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We learn at the same time that Assyria was inhabited, in the days of Ismi-Dagan, by a people who borrowed their gods from Chaldæa, and were dependents of the sovereign of the latter country.
And yet it was there, between two or three thousand years before our era, that the intermingling of ideas and races took place which gave birth to the civilization of Chaldæa. In order to find a king to whom we can give a probable date we have to come down as far as Ismi-Dagan, who should figure in the fourth dynasty of Berosus. We are led therefore to place the latter king about 1800.
That the kings of Chaldæa were quite equal to the task thus laid upon them is proved by the inscriptions of HAMMOURABI, one of the successors of Ismi-Dagan, which have been translated and commented upon by M. Joachim Ménant. The canal to which this king boasts of having given his name, the Nahar-Hammourabi, was called in later days the royal canal, Nahar-Malcha.
It was in fact upon the shores of the Persian Gulf, far enough from Assyria, that Oannes made his first revelation, and it is at Ur in the same region that the names of Ismi-Dagan and of his sons Goun-goun and Samsibin are to be found stamped upon the bricks. We may, therefore, look upon their epoch as that in which the first Chaldee Empire reached its apogee.
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