Chaldea: From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria

by Zénaïde A. Ragozin

FOOTNOTES:

[AC] "La Magie et la Divination chez les Chaldéens," 1874-5. German translation of it, 1878.

[AD] Alfred Maury, "La Magie et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquité et au Moyen-âge." Introduction, p. 1.

[AE] "Ud" not being a proper name, but the name of the sun in the language of Shumir and Accad, it can be rendered in translation by "Sun," with a capital.

[AF] Another and more recent translator renders this line: "God who knowest I knew not." Whichever rendering is right, the thought is beautiful and profound.

[AG] This hymn is given by H. Zimmern, as the text to a dissertation on the language and grammar.

IV.

CUSHITES AND SEMITES.—EARLY CHALDEAN HISTORY.

1. We have just seen that the hymns and prayers which compose the third part of the great Magic Collection really mark a later and higher stage in the religious conceptions of the Turanian settlers of Chaldea, the people of Shumir and Accad. This improvement was not entirely due to a process of natural development, but in a great measure to the influence of that other and nobler race, who came from the East. When the priestly historian of Babylon, Berosus, calls the older population "men of foreign race," it is because he belonged himself to that second race, who remained in the land, introduced their own superior culture, and asserted their supremacy to the end of Babylon. The national legends have preserved the memory of this important event, which they represent as a direct divine revelation. Êa, the all-wise himself, it was believed, had appeared to men and taught them things human and divine. Berosus faithfully reports the legend, but seems to have given the God's name "Êa-Han" ("Êa the Fish") under the corrupted Greek form of Oannes. This is the narrative, of which we already know the first line:

"There was originally at Babylon a multitude of men of foreign race who had colonized Chaldea, and they lived without order, like animals. But in the first year" (meaning the first year of the new order of things, the new dispensation) "there appeared, from out of the Erythrean Sea (the ancient Greek name for the Persian Gulf) where it borders upon Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, who was called Oannes. The whole body of the animal was that of a fish, but under the fish's head he had another head, and also feet below, growing out of his fish's tail, similar to those of a man; also human speech, and his image is preserved to this day. This being used to spend the whole day amidst men, without taking any food, and he gave them an insight into letters, and sciences, and every kind of art; he taught them how to found cities, to construct temples, to introduce laws and to measure land; he showed them how to sow seeds and gather in crops; in short, he instructed them in everything that softens manners and makes up civilization, so that from that time no one has invented anything new. Then, when the sun went down, this monstrous Oannes used to plunge back into the sea and spend the night in the midst of the boundless waves, for he was amphibious."

2. The question, Who were the bringers of this advanced civilization? has caused much division among the most eminent scholars. Two solutions are offered. Both being based on many and serious grounds and supported by illustrious names, and the point being far from settled yet, it is but fair to state them both. The two greatest of German assyriologists, Professors Eberhard Schrader and Friedrich Delitzsch, and the German school which acknowledges them as leaders, hold that the bringers of the new and more perfect civilization were Semites—descendants of Shem, i.e., people of the same race as the Hebrews—while the late François Lenormant and his followers contend that they were Cushites in the first instance,—i.e., belonged to that important family of nations which we find grouped, in Chapter X. of Genesis, under the name of Cush, himself a son of Ham—and that the Semitic immigration came second. As the latter hypothesis puts forward, among other arguments, the authority of the Biblical historians, and moreover involves the destinies of a very numerous and vastly important branch of ancient humanity, we will yield to it the right of precedence.

57.—OANNES. (Smith's "Chaldean Genesis.")

3. The name "Ham" signifies "brown, dark" (not "black"). Therefore, to speak of certain nations as "sons of Ham," is to say that they belonged to "the Dark Race." Yet, originally, this great section of Noah's posterity was as white of color as the other two. It seems to have first existed as a separate race in a region not very distant from the high table-land of Central Asia, the probable first cradle of mankind. That division of this great section which again separated and became the race of Cush, appears to have been drawn southwards by reasons which it is, of course, impossible to ascertain. It is easier to guess at the route they must have taken along the Hindu Cush,[AH] a range of mountains which must have been to it a barrier in the west, and which joins the western end of the Himâlaya, the mightiest mountain-chain in the world. The break between the Hindu-Cush and the Himâlaya forms a mountain pass, just at the spot where the river Indus (most probably the Pischon of Gen., Ch. II.) turns abruptly to the south, to water the rich plains of India. Through this pass, and following the course of the river, further Cushite detachments must have penetrated into that vast and attractive peninsula, even to the south of it, where they found a population mostly belonging to the Black branch of humanity, so persistently ignored by the writer of Chap. X. Hundreds of years spent under a tropical clime and intermarriage with the Negro natives altered not only the color of their skin, but also the shape of their features. So that when Cushite tribes, with the restless migratory spirit so characteristic of all early ages, began to work their way back again to the north, then to the west, along the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, they were both dark-skinned and thick-lipped, with a decided tendency towards the Negro type, lesser or greater according to the degree of mixture with the inferior race. That this type was foreign to them is proved by the facility with which their features resumed the nobler cast of the white races wherever they stayed long enough among these, as was the case in Chaldea, in Arabia, in the countries of Canaan, whither many of these tribes wandered at various times.

4. Some Cushite detachments, who reached the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, crossed over into Africa, and settling there amidst the barbarous native negro tribes, formed a nation which became known to its northern neighbors, the Egyptians, to the Hebrews, and throughout the ancient East under its own proper name of Cush, and whose outward characteristics came, in the course of time, so near to the pure Negro type as to be scarcely recognizable from it. This is the same nation which, to us moderns, is better known under the name of Ethiopians, given to it by the Greeks, as well as to the eastern division of the same race. The Egyptians themselves were another branch of the same great section of humanity, represented in the genealogy of Chap. X. by the name of Mizraim, second son of Ham. These must have come from the east along the Persian Gulf, then across Northern Arabia and the Isthmus of Suez. In the color and features of the Egyptians the mixture with black races is also noticeable, but not enough to destroy the beauty and expressiveness of the original type, at all events far less than in their southern neighbors, the Ethiopians, with whom, moreover, they were throughout on the worst of terms, whom they loathed and invariably designated under the name of "vile Cush."

