of Sassanian sculpture and architecture. The
photographic illustrations of the newly-discovered palace at Mashita are
due to the liberality of Mr. R. C. Johnson (the amateur artist who
accompanied Canon Tristram in his exploration of the "Land of Moab"),
who, with Canon Tristram's kind consent, has allowed them to appear in
the present volume. The numismatic illustrations are chiefly derived
from Longperier; but one or two have been borrowed from other sources.
For his frontispiece the author is indebted to his brother, Sir Henry
Rawlinson, who has permitted it to be taken from an original drawing in
his possession, which he believed to be a truthful representation of the
great Sassanian building.

CANTERBURY: December 1875.

THE FIRST MONARCHY.

CHALDAEA.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE COUNTRY.

"Behold the land of the Chaldaeans."--ISAIAH xxiii. 13.

The broad belt of desert which traverses the eastern hemisphere, in a
general direction from west to east (or, speaking more exactly, of
W. S. W. to N. E. E.), reaching from the Atlantic on the one hand nearly
to the Yellow Sea on the other, is interrupted about its centre by a
strip of rich vegetation, which at once breaks the continuity of the arid
region, and serves also to mark the point where the desert changes its
character from that of a plain at a low level to that of an elevated
plateau or table-land. West of the favored district, the Arabian and
African wastes are seas of sand, seldom raised much above, often sinking
below, the level of the ocean; while east of the same, in Persia, Kerman,
Seistan, Chinese Tartary, and Mongolia, the desert consists of a series
of plateaus, having from 3000 to nearly 10,000 feet of elevation. The
green and fertile region, which is thus interposed between the "highland"
and the "lowland" deserts, participates, curiously enough, in both
characters. Where the belt of sand is intersected by the valley of the
Nile, no marked change of elevation occurs; and the continuous low desert
is merely interrupted by a few miles of green and cultivable surface, the
whole of which is just as smooth and as flat as the waste on either side
of it. But it is otherwise at the more eastern interruption. There the
verdant and productive country divides itself into two tracts, running
parallel to each other, of which the western presents features not unlike
those that characterize the Nile valley, but on a