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They were followed by an Elulseus, who has been identified with the king of that name called by Menander king of Tyre the Luliya of the cuneiform inscriptions; but it is in the highest degree improbable that one and the same monarch should have borne sway both in Phoenicia and Chaldaea at a time when Assyria was paramount over the whole of the intervening country.
Such evidence as we possess of the condition of Assyria about this period seems to show that it was weak and insignificant, administered ordinarily by Babylonian satraps or governors, whose office was one of no great rank or dignity. In Chaldaea, Ismi-dagon was succeeded by a son, whose name is read, somewhat doubtfully, as Gunguna or Gurguna.
Dates, the principal support of the inhabitants of Chaldaea, or Babylonia, both in ancient and in modern times, were no doubt also an article of food in Assyria, though scarcely to any great extent. The date-palm does not bear well above the alluvium, and such fruit as it produces in the upper country is very little esteemed.
He then entered Chaldaea, and chastised the Chaldaeans, after which he returned in triumph to his own country. His seventh campaign was also against the Shuhites. Released from the immediate pressure of his arms, they had rebelled, and had even ventured to invade the Assyrian Empire. The Laki, whose territory adjoined that of the Shuhites towards the north and east, assisted them.
The general shape is square, or nearly so, while the thickness is, to modern ideas, disproportionately small; it is not, however, so small as in the bricks of the Romans. The earliest of the baked bricks hitherto discovered in Chaldaea are 11 1/4 inches square, and 2 1/2 inches thick, while the Roman are often 15 inches square, and only an inch and a quarter thick.
The series commences with a great king, named Khammurabi, who was probably the founder of the dynasty, the "Arab" chief who, taking advantage of the weakness and depression of Chaldaea under the latter monarchs of the fourth dynasty, by intrigue or conquest established his dominion over the country, and left the crown to his descendants. Khammu-rabi was also distinguished as a builder.
The sands of Chaldaea, which are still progressive and advancing, seem to have reached it from the Arabian Desert, to which they properly belong: year by year the drifts gain upon the alluvium, and threaten to spread over the whole country.
Chaldaea, though it had been now for above half a century an Assyrian fief, and had borne the yoke with scarcely a murmur during that period, could never wholly forget its old glories, or the long resistance which it had made before submitting to its northern neighbor.
After the most remarkable of the Mesopotamian mounds had yielded their treasures, and supplied the historical student with numerous and copious documents bearing upon the history of the great Assyrian and Babylonian empires, it was determined to explore Chaldaea Proper, where mounds of less pretension, but still of considerable height, marked the sites of a number of ancient cities.
Then came all the inferior forms of the Divinity: Baal-Samin, god of celestial space; Baal-Peor, god of the sacred mountains; Baal-Zeboub, god of corruption, with those of the neighbouring countries and congenerous races: the Iarbal of Libya, the Adramelech of Chaldaea, the Kijun of the Syrians; Derceto, with her virgin's face, crept on her fins, and the corpse of Tammouz was drawn along in the midst of a catafalque among torches and heads of hair.
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