The Assyrians were endowed with a keen sense of history, and had invented a system of reckoning time by means of certain officers called _limmi_, who gave their names to their years of office.

The historical and chronological works of the Assyrian libraries are therefore particularly important.

They have enabled us to restore the chronology of the royal period of Israelitish history, and to supplement the Old Testament narrative with the contemporaneous records of the Assyrian kings.

The Babylonians were less historically exact, perhaps because they had less of the Semitic element in their blood; but they, too, carefully kept the annals of their kings, and took a deep interest in the former history of their country.
Contract and other tablets relating to trade and business formed, however, the larger part of the contents of most Babylonian libraries.
They have revealed to us the inner and social life of the people, so that the age of Khammurabi, or even of Sargon, in Babylonia, is beginning to be as well known to us as the age of Perikles in Greece.
Along with the contract-tablets must be counted the numerous legal documents and records of law-cases which have been preserved.

Babylonian law was, like English law, built upon precedents, and an elaborate and carefully considered code had been formed at an early date.
Collections of letters, partly royal, partly private, were also to be found in the libraries.