s and his authorities had put the
sum total of reigns at thirty-six thousand years; this number falls in
with a certain astrological period, during which the gods had granted to
the Chaldaeans glory, prosperity, and independence, and whose termination
coincided with the capture of Babylon by Cyrus.** Others before them had
employed the same artifice, but they reckoned ten dynasties in the place
of the eight accepted by Berossus:--

* After the example of G. B. Niebuhr, Gutschmid admitted
here, as Oppert did, 45 Assyrians; he based his view on
Herodotus, in which it is said that the Assyrians held sway
in Asia for 520 years, until its conquest by the Medes. Upon
the improbability of this opinion, see Schrader's
demonstration.

** The existence of this astronomical or astrological scheme
on which Berossus founded his chronology, was pointed out by
Brandis, afterwards by Gutschmid; it is now generally
accepted.

[Illustration: 085.jpg TABLE]

Attempts have been made to bring the two lists* into harmony, with
varying results; in my opinion, a waste of time and labour. For even
comparatively recent periods of their history, the Chaldaeans, like
the Egyptians, had to depend upon a collection of certain abbreviated,
incoherent, and often contradictory documents, from which they found it
difficult to make a choice: they could not, therefore, always come to an
agreement when they wished to determine how many dynasties had succeeded
each other during these doubtful epochs, how many kings were included in
each dynasty, and what length of reign was to be assigned to each king.
We do not know the motives which influenced Berossus in his preference
of one tradition over others; perhaps he had no choice in the matter,
and that of which he constituted himself the interpreter was the only
one which was then known. In any case, the tradition he followed forms a
system which we cannot, modify without misinterpreting the intention of
those who drew it up or who have handed it down to us. We must accept
or reject it just as it is, in its entirety and without alteration:
to attempt to adapt it to the testimony of the monuments would be
equivalent to the creation of a new system, and not to the correction
simply of the old one. The right course is to put it aside for the
moment, and confine ourselves to the original lists whose fragments have
come down to us: they do not furnish us, it is