despatch to the king of “two hundred and forty men of ’the King’s Company’ under the command of Nannar-iddina... who have left the country of Ashur and the district of Shitullum.”  From this most interesting reference it followed that the country to the north of Babylonia was known as Assyria at the time of the kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and the fact that Babylonian troops were stationed there by Hammurabi proved that the country formed an integral part of the Babylonian empire.

These conclusions were soon after strikingly confirmed by two passages in the introductory sections of Hammurabi’s code of laws which was discovered at Susa.  Here Hammurabi records that he “restored his (i.e. the god Ashur’s) protecting image unto the city of Ashur,” and a few lines farther on he describes himself as the king “who hath made the names of Ishtar glorious in the city of Nineveh in the temple of E-mish-mish.”  That Ashur should be referred to at this period is what we might expect, inasmuch as it was known to have been the earliest capital of Assyria; more striking is the reference to Nineveh, proving as it does that it was a flourishing city in Hammurabi’s time and that the temple of Ishtar there had already been long established.  It is true that Gudea, the Sumerian patesi of Shirpurla, records that he rebuilt the temple of the goddess Ninni (Ishtar) at a place called Nina.  Now Nina may very probably be identified with Nineveh, but many writers have taken it to be a place in Southern Babylonia and possibly a district of Shirpurla itself.  No such uncertainty attaches to Hammurabi’s reference to Nineveh, which is undoubtedly the Assyrian city of that name.  Although no account has yet been published of the recent excavations carried out at Nineveh by the British Museum, they fully corroborate the inference drawn with regard to the great age of the city.  The series of trenches which were cut deep into the lower strata of Kuyunjik revealed numerous traces of very early habitations on the mound.

Neither in Hammurabi’s letters, nor upon the stele inscribed with his code of laws, is any reference made to the contemporary governor or ruler of Assyria, but on a contract tablet preserved in the Pennsylvania Museum a name has been recovered which will probably be identified with that of the ruler of Assyria in Hammurabi’s reign.  In legal and commercial documents of the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon the contracting parties frequently swore by the names of two gods (usually Shamash and Marduk) and also that of the reigning king.  Now it has been found by Dr. Banke that on this document in the Pennsylvania Museum the contracting parties swear by the name of Hammurabi and also by that of Shamshi-Adad.  As only gods and kings are mentioned in the oath formulas of this period, it follows that Shamshi-Adad was a king, or at any rate a patesi or ishshakku.  Now from its form the name Shamshi-Adad must be that of an Assyrian, not that of a Babylonian, and, since he