the existence of variant traditions, or Ulam-Buriash may have assumed
another name on his conquest of Babylonia, a practice which was usual
with the later kings of Assyria when they occupied the Babylonian
throne.

The information supplied by the new chronicle with regard to the
relations of the first three dynasties to one another is of the greatest
possible interest to the student of early Babylonian history. We see
that the Semitic empire founded at Babylon by Sumu-abu, and consolidated
by Hammurabi, was not established on so firm a basis as has hitherto
been believed. The later kings of the dynasty, after Elam had been
conquered, had to defend their empire from encroachments on the south,
and they eventually succumbed before the onslaught of the Sumerian
element, which still remained in the population of Babylonia and had
rallied in the Country of the Sea. This dynasty in its turn succumbed
before the invasion of the Kassites from the mountains in the western
districts of Elam, and, although the city of Babylon retained her
position as the capital of the country throughout these changes of
government, she was the capital of rulers of different races, who
successively fought for and obtained the control of the fertile plains
of Mesopotamia.

It is probable that the Kassite kings of the Third Dynasty exercised
authority not only over Babylonia but also over the greater part of
Elam, for a number of inscriptions of Kassite kings of Babylonia have
been found by M. de Morgan at Susa. These inscriptions consist of
grants of land written on roughly shaped stone stelae, a class which the
Babylonians themselves called _kudurru_, while they have been frequently
referred to by modern writers as "boundary-stones." This latter term
is not very happily chosen, for it suggests that the actual monuments
themselves were set up on the limits of a field or estate to mark its
boundary. It is true that the inscription on a kudurru enumerates the
exact position and size of the estate with which it is concerned,
but the kudurru was never actually used to mark the boundary. It was
preserved as a title-deed, in the house of the owner of the estate or
possibly in the temple of his god, and formed his charter or title-deed
to which he could appeal in case of any dispute arising as to his right
of ownership. One of the kudurrus found by M. de Morgan records the
grant of a number of estates near Babylon by Nazimaruttash, a king of
the Third o