ble coincidence can scarcely be accidental; and we may
conclude, therefore, that we have in the above table at any rate a near
approach to the scheme of Babylonian chronology as received among both
the Babylonians and Assyrians in the seventh century before our era.

Whether the chronology is wholly trustworthy is another question. The
evidence both of the classical writers and of the monuments is to the
effect that exact chronology was a subject to which the Babylonians and
Assyrians paid great attention. The "Canon of Ptolemy," which contained
an exact Babylonian computation of time from B.C. 747 to B.C. 331, is
generally allowed to be a most authentic document, and one on which we
may place complete reliance. The "Assyrian Canon," which gives the years
of the Assyrian monarchs from B.C. 911 to B.C. 660, appears to be equally
trustworthy. How much further exact notation went back, it is impossible
to say. All that we know is, first, that the later Assyrian monarchs
believed they had means of fixing the exact date of events in their own
history and in that of Babylon up to a time distant from their own as
much as sixteen or seventeen hundred years; and secondly, that the
chronology which result from their statements and those of Berosus is
moderate, probably, and in harmony with all the knowledge which we obtain
of the East from other sources. It is proposed therefore, in the present
volumes, to accept the general scheme of Berosus as, in all probability,
not seriously in error; and to arrange the Chaldaean, Assyrian, and
Babylonian history on the framework which it furnishes.

Chaldaean history may therefore be regarded as opening upon us at a time
anterior, at any rate by a century or two, to B.C. 2286. It was then
that Nimrod, the son or descendant of Cush, set up a kingdom in Lower
Mesopotamia, which attracted the attention of surrounding nations. The
people, whom he led, came probably by sea; at any rate, their earliest
settlements were on the coast; and Ur or Hur, on the right bank of the
Euphrates, at a very short distance from its embouchure, was the
primitive capital. The "mighty hunter" rapidly spread his dominion
inland, subduing or expelling the various tribes by which the country was
previously occupied. His kingdom extended northwards, at least as far as
Babylon,--which (as well as Erech or Huruk, Accad, and Calneh) was first
founded by this monarch. Further historical details of his reign are