yrians as a
people who had once dwelt to the south, in close contact with the
Chaldaeans, and had removed after awhile to a more northern position.

With regard to the date of their removal, we can only say that it was
certainly anterior to the time of the Chaldaean kings, Purna-puriyas and
Kurri-galzu, who seem to have reigned in the fifteenth century before
our era. If we could be sure that the city called in later times Asshur
bore that name when Shamas-Vul, the son of Ismi-Dagon, erected a temple
there to Anu and Vul, we might assign to the movement a still higher
antiquity for Shamas-Vul belongs to the nineteenth century B.C. As,
however, we have no direct evidence that either the city or the country
was known as Asshur until four centuries later, we must be content to
lay it down that the Assyrians had moved to the north certainly as early
as B.C. 1440, and that their removal may not improbably have taken place
several centuries earlier.

The motive of the removal is shrouded in complete obscurity. It may have
been a forced colonization, commanded and carried out by the Chaldaean
kings, who may have originated a system of transplanting to distant
regions subject tribes of doubtful fidelity; or it may have been the
voluntary self-expatriation of an increasing race, pressed for room and
discontented with its condition. Again, it may have taken place by a
single great movement, like that of the Tartar tribes, who transferred
their allegiance from Russia to China in the reign of the Empress
Catherine, and emigrated in a body from the banks of the Dun to the
eastern limits of Mongolia or it may have been a gradual and protracted
change, covering a long term of years, like most of the migrations
whereof we read in history. On the whole, there is perhaps some reason
to believe that a spirit of enterprise about this time possessed the
Semitic inhabitants of Lower Mesopotamia, who voluntarily proceeded
northwards in the hope of bettering their condition. Terah conducted one
body from Ur to Harran: another removed itself from the shores of the
Persian Gulf to those of the Mediterranean; while probably a third,
larger than either of these two, ascended the course of the Tigris,
occupied Adiabene, with the adjacent regions, and, giving its own tribal
name of Asshur to its chief city and territory, became known to its
neighbors first as a distinct, and then as an independent and powerful
people.

The Assyrians for some time