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Excerpt from Sumerian Grammatical Texts, Vol. 12 Reconstructing ancient history in Babylonia before B.C. 2000 up to 4000, and even to the kings after the flood, has become possible, thanks to the material provided by the Nippur excavations. A summary classification of unpublished tablets in the Museum collections has led to the discovery of fragments of historical import. They have been collected in the present volume. Prominent among them are: the chronological fragments, the portrait of King Ibi-Sin, and his official despatches at the time of the revolt of Isbi-irra, the founder of the Isin dynasty. They will be studied in turn along with less important, or comparatively more recent, fragments of the Cassite and Neo-Babylonian period. Due allowance should be made for further corrections to difficult Sumerian texts of damaged fragments. The main enlightening fact is that we gain a sure footing for more than two thousand years of history before the foundation of the first Babylonian empire - the empire of Hammurabi, when Abraham was a citizen of Ur in Chaldæa - a fact that brings the early Babylonian to the level of, if not before, the Egyptian chronology. Indeed it was not a Babylonian, but a Sumero-Akkadian chronology. And the problem of origins is furthermore complicated with a racial problem. Among the 11 royal cities that had in turn the honor of governing the land between the actual region of Bagdad and the sea, some like Kis, Upi, Akkad (Maer, Isin), belong to Akkadians a Semitic race; some like Uruk, Ur, Adab (Hamazi, Larsa), to a non-Semitic race: the Sumerians. The first known kingdom was the Semitic kingdom of Kis. But all civilization, art, religion looked toward the Sumerian south as its cradle. The Sumerian land that extended for about 150 miles from Nippur to Eridu on the sea was the land of origins. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbook