discovered--Zirlab and Shurippak, places of embarkation at the mouth
of the Euphrates for the passage of the Persian Gulf; and the island of
Dilmun, situated some forty leagues to the south in the centre of the
Salt Sea,--"Nar-Marratum." The northern group comprised Nipur, the
"incomparable;" Barsip, on the branch which flows parallel to the
Euphrates and falls into the Bahr-i-Nedjif; Babylon, the "gate of the
god," the "residence of life," the only metropolis of the Euphrates
region of which posterity never lost a reminiscence; Kishu, Kuta,
Agade;** and lastly the two Sipparas, that of Shamash and that of
Anunit. The earliest Chaldaean civilization was confined almost entirely
to the two banks of the Lower Euphrates: except at its northern
boundary, it did not reach the Tigris, and did not cross this river.
Separated from the rest of the world--on the east by the marshes which
border the river in its lower course, on the north by the badly watered
and sparsely inhabited table-land of Mesopotamia, on the west by the
Arabian desert--it was able to develop its civilization, as Egypt had
done, in an isolated area, and to follow out its destiny in peace. The
only point from which it might anticipate serious danger was on the
east, whence the Kashshi and the Elamites, organized into military
states, incessantly harassed it year after year by their attacks. The
Kashshi were scarcely better than half-civilized mountain hordes, but
the Elamites were advanced in civilization, and their capital, Susa,
vied with the richest cities of the Euphrates, Uru and Babylon, in
antiquity and magnificence.

* For an ideal picture of what may have been the beginnings
of that civilization, see Delitzsch, Die Entstehung des
altesten Schriflssystems, p. 214, et seq. I will not enter
into the question as to whether it did or did not come by
sea to the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris. The legend of
the fish-god Oannes (Berossus, frag. 1), which seems to
conceal some indication on the subject, is merely a
mythological tradition, from which it would be wrong to
deduce historical conclusions.

** Agade, or Agane, has been identified with one of the two
towns of which Sippara is made up, more especially with that
which was called Anunit Sippara; the reading Agadi, Agacle,
was especially assumed to lead to its identification with
the Accad of _Genesis x. 10_, and with the Akka