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Hence it was that Ashur-bani-pal, when forming his library at Nineveh, was able to draw upon so rich a store of the more ancient literary texts of Babylonia. The Sumerian Version of the Deluge and of Antediluvian history may well have survived in a less epitomized form than that in which we have recovered it; and, like other ancient texts, it was probably provided with a Semitic translation.

In the story of Bel and the Dragon, the third of the apocryphal additions to Daniel, we have direct evidence of the late survival of the Dragon motif apart from any trace of the Creation myth; in this connexion see Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudopigrapha, Vol. I , p. 653 f. I, pp. 116 ff., lxviii f. The text is preserved on an Assyrian tablet made for the library of Ashur-bani-pal.

Both he and Sarduris III were on friendly terms with the Assyrians, for we know that they both sent embassies to Ashur-bani-pal. By far the larger number of rock-inscriptions that have yet been found and copied in the mountainous districts bordering on Assyria were engraved by this ancient Vannic people, and Drs.

In any case we have a clear indication that an earlier period was included before the true "kingdoms", or dynasties, in an Assyrian copy of the list, a fragment of which is preserved in the British Museum from the Library of Ashur-bani-pal at Nineveh; see Chron. conc. Early Bab. I, pp. 182 ff., Vol. II, pp. 48 ff., 143 f.

At that time the excavations in Mesopotamia had not revealed many traces of the race itself, and its previous existence had been mainly inferred from a number of Sumerian compositions inscribed upon Assyrian tablets found in the library of Ashur-bani-pal at Nineveh.

The most important of these was the head and shoulders of a statue of Mentuemhat, governor of Thebes at the time of the sack of the city by Ashur-bani-pal of Assyria in 668 B.C. In Miss Benson's interesting book, The Temple of Mut in Asher, it is suggested, on the authority of Prof.

The worker of this change in the political condition of Elam and the author of her independence was a king named Kutir-Nakhkhunte or Kutir-Na'khunde, whose name and deeds have been preserved in later Assyrian records, where he is termed Kudur-Nankhundi and Kudur-Nakhundu.* This ruler, according to the Assyrian king Ashur-bani-pal, was not content with throwing off the yoke under which his land had laboured for so long, but carried war into the country of his suzerain and marched through Babylonia devastating and despoiling the principal cities.

2 Kings xvi. 7 ff. 2 Kings xvi. 10 ff. Hezekiah's resistance checked the action of Assyrian influence on Judah for a time. But it was intensified under his son Manasseh, when Judah again became tributary to Assyria, and in the house of the Lord altars were built to all the host of heaven. Towards the close of his long reign Manasseh himself was summoned by Ashur-bani-pal to Babylon.