uring
the period in which the two dynasties were contemporary they were at
war with one another, the Second Dynasty gradually encroaching on
the territory of the First Dynasty, until it eventually succeeded in
capturing Babylon and in getting the whole of the country under its
control. We also learn from the new chronicle that this Second Dynasty
at first established itself in "the Country of the Sea," that is to say,
the districts in the extreme south of Babylonia bordering on the Persian
Gulf, and afterwards extended its borders northward until it gradually
absorbed the whole of Babylonia. Before discussing the other facts
supplied by the new chronicle, with regard to the rise and growth of the
Country of the Sea, whose kings formed the so-called "Second Dynasty,"
it will be well to refer briefly to the sources from which the
information on the period to be found in the current histories is
derived.

All the schemes of Babylonian chronology that have been suggested during
the last twenty years have been based mainly on the great list of kings
which is preserved in the British Museum. This document was drawn up in
the Neo-Babylonian or Persian period, and when complete it gave a list
of the names of all the Babylonian kings from the First Dynasty of
Babylon down to the time in which it was written. The names of the kings
are arranged in dynasties, and details are given as to the length of
their reigns and the total number of years each dynasty lasted. The
beginning of the list which gave the names of the First Dynasty is
wanting, but the missing portion has been restored from a smaller
document which gives a list of the kings of the First and Second
Dynasties only. In the great list of kings the dynasties are arranged
one after the other, and it was obvious that its compiler imagined that
they succeeded one another in the order in which he arranged them.
But when the total number of years the dynasties lasted is learned, we
obtain dates for the first dynasties in the list which are too early to
agree with other chronological information supplied by the historical
inscriptions. The majority of writers have accepted the figures of the
list of kings and have been content to ignore the discrepancies; others
have sought to reconcile the available data by ingenious emendations of
the figures given by the list and the historical inscriptions, or have
omitted the Second Dynasty entirely from their calculations. The new
chroni