Old Assyrian Empire which included the power to detain people and confiscate property. At the beginning of the reign of an Assyrian king, the limmu, an appointed royal official, would preside over the New Year festival at the capital city. The eponym dating system was a calendar system for Assyria, for a period of over one thousand years. Every year was associated with the name, an eponym, of the limmu, the individual holding office. The dating system is thought to have originated in the ancient city of Assur, and remained the official dating system in Assyria until the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire ancient Roman remains have been shown to have been less than half that of modern Europeans which have concentrations between 20-50ppm. The role and importance of lead poisoning in contributing to the fall of the Roman Empire is the subject of controversy and its importance and validity is discounted by many historians. John Scarborough, a pharmacologist and classicist, criticized Nriagu's book as "so full of false evidence, miscitations, typographical errors, and a blatant flippancy regarding primary sources that the reader cannot trust the basic arguments." He concluded that ancient authorities were well aware of lead poisoning and that it was