Historians have differed in explaining the origin of the Babylonians and Assyrians and many things related to the beginning of their affair, so they went in that regard in various schools of thought that were neither compatible nor convergent until the Franks at that time arrived at the solution of the writing known as cuneiform, which is the Assyrian letters, and many of the facts that historians differed about became clear to them and they were certain of many of them; because they saw their truth written on the walls of the buildings that they discovered in those regions, so it was the most truthful witness to what happened to those buildings and their builders and their dates, and other things that established them with the clearest clarity. Many of the early historians who are described as trustworthy and famous made the kingdom of the Babylonians or the Chaldeans the same as the kingdom of the Assyrians, as did the famous Greek historian Herodotus; where he says in his history, and the translation: Assyria includes many large cities, but the most sublime of those cities in glory and the most impregnable is the city of Babylon, and the kings of that country made it their capital since the destruction of the city of Nineveh.