5. A third and very important branch of the Hamite family, the Canaanites, after reaching the Persian Gulf, and probably sojourning there some time, spread, not to the south, but to the west, across the plains of Syria, across the mountain chain of Lebanon and to the very edge of the Mediterranean Sea, occupying all the land which later became Palestine, also to the north-west, as far as the mountain chain of Taurus. This group was very numerous, and broken up into a great many peoples, as we can judge from the list of nations given in Chap. X. (v. 15-18) as "sons of Canaan." In its migrations over this comparatively northern region, Canaan found and displaced not black natives, but Turanian nomadic tribes, who roamed at large over grassy wildernesses and sandy wastes and are possibly to be accounted as the representatives of that portion of the race which the biblical historian embodies in the pastoral names of Jabal and Jubal—(Gen. iv., 20-22)—"The father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle," and "the father of all such as handle the harp and pipe." In which case the Turanian settlers and builders of cities would answer to Tubalcain, the smith and artificer. The Canaanites, therefore, are those among the Hamites who, in point of color and features, have least differed from their kindred white races, though still sufficiently bronzed to be entitled to the name of "sons of Ham," i.e., "belonging to the dark-skinned race."

6. Migrating races do not traverse continents with the same rapidity as marching armies. The progress is slow, the stations are many. Every station becomes a settlement, sometimes the beginning of a new nation—so many landmarks along the way. And the distance between the starting-point and the furthest point reached by the race is measured not only by thousands of miles, but also by hundreds and hundreds of years; only the space can be actually measured; while the time can be computed merely by conjecture. The route from the south of India, along the shore of Malabar, the Persian Gulf, across the Arabian deserts, then down along the Red Sea and across the straits into Africa, is of such tremendous length that the settlements which the Cushite race left scattered along it must have been more than usually numerous. According to the upholders of a Cushite colonization of Chaldea, one important detachment appears to have taken possession of the small islands along the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf and to have stayed there for several centuries, probably choosing these island homes on account of their seclusion and safety from invasion. There, unmolested and undisturbed, they could develop a certain spirit of abstract speculation to which their natural bent inclined them. They were great star-gazers and calculators—two tastes which go well together, for Astronomy cannot exist without Mathematics. But star-gazing is also favorable to dreaming, and the Cushite islanders had time for dreams. Thoughts of heavenly things occupied them much; they worked out a religion beautiful in many ways and full of deep sense; their priests dwelt in communities or colleges, probably one on every island, and spent their time not only in scientific study and religious contemplation, but also in the more practical art of government, for there do not appear as yet to have been any kings among them.

7. But there came a time when the small islands were overcrowded with the increased population, and detachments began to cross the water and land at the furthest point of the Gulf, in the land of the great rivers. Here they found a people not unpractised in several primitive arts, and possessed of some important fundamental inventions—writing, irrigation by means of canals—but deplorably deficient in spiritual development, and positively barbarous in the presence of an altogether higher culture. The Cushites rapidly spread through the land of Shumir and Accad, and taught the people with whom they afterwards, as usual, intermarried, until both formed but one nation—with this difference, that towards the north of Chaldea the Cushite element became predominant, while in the south numbers remained on the side of the Turanians. Whether this result was attained altogether peacefully or was preceded by a period of resistance and fighting, we have no means of ascertaining. If there was such a period, it cannot have lasted long, for intellect was on the side of the newcomers, and that is a power which soon wins the day. At all events the final fusion must have been complete and friendly, since the old national legend reported by Berosus cleverly combines the two elements, by attributing the part of teacher and revealer to the Shumiro-Accad's own favorite divine being Êa, while it is not impossible that it alludes to the coming of the Cushites in making the amphibious Oannes rise out of the Persian Gulf, "where it borders on Chaldea." The legend goes on to say that Oannes set down his revelations in books which he consigned into the keeping of men, and that several more divine animals of the same kind continued to appear at long intervals. Who knows but the latter strange detail may have been meant to allude fantastically to the arrival of successive Cushite colonies? In the long run of time, of course all such meaning would be forgotten and the legend remain as a miraculous and inexplicable incident.

8. It would be vain to attempt to fix any dates for events which took place in such remote antiquity, in the absence of any evidence or document that might be grasped. Yet, by close study of facts, by laborious and ingenious comparing of later texts, of every scrap of evidence furnished by monuments, of information contained in the fragments of Berosus and of other writers, mostly Greek, it has been possible, with due caution, to arrive at some approximative dates, which, after all, are all that is needed to classify things in an order intelligible and correct in the main. Even should further discoveries and researches arrive at more exact results, the gain will be comparatively small. At such a distance, differences of a couple of centuries do not matter much. When we look down a long line of houses or trees, the more distant ones appear to run together, and we do not always see where it ends—yet we can perfectly well pursue its direction. The same with the so-called double stars in astronomy: they are stars which, though really separated by thousands of miles, appear as one on account of the immense distance between them and our eye, and only the strongest telescope lenses show them to be separate bodies, though still close together. Yet this is sufficient to assign them their place so correctly on the map of the heavens, that they do not disturb the calculations in which they are included. The same kind of perspective applies to the history of remote antiquity. As the gloom which has covered it so long slowly rolls back before the light of scientific research, we begin to discern outlines and landmarks, at first so dim and wavering as rather to mislead than to instruct; but soon the searcher's eye, sharpened by practice, fixes them sufficiently to bring them into connection with the later and more fully illumined portions of the eternally unrolling picture. Chance, to which all discoverers are so much indebted, frequently supplies such a landmark, and now and then one so firm and distinct as to become a trustworthy centre for a whole group.

9. The annals of the Assyrian king Asshurbanipal (the founder of the great Library at Nineveh) have established beyond a doubt the first positive date that has been secured for the History of Chaldea. That king was for a long time at war with the neighboring kingdom of Elam, and ended by conquering and destroying its capital, Shushan (Susa), after carrying away all the riches from the royal palace and all the statues from the great temple. This happened in the year 645 b.c. In the inscriptions in which he records this event, the king informs us that in that temple he found a statue of the Chaldean goddess Nana, which had been carried away from her own temple in the city of Urukh (Erech, now Warka) by a king of Elam of the name of Khudur-Nankhundi, who invaded the land of Accad 1635 years before, and that he, Asshurbanipal, by the goddess's own express command, took her from where she had dwelt in Elam, "a place not appointed her," and reinstated her in her own sanctuary "which she had delighted in." 1635 added to 645 make 2280, a date not to be disputed. Now if a successful Elamite invasion in 2280 found in Chaldea famous sanctuaries to desecrate, the religion to which these sanctuaries belonged, that of the Cushite, or Semitic colonists, must have been established in the country already for several, if not many, centuries. Indeed, quite recent discoveries show that it had been so considerably over a thousand years, so that we cannot possibly accept a date later than 4000 b.c. for the foreign immigration. The Shumiro-Accadian culture was too firmly rooted then and too completely worked out—as far as it went—to allow less than about 1000 years for its establishment. This takes us as far back as 5000 b.c.—a pretty respectable figure, especially when we think of the vista of time which opens behind it, and for which calculation fairly fails us. For if the Turanian settlers brought the rudiments of that culture from the highlands of Elam, how long had they sojourned there before they descended into the plains? And how long had it taken them to reach that station on their way from the race's mountain home in the far Northeast, in the Altaï valleys?

