e time to which they belong is anterior to the rise of Assyria
to greatness appears from the synchronism of the later monarchs of the
Chaldaean with the earliest of the Assyrian list, as well as from the
fact that the names borne by the Babylonian kings after Assyria became
the leading power in the country are not only different, but of a
different type. If it be objected that the number of thirty kings is
insufficient for the space over which they have in our scheme been
spread, we may answer that it has never been, supposed by any one that
the twenty-nine or thirty kings, of whom distinct mention has been made
in the foregoing account, are a complete list of all the Chaldaean
sovereigns. On the contrary, it is plain that they are a very incomplete
list, like that which Herodotus gives of the kings of Egypt, or that
which the later Romans possessed of their early monarchs. The monuments
themselves present indications of several other names of kings, belonging
evidently to the same series, which are too obscure or too illegible for
transliteration. And there may, of course, have been many others of whom
no traces remain, or of whom none have been as yet found. On the other
hand, it may be observed, that the number of the early Chaldaean kings
reported by Polyhistor is preposterous. If sixty-eight consecutive
monarchs held the Chaldaean throne between B.C. 2286 and B.C. 1546, they
must have reigned on an average, less than eleven years apiece. Nay, if
forty-nine ruled between B.C. 2004 and B.C. 1546, covering a space of
little more than four centuries and a half--which is what Berosus is made
to assert--these later monarchs cannot even have reigned so long as ten
years each, an average which may be pronounced quite impossible in a
settled monarchy such as the Chaldaean. The probability would seem to be
that Berosus has been misreported, his numbers having suffered corruption
during their passage through so many hands, and being in this instance
quite untrustworthy. We may conjecture that the actual number of reigns
which he intended to allow his fourth dynasty was nineteen, or at the
utmost twenty-nine, the former of which numbers would give the common
average of twenty-four years, while the latter would produce the less
usual but still possible one of sixteen years.

The monarchy which we have had under review is one, no doubt, rather
curious from its antiquity than illustrious from its great names, or
admirable