concerned predominantly with the great religious reformation which he instituted. The first stage of this programme occurred in the eighth year of his reign (c. 631 BC), not long before the death of Ashurbanipal (c. 626 BC),1 the last great Assyrian ruler. Jeremiah seems to have been influenced profoundly by the way in which Josiah consistently renounced the corrupt polytheism which his father Amon and his grandfather Manasseh had espoused. After the death of Ashurbanipal the Assyrians were so beset