, and
restored the Chaldaean throne to a line of native princes, and
unrecorded by any historian; nor have the monuments hitherto thrown any
light upon them. If we may trust the numbers of the Armenian Eusebius,
the dynasty which succeeded, ab. B.C. 2052, to the Susianian (or
Median), though it counted eleven kings, bore rule for the short space
of forty-eight years only. This would seem to imply either a state of
great internal disturbance, or a time during which viceroys, removable
at pleasure and often removed, governed the country under some foreign
suzerain. In either case, the third dynasty of Berosus may be said to
mark a transition period between the time of foreign subjection and that
of the recovery by the native Chaldaeans of complete independence.

To the fourth Berosian dynasty, which held the throne for 458 years,
from about B. C. 2004 to B. C. 1546, the monuments enable us to assign
some eight or ten monarchs, whose inscriptions are characterized by a
general resemblance, and by a character intermediate between the extreme
rudeness of the more ancient and the comparative elegance and neatness
of the later legends. Of these kings one of the earliest was a certain
Ismidagon, the date of whose reign we are able to fix with a near
approach to exactness. Sennacherib, in a rock inscription at Bavian,
relates that in his tenth year (which was B. C. 692) he recovered from
Babylon certain images of the gods which had been carried thither
by Merodach-iddin-akhi, King of Babylon, after his defeat of
Tiglath-Pileser, King of Assyria, 418 years previously. And the same
Tiglath-Pileser relates that he rebuilt a temple in Assyria, which had
been taken down 60 years before, after it had lasted 641 years from its
foundation by Shamas-Vul, sun of Ismi-dagon. It results from these
numbers that Ismi-dagon was king as early as B.C. 1850, or, probably a
little earlier.

The monuments furnish little information concerning Ismidagon beyond the
evidence which they afford of the extension of this king's dominion into
the upper part of the Mesopotamian valley, and especially into the
country known in later times as Assyria. The fact that Shamas-Vul, the
son of Ismi-dagon, built a temple at Kileh-Sherghat, implies necessarily
that the Chaldaans at this time bore sway in the upper region.
Shamas-Vul appears to have been, not the eldest, but the second son of
the monarch, and must be viewed as ruling over Assyria in the capac