This concludes our detailed study of the "histories" of the reigns
which were set forth with the official sanction. Before summing up our
conclusions as to their general character, it will be well to devote a
moment to the consideration of certain other sources for the Assyrian
period. Many minor inscriptions have been passed by without notice,
and a mere mention of the mass of business documents, letters, and
appeals to the sun god will here be sufficient, though in a detailed
history their help will be constantly invoked to fill in the sketch
secured by the study of the official documents, and not infrequently
to correct them. Of foreign sources, those of the Hebrews furnish too
complicated a problem for study in this place, [Footnote:
Cf. Olmstead, AJSL. XXX. Iff.; XXXI, 169 ff. for introduction to these
new problems.] and the scanty documents of the other peoples who used
the cuneiform characters hardly furnish source problems.

Even the Babylonians have furnished us with hardly a text which
demands source study. To the end, as is shown so conspiciously in the
case of Nebuchadnezzar, scores of long inscriptions could be devoted
to the building activities of the ruler while a tiny fragment is all
that is found of the Annals. Even his rock cut inscriptions in Syria,
those in the Wadi Brissa and at the Nahr el Kelb, are almost
exclusively devoted to architectural operations in far away Babylon!
[Footnote: It may be noted that the Cornell Expedition secured
squeezes of both these inscriptions.]

Yet if the Babylonians were so deficient in their appreciation of the
need of historical annals for the individual reigns, they seem to have
been, the superiors of the Assyrians when it came to the production of