10. However that may be, 5000 b.c. is a moderate and probable date. But ancient nations were not content with such, when they tried to locate and classify their own beginnings. These being necessarily obscure and only vaguely shadowed out in traditions which gained in fancifulness and lost in probability with every succeeding generation that received them and handed them down to the next, they loved to magnify them by enshrouding them in the mystery of innumerable ages. The more appalling the figures, the greater the glory. Thus we gather from some fragments of Berosus that, according to the national Chaldean tradition, there was an interval of over 259,000 years between the first appearance of Oannes and the first king. Then come ten successive kings, each of whom reigns a no less extravagant number of years (one 36,000, another 43,000, even 64,000; 10,800 being the most modest figure), till the aggregate of all these different periods makes up the pretty sum total of 691,200 years, supposed to have elapsed from the first appearance of Oannes to the Deluge. It is so impossible to imagine so prodigious a number of years or couple with it anything at all real, that we might just as well substitute for such a figure the simpler "very, very long ago," or still better, the approved fairy tale beginning, "There was once upon a time, ..." It conveys quite as definite a notion, and would, in such a case, be the more appropriate, that all a nation's most marvellous traditions, most fabulous legends, are naturally placed in those stupendously remote ages which no record could reach, no experience control. Although these traditions and legends generally had a certain body of actual truth and dimly remembered fact in them, which might still be apparent to the learned and the cultivated few, the ignorant masses of the people swallowed the thing whole, as real history, and found things acknowledged as impossible easy to believe, for the simple reason that "it was so very long ago!" A Chaldean of Alexander's time certainly did not expect to meet a divine Man-Fish in his walks along the sea-shore, but—there was no knowing what might or might not have happened seven hundred thousand years ago! In the legend of the six successive apparitions under the first ten long-lived kings, he would not have descried the simple sense so lucidly set forth by Mr. Maspero, one of the most distinguished of French Orientalists:—"The times preceding the Deluge represented an experimental period, during which mankind, being as yet barbarous, had need of divine assistance to overcome the difficulties with which it was surrounded. Those times were filled up with six manifestations of the deity, doubtless answering to the number of sacred books in which the priests saw the most complete expression of revealed law."[AI] This presents another and more probable explanation of the legend than the one suggested above, (end of § 7); but there is no more actual proof of the one than of the other being the correct one.

11. If Chaldea was in after times a battle-ground of nations, it was in the beginning a very nursery and hive of peoples. The various races in their migrations must necessarily have been attracted and arrested by the exceeding fertility of its soil, which it is said, in the times of its highest prosperity and under proper conditions of irrigation, yielded two hundredfold return for the grain it received. Settlement must have followed settlement in rapid succession. But the nomadic element was for a long time still very prevalent, and side by side with the builders of cities and tillers of fields, shepherd tribes roamed peacefully over the face of the land, tolerated and unmolested by the permanent population, with which they mixed but warily, occasionally settling down temporarily, and shifting their settlements as safety or advantage required it,—or wandering off altogether from that common halting-place, to the north, and west, and south-west. This makes it very plain why Chaldea is given as the land where the tongues became confused and the second separation of races took place.

12. Of those principally nomadic tribes the greatest part did not belong, like the Cushites or Canaanites, to the descendants of Ham, "the Dark," but to those of Shem, whose name, signifying "Glory, Renown," stamps him as the eponymous ancestor of that race which has always firmly believed itself to be the chosen one of God. They were Semites. When they arrived on the plains of Chaldea, they were inferior in civilization to the people among whom they came to dwell. They knew nothing of city arts and had all to learn. They did learn, for superior culture always asserts its power,—even to the language of the Cushite settlers, which the latter were rapidly substituting for the rude and poor Turanian idiom of Shumir and Accad. This language, or rather various dialects of it, were common to most Hamitic and Semitic tribes, among whom that from which the Hebrews sprang brought it to its greatest perfection. The others worked it into different kindred dialects—the Assyrian, the Aramaic or Syrian, the Arabic—according to their several peculiarities. The Phœnicians of the sea-shore, and all the Canaanite nations, also spoke languages belonging to the same family, and therefore classed among the so-called Semitic tongues. Thus it has come to pass that philology,—or the Science of Languages,—adopted a wrong name for that entire group, calling the languages belonging to it, "Semitic," while, in reality, they are originally "Hamitic." The reason is that the Hamitic origin of those important languages which have been called Semitic these hundred years had not been discovered until very lately, and to change the name now would produce considerable confusion.

13. Most of the Semitic tribes who dwelt in Chaldea adopted not only the Cushite language, but the Cushite culture and religion. Asshur carried all three northward, where the Assyrian kingdom arose out of a few Babylonian colonies, and Aram westward to the land which was afterwards called Southern Syria, and where the great city of Damascus long flourished and still exists. But there was one tribe of higher spiritual gifts than the others. It was not numerous, for through many generations it consisted of only one great family governed by its own eldest chief or patriarch. It is true that such a family, with the patriarch's own children and children's children, its wealth of horses, camels, flocks of sheep, its host of servants and slaves, male and female, represented quite a respectable force; Abraham could muster three hundred eighteen armed and trained servants who had been born in his own household. This particular tribe seems to have wandered for some time on the outskirts of Chaldea and in the land itself, as indicated by the name given to its eponym in Chap. X.: Arphaxad (more correctly Arphakshad), corrupted from Areph-Kasdîm, which means, "bordering on the Chaldeans," or perhaps "boundaries"—in the sense of "land"—of the Chaldeans. Generation after generation pushed further westward, traversed the land of Shinar, crossed the Euphrates and reached the city of Ur, in or near which the tribe dwelt many years.

