the son of Ishme-Dagan, is mentioned by Tiglath-Pileser I, but he cannot
be identified with the ruler of the time of Hammurabi, since,
according to Tiglath-Pileser, he ruled too late, about 1800 B.C.
A brick-inscription of another Shamshi-Adad, however, the son of
Igur-kapkapu, is preserved in the British Museum, and it is probable
that we may identify him with Hammurabi's Assyrian viceroy. Erishum and
his son Ikunum, whose inscriptions are also preserved in the British
Museum, should certainly be assigned to an early period of Assyrian
history.

The recent excavations at Sherghat are already yielding the names
of other early Assyrian viceroys, and, although the texts of the
inscriptions in which their names occur have not yet been published, we
may briefly enumerate the more important of the discoveries that have
been made. Last year a small cone or cylinder was found which, though
it bears only a few lines of inscription, restores the names of no less
than seven early Assyrian viceroys whose existence was not previously
known. The cone was inscribed by Ashir-rîm-nishêshu, who gives his own
genealogy and records the restoration of the wall of the city of Ashur,
which he states had been rebuilt by certain of his predecessors on
the throne. The principal portion of the inscription reads as
follows: "Ashir-rîm-nishêshu, the viceroy of the god Ashir, the son of
Ashir-nirari, the viceroy of the god Ashir, the son of Ashir-rabi, the
viceroy. The city wall which Kikia, Ikunum, Shar-kenkate-Ashir, and
Ashir-nirari, the son of Ishme-Dagan, my forefathers, had built, was
fallen, and for the preservation of my life... I rebuilt it." Perhaps no
inscription has yet been recovered in either Assyria or Babylonia which
contained so much new information packed into so small a space. Of the
names of the early viceroys mentioned in it only one was previously
known, i.e. the name of Ikunum, the son of Erishum, is found in a late