was
chosen by the god Oannes, and reigned supernaturally for ten sari, or
36,000 years, each saros being 3,600 years. Nine kings follow, each in
this mythical record reigning an enormous period. Then took place the
great deluge, 691,000 years after the creation, in consequence of the
wickedness of men, who neglected the worship of the gods, and excited
their wrath. Shamashnapishtim, king at this time in Shurippak, was saved
miraculously in a great ship. Concerning him and his voyage strange
fables are recorded. After the deluge, 86 kings ruled during 34,080
years. One of these was Nimrod, the mighty hunter of the Bible, who
appears as Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and is the hero of extraordinary
adventures.

History proper begins with Sargon the Elder, king at the first in Agade,
who soon annexed Babylon, Sippara, Kishu, Uruk, Kuta and Nipur. His
brilliant career was like an anticipation of that of the still more
glorious life of Sargon of Nineveh. His son, Naramsin, succeeded him
about 3750 B.C. He conquered Elam and was a great builder. After him the
most famous king of that epoch was Gudea, of Lagash, the prince of whom
we possess the greatest number of monuments. But in these records we
have but the dust of history rather than history itself. The materials
are scanty in the extreme and the framework also is wanting.

_VIII.--The Temples and the Gods of Chaldaea_

The cities of the Euphrates attract no attention, like those of Egypt,
by the magnificence of their ruins. They are merely heaps of rubbish in
which no architectural outline can be traced--mounds of stiff greyish
clay, containing the remains of the vast structures that were built of
bricks set in mortar or bitumen. Stone was not used as in Egypt. While
the Egyptian temple was spread superficially over a large area, the
Chaldaean temple strove to attain as high an elevation as possible. These
"ziggurats" were composed of several immense cubes piled up on one
another, and diminishing in size up to the small shrine by which they
were crowned, and wherein the god himself was supposed to dwell.

The gods of the Euphrates, like those of the Nile, constituted a
countless multitude of visible and invisible beings, distributed into
tribes and empires throughout all the regions of the universe; but,
whereas in Egypt they were, on the whole, friendly to man, in Chaldaea
they for the most part pursued him with an implacable hatred, and only
seemed to exist in orde