14. Ur was then the greatest city of Southern Chaldea. The earliest known kings of Shumir resided in it, and besides that, it was the principal commercial mart of the country. For, strange as it may appear when we look on a modern map, Ur, the ruins of which are now 150 miles from the sea, was then a maritime city, with harbor and ship docks. The waters of the Gulf reached much further inland than they do now. There was then a distance of many miles between the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates, and Ur lay very near the mouth of the latter river. Like all commercial and maritime cities, it was the resort not only of all the different races which dwelt in the land itself, but also of foreign traders. The active intellectual life of a capital, too, which was at the same time a great religious centre and the seat of a powerful priesthood, must of necessity have favored interchange of ideas, and have exerted an influence on that Semitic tribe of whom the Bible tells us that it "went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan," led by the patriarch Terah and his son Abraham (Genesis xi. 31). The historian of Genesis here, as throughout the narrative, does not mention any date whatever for the event he relates; nor does he hint at the cause of this removal. On the first of these points the study of Chaldean cuneiform monuments throws considerable light, while the latter does not admit of more than guesses—of which something hereafter.

15. Such is a broad and cursory outline of the theory according to which Cushite immigrations preceded the arrival of the Semites in the land of Shumir and Accad. Those who uphold it give several reasons for their opinion, such as that the Bible several times mentions a Cush located in the East and evidently different from the Cush which has been identified as Ethiopia; that, in Chap. X. of Genesis (8-12), Nimrod, the legendary hero, whose empire at first was in "the land of Shinar," and who is said to have "gone forth out of that land into Assyria," is called a son of Cush; that the most ancient Greek poets knew of "Ethiopians" in the far East as opposed to those of the South—and several more. Those scholars who oppose this theory dismiss it wholesale. They will not admit the existence of a Cushite element or migration in the East at all, and put down the expressions in the Bible as simple mistakes, either of the writers or copyists. According to them, there was only one immigration in the land of Shumir and Accad, that of the Semites, achieved through many ages and in numerous instalments. The language which superseded the ancient Shumiro-Accadian idiom is to them a Semitic one in the directest and most exclusive sense; the culture grafted on that of the earlier population is by them called purely "Semitic;" while their opponents frequently use the compound designation of "Cushito-Semitic," to indicate the two distinct elements of which, to them, it appears composed. It must be owned that the anti-Cushite opinion is gaining ground. Yet the Cushite theory cannot be considered as disposed of, only "not proven,"—or not sufficiently so, and therefore in abeyance and fallen into some disfavor. With this proviso we shall adopt the word "Semitic," as the simpler and more generally used.

16. It is only with the rise of Semitic culture in Southern Mesopotamia that we enter on a period which, however remote, misty, and full of blanks, may still be called, in a measure, "historical," because there is a certain number of facts, of which contemporary monuments give positive evidence. True, the connection between those facts is often not apparent; their causes and effects are frequently not to be made out save by more or less daring conjectures; still there are numerous landmarks of proven fact, and with these real history begins. No matter if broad gaps have to be left open or temporarily filled with guesses. New discoveries are almost daily turning up, inscriptions, texts, which unexpectedly here supply a missing link, there confirm or demolish a conjecture, establish or correct dates which had long been puzzles or suggested on insufficient foundations. In short, details may be supplied as yet brokenly and sparingly, but the general outline of the condition of Chaldea may be made out as far back as forty centuries before Christ.

17. Of one thing there can be no doubt: that our earliest glimpse of the political condition of Chaldea shows us the country divided into numerous small states, each headed by a great city, made famous and powerful by the sanctuary or temple of some particular deity, and ruled by a patesi, a title which is now thought to mean priest-king, i.e., priest and king in one. There can be little doubt that the beginning of the city was everywhere the temple, with its college of ministering priests, and that the surrounding settlement was gradually formed by pilgrims and worshippers. That royalty developed out of the priesthood is also more than probable, and consequently must have been, in its first stage, a form of priestly rule, and, in a great measure, subordinate to priestly influence. There comes a time when for the title of patesi is substituted that of "king" simply—a change which very possibly indicates the assumption by the kings of a more independent attitude towards the class from which their power originally sprang. It is noticeable that the distinction between the Semitic newcomers and the indigenous Shumiro-Accadians continues long to be traceable in the names of the royal temple-builders, even after the new Semitic idiom, which we call the Assyrian, had entirely ousted the old language—a process which must have taken considerable time, for it appears, and indeed stands to reason, that the newcomers, in order to secure the wished for influence and propagate their own culture, at first not only learned to understand but actually used themselves the language of the people among whom they came, at least in their public documents. This it is that explains the fact that so many inscriptions and tablets, while written in the dialect of Shumir or Accad, are Semitic in spirit and in the grade of culture they betray. Furthermore, even superficial observation shows that the old language and the old names survive longest in Shumir,—the South. From this fact it is to be inferred with little chance of mistake that the North,—the land of Accad,—was earlier Semitized, that the Semitic immigrants established their first headquarters in that part of the country, that their power and influence thence spread to the South.

18. Fully in accordance with these indications, the first grand historical figure that meets us at the threshold of Chaldean history, dim with the mists of ages and fabulous traditions, yet unmistakably real, is that of the Semite Sharrukin, king of Accad—or Agadê, as the great Northern city came to be called—more generally known in history under the corrupt modern reading of Sargon, and called Sargon I., "the First," to distinguish him from another monarch of the same name who was found to have reigned many centuries later. As to the city of Agadê, it is no other than the city of Accad mentioned in Genesis x., 10. It was situated close to the Euphrates on a wide canal just opposite Sippar, so that in time the two cities came to be considered as one double city, and the Hebrews always called it "the two Sippars"—Sepharvaim, which is often spoken of in the Bible. It was there that Sharrukin established his rule, and a statue was afterwards raised to him there, the inscription on which, making him speak, as usual, in the first person, begins with the proud declaration: "Sharrukin, the mighty king, the king of Agadê, am I." Yet, although his reforms and conquests were of lasting importance, and himself remained one of the favorite heroes of Chaldean tradition, he appears to have been an adventurer and usurper. Perhaps he was, for this very reason, all the dearer to the popular fancy, which, in the absence of positive facts concerning his birth and origin, wove around them a halo of romance, and told of him a story which must be nearly as old as mankind, for it has been told over and over again, in different countries and ages, of a great many famous kings and heroes. This of Sharrukin is the oldest known version of it, and the inscription on his statue puts it into the king's own mouth. It makes him say that he knew not his father, and that his mother, a princess, gave him birth in a hiding-place, (or "an inaccessible place"), near the Euphrates, but that his family were the rulers of the land. "She placed me in a basket of rushes," the king is further made to say; "with bitumen the door of my ark she closed. She launched me on the river, which drowned me not. The river bore me along; to Akki, the water-carrier, it brought me. Akki, the water-carrier, in the tenderness of his heart lifted me up. Akki, the water-carrier, as his own child brought me up. Akki, the water-carrier, made me his gardener. And in my gardenership the goddess Ishtar loved me...."

