which document is our earliest and most authentic source for any given
event, we have already solved some of the most stubborn problems in
the history of the reign. The various conflicting accounts of the
Egyptian campaigns, for example, have caused much trouble, but if we
recognize that each is a step in the movement toward increasing the
credit the king should receive for them, and trust for our history
only the first in date, we have at last placed the history of the
reign on a firm basis.

Our very earliest document furnishes a beautiful illustration of this
principle. It is a detailed narrative of the unimportant Kirbit
expedition, which is ascribed to the governor Nur ekalli umu. Cylinder
E gives a briefer account and Cylinder F one still shorter. Both
vaguely ascribe it to the "governors" but do not attempt to claim it
for the king. It remained for Cylinder B, a score of years later, to
take the final step, and to inform us that the king in person
conducted the expedition. Further, the formal conclusion, which
immediately follows the Kirbit expedition in our earliest document,
shows that this event, unimportant as it was, was the only one which
could be claimed for the "beginning of the reign." This campaign is
further fixed by the Babylonian Chronicle to the accession year. Yet
later cylinders can place before it no less than two expeditions
against Egypt and one against Tyre! Our earliest document alone would
be enough to prove that these had been taken over from the reign of
his father, even did we not have some of this verified by that father
himself. [Footnote: K. 2846; Winckler, AOF. I. 474 ff.]

Next in date and therefore in value we are probably to place Cylinder
E, a decagon fragment, which contains a somewhat less full account of
the Kirbit campaign, and a picturesque narrative of the opening of