Sfugheir), the earliest capital of the country ; and Babylon, with its suburb, Borsippa (Sirs Nimrud), as well as the two Sipparas (the Sepharvaim of Scripture, now Mosaib), occupied both the Arabian and Chaldean side of the river. (See Babylon.) The Araxes, or " River of Babylon," was conducted through a deep valley into the heart of Arabia, irrigating the land through which it passed ; and to the south of it lay the great inland fresh-water sea of Nedje/, surrounded by red sandstone cliffs of considerable height, 40 miles in length and 35 in breadth in the widest part. Above and below this sea, from Borsippa to Kufa, extend the famous Chaldean marshes, where Alexander was nearly lost (Arrian, Exp. AL, vii. 22.; Strab., xvi. 1, 12,) ; but these depend upon the state of the Hindiyah canal, disappearing altogether when it is closed. Between the sea of Nedjef and Ur, but on the left side of the Euphrates, was Erech (now WarTca), which with Nipur or Calneh (now Niffer Surippac (Senkereh ?), and Babylon (now Hillah), formed the tetrapolis of Sumir or Shinar. This north western part of Chaldea was also called Gan-duniyas or Gun-duni after the accession of the Cassite dynasty. South eastern Chaldea, on the other hand, was termed Accad, though the name came also to be applied to the whole of Babylonia. The Caldai, or Chaldeans, are first met with in the 9th century B.C. as a small tribe on the Persian Gulf, whence they slowly moved northwards, until under Merodach-Baladan they made themselves masters of Babylon, and henceforth formed so important an element in the population of the country, as in later days to give their name to the whole of it. In the inscriptions, however, Chaldea represents the marshes of the sea-coast, and Teredon was one of their ports. The whole territory was thickly studded with towns ; but among all this " vast number of great cities," to use the words of Herodotus, Cuthah, or Tiggaba (now Ibrahim), Chilmad (Kalwadah], Is (Hit), and Duraba (Akkerkuf) alone need be mentioned, The cultivation of the country was regulated by canals, the three chief of which carried off the waters of the Euphrates towards the Tigris above Babylon, the " Royal River," or Ar-Malcha, entering the Tigris a little below Baghdad, the Nahr-Malcha running across to the site of Seleucia, and the Nahr-Kutha passing through Ibrahim. The Pallacopas, on the other side of the Euphrates, supplied an immense lake in the neighbourhood of Borsippa. So great was the fertility of the soil that, according to Herodotus (i. 195), grain commonly returned two hundred fold to the sower, and occasionally three hundredfold. Pliny, too (//. iV., xviii. 17), says that wheat was cut twice,
and afterwards was good keep for sheep; and Berosus remarked that wheat, barley, sesame, ochrys, palms, apples, and many kinds of shelled fruit grew wild, as wheat still does in the neighbourhood of Anah. A Persian poem celebrated the 360 uses of the palm (Strab., xvi. 1, 14), and Ammianus Marcellinus (xxiv. 3) states that from the point reached by Julian's army to the shores of the Persian Gulf was one continuous forest of verdure.Such a country was well fitted to be one of the primeval seats of civilisation. Where brick lay ready to hand, and climate and soil needed only settled life and moderate labour to produce all that man required, it was natural that the great civilising power of Western Asia should take its rise. The history of the origin and development of this civilisation, interesting and important as it is, has but recently been made known to us by the decipherment of the native monuments. The scanty notices and conflicting statements of classical writers have been replaced by the evidence of contemporaneous documents ; and though the materials are still but a tithe of what we may hope hereafter to obtain, we can sketch the outlines of the history, the art, and the science of the powerful nations of the Tigris and Euphrates. Before doing so, however, it would be well to say a few words in regard to our classical sources of information, the only ones hitherto available. The principal of these is Berosus, the Manetho of Babylonia, who flourished at the time of Alexander's conquests (though see Havet, Memoire sur la Date des Ecrits qui portent les noms de Berose et dc Manethon). He was priest of Bel, and translated the records and astronomy of his nation into Greek. His works have unfortunately perished, but the second and third hand quotations from them, which we have in Eusebius and other writers, have been strikingly verified by inscriptions so far as regards their main facts. The story of the flood taken from Berosus, for instance, is almost identical with the one preserved on the cuneiform tablets. Numerical figures, however, as might be expected, are untrustworthy. According to Berosus, ten kings reigned before the Deluge for 120 saroi, or 432,000 years, beginning with Alorus of Babylon and ending with Otiartes (Opartes) of Larankha, and his son Sisuthrus, the hero of the flood. Then came eight dynasties, which are given as follows:—
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(1.) 86 Chaldean kings 34,030 years. (2.) 8 Median 224 (3.) 11 (Chaldean)
(4.) 49 Chaldean 458 (5.) 9 Arabian 245 (6.) 45 Assyrian 526 (7.) * (Assyrian) (8.) 6 Chaldean 87
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(1.) Nabonassar (747 B.C.) the seventh 14 ycirs. (2.) Nadios 2 (3.) Khinziros and Foros (Pul) 5 (4.) Ilulseos 5 (5.) Mardokempados (Merodach-Baladan) 12 (6.) Arkeanos (Sargon) 5 (7.) Interregnum 2 , (8.) Hagiaa 1 month (9.) Belibos (702 B.C.) 3 years. (10.) Assaranadios (Assur-nadin-suni) .. 6 11.) Eegebelos 1 ,, (12.) Mesesimordakos .. 4 (13.) Interregnum 8 ,, (14.) Asaridinos (Essar-haddon) ..13 (15.) Saosdukliinos (Savul-sum-yucin) . 20 (16.) Sineladanos (Assur-bani-pal) ., ..22 Next to Berosus, the authority of Herodotus ranks highest. His information, however, is scanty, and he had to trust to the doubtful statements of ciceroni. Herodotus was controverted by Ctesias of Cnidus, the physician of Artaxerxes Mnemon. But Ctesias mistook mythology for history, and the Ninus and Semiramis, the Ninyas and Sardanapalus, of Greek romance were in great measure his creations. We may yet construct an Assyrian epopee, like the Shahnameh of Firdusi, out of his pages, but we must not look to them for history. Other historical notices of Assyria and Babylonia, of more or less questionable value, are to be gathered from Diodorus and one or two more writers, but beyond Berosus and, to a limited extent, Herodotus, our only ancient authority of much value upon this subject is the Old Testament.