19. Whatever his origin and however he came by the royal power, Sargon was a great monarch. It is said that he undertook successful expeditions into Syria, and a campaign into Elam; that with captives of the conquered races he partly peopled his new capital, Agadê, where he built a palace and a magnificent temple; that on one occasion he was absent three years, during which time he advanced to the very shores of the Mediterranean, which he calls "the sea of the setting sun," and where he left memorial records of his deeds, and returned home in triumph, bringing with him immense spoils. The inscription contains only the following very moderate mention of his military career: "For forty-five years the kingdom I have ruled. And the black-head race (Accadian) I have governed. In multitudes of bronze chariots I rode over rugged lands. I governed the upper countries. Three times to the coast of the (Persian) sea I advanced...."[AJ]

58.—CYLINDER OF SARGON, FROM AGADÊ.

(Hommel, "Gesch. Babyloniens u. Assyriens.")

20. This Sharrukin must not be confounded with another king of the same name, who reigned also in Agadê, some 1800 years later (about 2000 b.c.), and in whose time was completed and brought into definite shape a vast religious reform which had been slowly working itself out ever since the Semitic and Accadian elements began to mix in matters of spiritual speculation and worship. What was the result of the amalgamation will form the subject of the next chapter. Suffice it here to say that the religion of Chaldea in the form which it assumed under the second Sharrukin remained fixed forever, and when Babylonian religion is spoken of, it is that which is understood by that name. The great theological work demanded a literary undertaking no less great. The incantations and magic forms of the first, purely Turanian, period had to be collected and put in order, as well as the hymns and prayers of the second period, composed under the influence of a higher and more spiritual religious feeling. But all this literature was in the language of the older population, while the ruling class—the royal houses and the priesthood—were becoming almost exclusively Semitic. It was necessary, therefore, that they should study the old language and learn it so thoroughly as not only to understand and read it, but to be able to use it, in speaking and writing. For that purpose Sargon not only ordered the ancient texts, when collected and sorted, to be copied on clay tablets with the translation—either between the lines, or on opposite columns—into the now generally used modern Semitic language, which we may as well begin to call by its usual name, Assyrian, but gave directions for the compilation of grammars and vocabularies,—the very works which have enabled the scholars of the present day to arrive at the understanding of that prodigiously ancient tongue which, without such assistance, must have remained a sealed book forever.

21. Such is the origin of the great collection in three books and two hundred tablets, the contents of which made the subject of the preceding chapter. To this must be added another great work, in seventy tablets, in Assyrian, on astrology, i.e., the supposed influence of the heavenly bodies, according to their positions and conjunctions, on the fate of nations and individuals and on the course of things on earth generally—an influence which was firmly believed in; and probably yet a third work, on omens, prodigies and divination. To carry out these extensive literary labors, to treasure the results worthily and safely, Sargon II. either founded or greatly enlarged the library of the priestly college at Urukh (Erech), so that this city came to be called "the City of Books." This repository became the most important one in all Chaldea, and when, fourteen centuries later, the Assyrian Asshurbanipal sent his scribes all over the country, to collect copies of the ancient, sacred and scientific texts for his own royal library at Nineveh, it was at Erech that they gathered their most abundant harvest, being specially favored there by the priests, who were on excellent terms with the king after he had brought back from Shushan and restored to them the statue of their goddess Nana. Agadê thus became the headquarters, as it were, of the Semitic influence and reform, which spread thence towards the South, forming a counter-current to the culture of Shumir, which had steadily progressed from the Gulf northward.

22. It is just possible that Sargon's collection may have also comprised literature of a lighter nature than those ponderous works on magic and astrology. At least, a work on agriculture has been found, which is thought to have been compiled for the same king's library,[AK] and which contains bits of popular poetry (maxims, riddles, short peasant songs) of the kind that is now called "folk-lore." Of the correctness of the supposition there is, as yet, no absolute proof, but as some of these fragments, of which unfortunately but few could be recovered, are very interesting and pretty in their way, this is perhaps the best place to insert them. The following four may be called "Maxims," and the first is singularly pithy and powerfully expressed.

1. Like an oven that is old
2. Against thy foes be hard and strong.
3. May he suffer vengeance,
4. May it be returned to him,
5. Who gives the provocation.
6. If evil thou doest,
7. To the everlasting sea
9. Thou shalt surely go.
10. Thou wentest, thou spoiledst
11. The land of the foe,
12. For the foe came and spoiled
13. Thy land, even thine.

23. It will be noticed that No. 3 alone expresses moral feeling of a high standard, and is distinctively Semitic in spirit, the same spirit which is expressed in a loftier and purely religious vein, and a more poetical form in one of the "Penitential Psalms," where it says:

1. Whoso fears not his god—will be cut off even like a reed.
2. Whoso honors not the goddess—his bodily strength shall waste away;
3. Like a star of heaven, his light shall wane; like waters of the night he shall disappear.

Some fragments can be well imagined as being sung by the peasant at work to his ploughing team, in whose person he sometimes speaks:

1. 5. A heifer am I,—to the cow I am yoked;
2. The plough handle is strong—lift it up! lift it up!
3. 6. My knees are marching—my feet are not resting;
4. With no wealth of thy own—grain thou makest for me.[AL]

