THE MOST IMPORTANT CHRONOLOGICAL FINDS in the realm of historical cuneiform literature are the chronicles. They fix for us the exact dates of certain events in the annals of the periods to which they belong. Practically every document of this character that has come to light has established some hitherto unknown fact. The latest published acquisition of this kind falls within the reign of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon (62.5-605 B. C.) and covers the tenth to the seventeenth years of his reign (616-609 B. C.). This bit of a chronicle is found on one tablet and sheds its light during a period that has been largely veiled in mystery. Indeed, for the period from 637 B. C. down through the fall of Nineveh our information has been gathered mainly from cunei- form contracts, many of them mere fragments, from the prophets of the Old Testament, and from a galaxy of classical writers both Greek and Roman, who lived not less than 200 years later than the events they described. Thus, the last years of the Assyrian em- pire have been hidden behind the mists of the legendary reports of the classicists from Herodotus to, Eusebius, the imprecations and denunciations of the Old Testament prophets, a few dated contract tablets, and the commutable statements of Nabonidus in his descriptions of the national conflicts of this period.