e
Mesopotamian plain, commenced the building of great cities in a tract
upon the middle Tigris. The Phoenicians removed from the shores of the
Persian Gulf, and, journeying towards the northwest, formed settlements
upon the coast of Canaan, where they became a rich and prosperous
people. The family of Abraham, and probably other Aramaean families,
ascended the Euphrates, withdrawing from a yoke which was oppressive, or
at any rate unpleasant. Abundant room was thus made for the Cushite
immigrants, who rapidly established their preponderance over the whole
of the southern region. As war ceased to be the necessary daily
occupation of the newcomers, civilization and the arts of life began to
appear. The reign of the "Hunter" was followed, after no long time, by
that of the "Builder." A monumental king, whose name is read doubtfully
as Urkham or Urukh, belongs almost certainly to this early dynasty, and
may be placed next in succession, though at what interval we cannot say,
to Nimrod. He is beyond question the earliest Chaldaean monarch of whom
any remains have been obtained in the country. Not only are his bricks
found in a lower position than any others, at the very foundations of
buildings, but they are of a rude and coarse make, and the inscriptions
upon them contrast most remarkably, in the simplicity of the style of
writing used and in their general archaic type, with the elaborate and
often complicated symbols of the later monarchs. The style of Urukh's
buildings is also primitive and simple in the extreme; his bricks are of
many sizes, and ill fitted together; he belongs to a time when even the
baking of bricks seems to have been comparatively rare, for sometimes he
employs only the sun-dried material; and he is altogether unacquainted
with the use of lime mortar, for which his substitute is moist mud, or
else bitumen. There can be little doubt that he stands at the head of
the present series of monumental kings, another of whom probably reigned
as early as B.C. 2286. As he was succeeded by a son, whose reign seems
to have been of the average length, we must place his accession at least
as early as B.C. 2326. Possibly it may have fallen a century earlier.

It is as a builder of gigantic works that Urukh is chiefly known to us.
The basement platforms of his temples are of an enormous size; and though
they cannot seriously be compared with the Egyptian pyramids, yet
indicate the employment for many years of