24. A great deal of additional interest in the elder Sargon of Agadê has lately been excited by an extraordinary discovery connected with him, which produced a startling revolution in the hitherto accepted Chaldean chronology. This question of dates is always a most intricate and puzzling one in dealing with ancient Oriental nations, because they did not date their years from some particular event, as we do, and as did the Mohammedans, the Greeks and the Romans. In the inscriptions things are said to have happened in the year so-and-so of such a king's reign. Where to place that king is the next question—unanswerable, unless, as fortunately is mostly the case, some clue is supplied, to borrow a legal term, by circumstantial evidence. Thus, if an eclipse is mentioned, the time can easily be determined by the help of astronomy, which can calculate backward as well as forward. Or else, an event or a person belonging to another country is alluded to, and if they are known to us from other sources, that is a great help. Such a coincidence (which is called a Synchronism) is most valuable, and dates established by synchronisms are generally reliable. Then, luckily for us, Assyrian and Babylonian kings of a late period, whose dates are fixed and proved beyond a doubt, were much in the habit, in their historical inscriptions, of mentioning events that had taken place before their time and specifying the number of years elapsed, often also the king under whose reign the event, whatever it was, had taken place. This is the most precious clue of all, as it is infallible, and besides ascertaining one point, gives a firm foothold, whereby to arrive at many others. The famous memorandum of Asshurbanipal, already so often referred to, about the carrying away of the goddess Nana, (i.e., her statue) from her temple at Erech is evidence of this kind. Any dates suggested without any of these clues as basis are of necessity untrustworthy, and no true scholar dreams of offering any such date, except as a temporary suggestion, awaiting confirmation or abolition from subsequent researches. So it was with Sargon I. of Agadê. There was no positive indication of the time at which he lived, except that he could not possibly have lived later than 2000 b.c. Scholars therefore agreed to assign that date to him, approximatively—a little more or less—thinking they could not go very far wrong in so doing. Great therefore was the commotion produced by the discovery of a cylinder of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon (whose date is 550 b.c.), wherein he speaks of repairs he made in the great Sun-temple at Sippar, and declares having dug deep in its foundations for the cylinders of the founder, thus describing his success: "Shamash (the Sun-god), the great lord ... suffered me to behold the foundation-cylinder of Naram-sin, the son of Sharrukin, which for thrice thousand and twice hundred years none of the kings that lived before me had seen." The simple addition 3200 + 550 gives 3750 b.c. as the date of Naram-Sin, and 3800 as that of his father Sargon, allowing for the latter's long reign! A scene-shifting of 1800 years at one slide seemed something so startling that there was much hesitation in accepting the evidence, unanswerable as it seemed, and the possibility of an error of the engraver was seriously considered. Some other documents, however, were found independently of each other and in different places, corroborating the statement on Nabonidus' cylinder, and the tremendously ancient date of 3800 b.c. is now generally accepted the elder Sargon of Agadê—perhaps the remotest authentic date yet arrived at in history.

25. When we survey and attempt to grasp and classify the materials we have for an early "History of Chaldea," it appears almost presumptuous to grace so necessarily lame an attempt with so ambitious a name. The landmarks are so few and far between, so unconnected as yet, and there is so much uncertainty about them, especially about placing them. The experience with Sargon of Agadê has not been encouraging to conjectural chronology; yet with such we must in many cases be content until more lucky finds turn up to set us right. What, for instance, is the proper place of Gudêa, the patesi of Sir-burla (also read Sir-gulla or Sirtilla, and, lately, Zirlaba), whose magnificent statues Mr. de Sarzec found in the principal hall of the temple of which the bricks bear his stamp? (See p. [217].) The title of patesi, (not "king"), points to great antiquity, and he is pretty generally understood to have lived somewhere between 4000 and 3000 b.c. That he was not a Semite, but an Accadian prince, is to be concluded not only from the language of his inscriptions and the writing, which is of the most archaic—i.e., ancient and old-fashioned—character, but from the fact that the head, which was found with the statues, is strikingly Turanian in form and features, shaved, too, and turbaned after a fashion still used in Central Asia. Altogether it might easily be taken for that of a modern Mongolian or Tatar.[AM] The discovery of this builder and patron of art has greatly eclipsed the glory of a somewhat later ruler, Ur-êa, King of Ur,[AN] who had long enjoyed the reputation of being the earliest known temple-builder. He remains at all events the first powerful monarch we read of in Southern Chaldea, of which Ur appears to have been in some measure the capital, at least in so far as to have a certain supremacy over the other great cities of Shumir.

26. Of these Shumir had many, even more venerable for their age and holiness than those of Accad. For the South was the home of the old race and most ancient culture, and thence both had advanced northward. Hence it was that the old stock was hardier there and endured longer in its language, religion and nationality, and was slower in yielding to the Semitic counter-current of race and culture, which, as a natural consequence, obtained an earlier and stronger hold in the North, and from there radiated over the whole of Mesopotamia. There was Eridhu, by the sea "at the mouth of the Rivers," the immemorial sanctuary of Êa; there was Sir-gulla, so lately unknown, now the most promising mine for research; there was Larsam, famous with the glories of its "House of the Sun" (Ê-Babbara in the old language), the rival of Ur, the city of the Moon-god, whose kings Ur-êa and his son Dungi were, it appears, the first to take the ambitious title of "Kings of Shumir and Accad" and "Kings of the Four Regions." As for Babylon, proud Babylon, which we have so long been accustomed to think of as the very beginning of state life and political rule in Chaldea, it was perhaps not yet built at all, or only modestly beginning its existence under its Accadian name of Tin-tir-ki ("the Place of Life"), or, somewhat later, Ka-Dimirra ("Gate of God"), when already the above named cities, and several more, had each its famous temple with ministering college of priests, and, probably, library, and each its king. But political power was for a long time centred at Ur. The first kings of Ur authentically known to us are Ur-êa and his son Dungi, who have left abundant traces of their existence in the numerous temples they built, not in Ur alone, but in most other cities too. Their bricks have been identified at Larsam (Senkereh), and, it appears, at Sir-burla (Tel-Loh), at Nipur (Niffer) and at Urukh (Erech, Warka), and as the two latter cities belonged to Accad, they seem to have ruled at least part of that country and thus to have been justified in assuming their high-sounding title.

59.—STATUE OF GUDÊA, WITH INSCRIPTION; FROM TELL-LOH, (SIR-BURLA OR SIR-GULLA). SARZEC COLLECTION.

(Hommel).

