ABSTRACT

In the time of the First Dynasty of Babylon, people called Habiru are known in Mesopotamia. A great many written documents remain from the Old Babylonian period. Not only official correspondence but also many private letters have been found, and show that a considerable part of the population was literate. There are some other Old Babylonian fragments and fairly extensive fragments of a late Assyrian version, the latter all from the seventh-century library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. The Chaldeans were a Semitic people, an Aramean tribe, who probably settled in southern Babylonia about the end of the second millennium and later established the Chaldean or New Babylonian empire. The thousands of Nuzi tablets referred to were written by Hurrian scribes in the Babylonian language but with occasional employment of native Hurrian words.