These six names are all that remain of the his tory of the early government of Assyria. At this period, about 1800 B. C., the chief city was Asshur, then and long after the residence of the ruler. There IS no hint In these early texts of hegemony over other cities; though Nineveh certainly, and other cities probably, were then in existence. The population was probably small, consisting, in its ruling classes at least, of colonists from Babylonia. There may have been earlier settlers among whom the Semitic invaders found home, as there were in Babylonia when the Semites first appeared in that land, but of them we have no certainty. It is an indistinct picture which we get of these times in the temperate northern land, but it is a picture of civilized men who dwelt in cities, and built tem ples in which to worship their gods, and who car ried on some form of government in a tributary or other subject relation to the great culture land which they had left in the south. The later As syrian people had but faint memory of these times, and to them, as to us, they were ancient days.