wanting; but the strength of his character and the greatness of his
achievements are remarkably indicated by a variety of testimonies, which
place him among the foremost men of the Old World, and guarantee him a
never-ending remembrance. At least as early as the time of Moses his
name had passed into a proverb. He was known as "the mighty hunter
before the Lord"--an expression which had probably a double meaning,
implying at once skill and bravery in the pursuit and destruction of wild
beasts, and also a genius for war and success in his aggressions upon
men. In his own nation he seems to have been deified, and to have
continued down to the latest times one of the leading objects of worship,
under the title of Bilu-Nipru or Bel-Nimrod, which may be translated "the
god of the chase," or "the great hunter."

One of his capitals, Calneh, which was regarded as his special city,
appears afterwards to have been known by his name (probably as being the
chief seat of his worship in the early times); and this name it still
retains, slightly corrupted. In the modern Niffer we may recognize the
Talmudical Nopher, and the Assyrian Nipur which is Nipru, with a mere
metathesis of the two final letters. The fame of Nimrod has always been
rife in the country of his domination. Arab writers record a number of
remarkable traditions, in which he plays a conspicuous part; and there is
little doubt but that it is in honor of his apotheosis that the
constellation Orion bears in Arabian astronomy the title of El Jabbar, or
"the giant." Even at the present day his name lives in the mouth of the
people inhabiting Chaldaea and the adjacent regions, whose memory of
ancient heroes is almost confined to three--Nimrod, Solomon, and
Alexander. Wherever a mound of ashes is to be seen in Babylonia or the
adjoining countries, the local traditions attach to it the name of
Niinrud or Nimrod; and the most striking ruins now existing in the
Mesopotamian valley, whether in its upper or its lower portion, are made
in this way monuments of his glory.

Of the immediate successors of Nimrod we have no account that even the
most lenient criticism can view as historical. It appears that his
conquest was followed rapidly by a Semitic emigration from the
country--an emigration which took a northerly direction. The Assyrians
withdrew from Babylonia, which they still always regarded as their
parent land, and, occupying the upper or non-alluvial portion of th