A letter to the Times of Tuesday by Mr. C.
R. Conder. besides a quantity of new information about the Hittites discovered by a French mission to Cappadocia, contains a translation of a Babylonian tablet, which is most curiously suggestive. It is a letter written by an Assyrian dealer of B.C. 2000 to a Cappadocian, in which he asks whether he can settle as a merchant there and found a house on paying a tax, giving sufficient money security, and living "as a son of the laud." A Genevese might write to a friend in the Transvaal almost in the words used by the Assyrian three thousand nine hundred years ago. The truth is, the world has changed its ways less than we think, though, owing to the new means of communication and the new security for life, it seems to have changed them so exceed- ingly. A Byzantine only five hundred years ago would have said that it had not changed them at all, except through the rise of new dynasties and Powers.
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