27. It has been noticed that the bricks bearing the name of Ur-êa "are found in a lower position than any others, at the very foundation of buildings;" that "they are of a rude and coarse make, of many sizes and ill-fitted together;" that baked bricks are rare among them; that they are held together by the oldest substitutes for mortar—mud and bitumen—and that the writing upon them is curiously rude and imperfect.[AO] But whatever King Ur-êa's architectural efforts may lack in perfection, they certainly make up in size and number. Those that he did not complete, his son Dungi continued after him. It is remarkable that these great builders seem to have devoted their energies exclusively to religious purposes; also that, while their names are Shumiro-Accadian, and their inscriptions are often in that language, the temples they constructed were dedicated to various deities of the new, or rather reformed religion. When we see the princes of the South, according to an ingenious remark of Mr. Lenormant, thus begin a sort of practical preaching of the Semitized religion, we may take it as a sign of the times, as an unmistakable proof of the influence of the North, political as well as religious. A very curious relic of King Ur-êa was found—his own signet cylinder—which was lost by an accident, then turned up again and is now in the British Museum. It represents the Moon-god seated on a throne,—as is but meet for the king of the Moon-god's special city—with priests presenting worshippers. No definite date is of course assignable to Ur-êa and the important epoch of Chaldean history which he represents. But a very probable approximative one can be arrived at, thanks to a clue supplied by the same Nabonidus, last King of Babylon, who settled the Sargon question for us so unexpectedly. That monarch was as zealous a repairer of temples as his predecessors had been zealous builders. He had reasons of his own to court popularity, and could think of nothing better than to restore the time-honored sanctuaries of the land. Among others he repaired the Sun-temple (Ê-Babbara) at Larsam, whereof we are duly informed by a special cylinder. In it he tells posterity that he found a cylinder of King Hammurabi intact in its chamber under the corner-stone, which cylinder states that the temple was founded 700 years before Hammurabi's time; as Ur-êa was the founder, it only remains to determine the latter king's date in order to know that of the earlier one.[AP] Here unfortunately scholars differ, not having as yet any decisive authority to build upon. Some place Hammurabi before 2000 b.c., others a little later. It is perhaps safest, therefore, to assume that Ur-êa can scarcely have lived much earlier than 2800 or much later than 2500 b.c. At all events, he must necessarily have lived somewhat before 2300 b.c., for about this latter year took place the Elamite invasion recorded by Asshurbanipal, an invasion which, as this King expressly mentions, laid waste the land of Accad and desecrated its temples—evidently the same ones which Ur-êa and Dungi so piously constructed. Nor was this a passing inroad or raid of booty-seeking mountaineers. It was a real conquest. Khudur-Nankhundi and his successors remained in Southern Chaldea, called themselves kings of the country, and reigned, several of them in succession, so that this series of foreign rulers has become known in history as "the Elamite dynasty." There was no room then for a powerful and temple-building national dynasty like that of the kings of Ur.

28. This is the first time we meet authentic monumental records of a country which was destined through the next sixteen centuries to be in continual contact, mostly hostile, with both Babylonia and her northern rival Assyria, until its final annihilation by the latter. Its capital was Shushan, (afterwards pronounced by foreigners "Susa"), and its own original name Shushinak. Its people were of Turanian stock, its language was nearly akin to that of Shumir and Accad. But at some time or other Semites came and settled in Shushinak. Though too few in number to change the country's language or customs, the superiority of their race asserted itself. They became the nobility of the land, the ruling aristocracy from which the kings were taken, the generals and the high functionaries. That the Turanian mass of the population was kept in subjection and looked down upon, and that the Semitic nobility avoided intermarrying with them is highly probable; and it would be difficult otherwise to explain the difference of type between the two classes, as shown in the representations of captives and warriors belonging to both on the Assyrian sculptures. The common herd of prisoners employed on public labor and driven by overseers brandishing sticks have an unmistakably Turanian type of features—high cheek-bones, broad, flattened face, etc., while the generals, ministers and nobles have all the dignity and beauty of the handsomest Jewish type. "Elam," the name under which the country is best known both from the Bible and later monuments, is a Turanian word, which means, like "Accad," "Highlands." It is the only name under which the historian of Chap. X. of Genesis admits it into his list of nations, and, consistently following out his system of ignoring all members of the great yellow race, he takes into consideration only the Semitic aristocracy, and makes of Elam a son of Shem, a brother of Asshur and Arphakhshad. (Gen. x. 22.)

29. One of Khudur-Nankhundi's next successors, Khudur-Lagamar, was not content with the addition of Chaldea to his kingdom of Elam. He had the ambition of a born conqueror and the generalship of one. The Chap. XIV. of Genesis—which calls him Chedorlaomer—is the only document we have descriptive of this king's warlike career, and a very striking picture it gives of it, sufficient to show us that we have to do with a very remarkable character. Supported by three allied and probably tributary kings, that of Shumir (Shineâr), of Larsam, (Ellassar) and of the Goïm, (in the unrevised translation of the Bible "king of nations") i.e., the nomadic tribes which roamed on the outskirts and in the yet unsettled, more distant portions of Chaldea, Khudur-Lagamar marched an army 1200 miles across the desert into the fertile, wealthy and populous valleys of the Jordan and the lake or sea of Siddim, afterwards called the Dead Sea, where five great cities—Sodom, Gomorrah, and three others—were governed by as many kings. Not only did he subdue these kings and impose his rule on them, but contrived, even after he returned to the Persian Gulf, to keep on them so firm a hand, that for twelve years they "served" him, i.e., paid him tribute regularly, and only in the thirteenth year, encouraged by his prolonged absence, ventured to rebel. But they had underrated Khudur-Lagamar's vigilance and activity. The very next year he was among them again, together with his three faithful allies, encountered them in the vale of Siddim and beat them, so that they all fled. This was the battle of the "four kings with five." As to the treatment to which the victor subjected the conquered country it is very briefly but clearly described: "And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their way."

30. Now there dwelt in Sodom a man of foreign race and great wealth, Lot, the nephew of Abraham. For Abraham and his tribe no longer lived at Chaldean Ur. The change of masters, and very probably the harsher rule, if not positive oppression, consequent on the Elamite conquest, had driven them thence. It was then they went forth into the land of Canaan, led by Terah and his son Abraham, and when Terah died, Abraham became the patriarch and chief of the tribe, which from this time begins to be called in the Bible "Hebrews," from an eponymous ancestor, Heber or Eber, whose name alludes to the passing of the Euphrates, or, perhaps, in a wider sense, to the passage of the tribe through the land of Chaldea.[AQ] For years the tribe travelled without dividing, from pasture to pasture, over the vast land where dwelt the Canaanites, well seen and even favored of them, into Egypt and out of it again, until the quarrel occurred between Abraham's herdsmen and Lot's, (see Genesis, Chap. XIII.), and the separation, when Lot chose the plain of the Jordan and pitched his tent toward Sodom, while Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan as heretofore, with his family, servants and cattle, in the plain of Mamre. It was while dwelling there, in friendship and close alliance with the princes of the land, that one who had escaped from the battle in the vale of Siddim, came to Abraham and told him how that among the captives whom Khudur-Lagamar had taken from Sodom, was Lot, his brother's son, with all his goods. Then Abraham armed his trained servants, born in his own household, three hundred and eighteen, took with him his friends, Mamre and his brothers, with their young men, and starting in hot pursuit of the victorious army, which was now carelessly marching home towards the desert with its long train of captives and booty, overtook it near Damascus in the night, when his own small numbers could not be detected, and produced such a panic by a sudden and vigorous onslaught that he put it to flight, and not only rescued his nephew Lot with his goods and women, but brought back all the captured goods and the people too. And the King of Sodom came out to meet him on his return, and thanked him, and wanted him to keep all the goods for himself, only restoring the persons. Abraham consented that a proper share of the rescued goods should be given to his friends and their young men, but refused all presents offered to himself, with the haughty words: "I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread, even to a shoe-latchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abraham rich."

