ASSYRIA lies to the north of Babylonia. It begins ~ with the high plain of Mesopotamia, a little above the junction of the Adhem with the Tigris, and occupies the middle part of the basin of that river as far as the Kurnib. On the east the middle course of the Great Zftb and the spurs of the Zagros separate it from the Kassites. Northward, Mount Masios serves as a frontier. To the west it does not reach the Habur or thc Euphrates. This land of triangular outline does not possess the geographical unity of Babylonia. The wcstern part in Mesopotamia is a vast undulating plateau, from which rise some chalky hills; in the eastern section, beyond the Tigris, are numerous wooded hills and valleys whence flow important streams, the Kurnib, the two Zftbs, and the Adhem, a region rich in metals and fertile in cereals and fruit. On the east the Zagros forms a natural frontier, with its abrupt chains through which only two or three passes, and those impassable during part of the year, exist. On the north, terrace is piled on terrace, buttrcssing the Armenian massif. To the south the alluvial plain is inhabited by the Babylonians. Only on the west is there no natural boundary, and it is mainly in that direction that the Assyrian power will extend its conquests to the Mediterranean and Egypt. The area of Assyria has been compared by Rawlinson to that of Great Britain, while the extent of Babylonia would be roughly the same as that of Denmark. l

In the ruins of Assur, the first capital of Assyria, the oldest documents discovered under a temple of Ishtar are sculpturcs analogous to the Sumerian, a statue of a seated man, unfortunately mutilated and headless, and an erect statue with great empty eye-sockets and shaven head, but

wearing a beard on the chin, contrary to the Sumerian usage. The chance of excavation has brought to light at Kala-tepe, near Kara-Eyuk, a mound lying eighteen kilometres north-east of Cresarea in Cappadocia, some tablets written in Semitic containing theophorous names, compounds of Ashur-ltti-Ashur, Tuba-Ashur, Ashur-malik, Ashur-muttabil. That in this region far away from Assyria

there were votaries of Ashur in the twenty-fourth century before the Christian era, has been put beyond the possibility of doubt, since the publication 1 of a tablet belonging to this series bearing on its envelope the impression of a Sumerian cylinder in the name of a servant of lbi-Sin, the last of thc kings of Ur.