31. Khudur-Lagamar, of whom the spirited Biblical narrative gives us so life-like a sketch, lived, according to the most probable calculations, about 2200 b.c. Among the few vague forms whose blurred outlines loom out of the twilight of those dim and doubtful ages, he is the second with any flesh-and-blood reality about him, probably the first conqueror of whom the world has any authentic record. For Egypt, the only country which rivals in antiquity the primitive states of Mesopotamia, although it had at this time already reached the height of its culture and prosperity, was as yet confined by its rulers strictly to the valley of the Nile, and had not entered on that career of foreign wars and conquests which, some thousand years later, made it a terror from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.

32. The Elamitic invasion was not a passing raid. It was a real conquest, and established a heavy foreign rule in a highly prosperous and flourishing land—a rule which endured, it would appear, about three hundred years. That the people chafed under it, and were either gloomily despondent or angrily rebellious as long as it lasted, there is plenty of evidence in their later literature. It is even thought, and with great moral probability, that the special branch of religious poetry which has been called "Penitential Psalms" has arisen out of the sufferings of this long period of national bondage and humiliation, and if, as seems to be proved by some lately discovered interesting fragments of texts, these psalms were sung centuries later in Assyrian temples on mournful or very solemn public occasions, they must have perpetuated the memory of the great national calamity that fell on the mother-country as indelibly as the Hebrew psalms, of which they were the models, have perpetuated that of King David's wanderings and Israel's tribulations.

33. But there seems to have been one Semitic royal house which preserved a certain independence and quietly gathered power against better days. To do this they must have dissembled and done as much homage to the victorious barbarians as would ensure their safety and serve as a blind while they strengthened their home rule. This dynasty, destined to the glorious task of restoring the country's independence and founding a new national monarchy, was that of Tin-tir-ki, or Ka-dimirra—a name now already translated into the Semitic Bab-ilu, ("the Gate of God"); they reigned over the large and important district of Kardunyash, important from its central position, and from the fact that it seems to have belonged neither to Accad, nor to Shumir, but to have been politically independent, since it is always mentioned by itself. Still, to the Hebrews, Babylon lay in the land of Shinar, and it is strongly supposed that the "Amraphel king of Shinar" who marched with Khudur-Lagamar, as his ally, against the five kings of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, was no other than a king of Babylon, one of whose names has been read Amarpal, while "Ariokh of Ellassar" was an Elamite, Eri-aku, brother or cousin of Khudur-Lagamar, and King of Larsam, where the conquerors had established a powerful dynasty, closely allied by blood to the principal one, which had made the venerable Ur its headquarters. This Amarpal, more frequently mentioned under his other name of Sin-Muballit, is thought to have been the father of Hammurabi, the deliverer of Chaldea and the founder of the new empire.

34. The inscriptions which Hammurabi left are numerous, and afford us ample means of judging of his greatness as warrior, statesman and administrator. In his long reign of fifty-five years he had, indeed, time to achieve much, but what he did achieve was much even for so long a reign. In what manner he drove out the foreigners we are not told, but so much is clear that the decisive victory was that which he gained over the Elamite king of Larsam. It was probably by expelling the hated race by turns from every district they occupied, that Hammurabi gathered the entire land into his own hands and was enabled to keep it together and weld it into one united empire, including both Accad and Shumir, with all their time-honored cities and sanctuaries, making his own ancestral city, Babylon, the head and capital of them all. This king was in every respect a great and wise ruler, for, after freeing and uniting the country, he was very careful of its good and watchful of its agricultural interests. Like all the other kings, he restored many temples and built several new ones. But he also devoted much energy to public works of a more generally useful kind. During the first part of his reign inundations seem to have been frequent and disastrous, possibly in consequence of the canals and waterworks having been neglected under the oppressive foreign rule. The inscriptions speak of a city having been destroyed "by a great flood," and mention "a great wall along the Tigris"—probably an embankment, as having been built by Hammurabi for protection against the river. But probably finding the remedy inadequate, he undertook and completed one of the greatest public works that have ever been carried out in any country: the excavation of a gigantic canal, which he called by his own name, but which was afterwards famous under that of "Royal Canal of Babylon." From this canal innumerable branches carried the fertilizing waters through the country. It was and remained the greatest work of the kind, and was, fifteen centuries later, the wonder of the foreigners who visited Babylon. Its constructor did not overrate the benefit he had conferred when he wrote in an inscription which can scarcely be called boastful: "I have caused to be dug the Nahr-Hammurabi, a benediction for the people of Shumir and Accad. I have directed the waters of its branches over the desert plains; I have caused them to run in the dry channels and thus given unfailing waters to the people.... I have changed desert plains into well-watered lands. I have given them fertility and plenty, and made them the abode of happiness."

35. There are inscriptions of Hammurabi's son. But after him a new catastrophe seems to have overtaken Chaldea. He is succeeded by a line of foreign kings, who must have obtained possession of the country by conquest. They were princes of a fierce and warlike mountain race, the Kasshi, who lived in the highlands that occupy the whole north-western portion of Elam, where they probably began to feel cramped for room. This same people has been called by the later Greek geographers Cossæans or Cissians, and is better known under either of these names. Their language, of which very few specimens have survived, is not yet understood; but so much is plain, that it is very different both from the Semitic language of Babylon and that of Shumir and Accad, so that the names of the Kasshi princes are easily distinguishable from all others. No dismemberment of the empire followed this conquest, however, if conquest there was. The kings of the new dynasty seem to have succeeded each other peacefully enough in Babylon. But the conquering days of Chaldea were over. We read no more of expeditions into the plains of Syria and to the "Sea of the Setting Sun." For a power was rising in the North-West, which quickly grew into a formidable rival: through many centuries Assyria kept the rulers of the Southern kingdom too busy guarding their frontiers and repelling inroads to allow them to think of foreign conquests.