econdary form of Chaldaean art, a branch broken off
from the parent stem.

We are better, or, rather, less ill, informed, in the case of the first
Chaldee Empire. The fragments of Berosus give us some knowledge of its
beginnings, so far, at least, as the story was preserved in the national
traditions, and the remains by which tradition can be tested and corrected
are more numerous than in the case of Susiana.

The chronicles on which Berosus based his work began with a divine
dynasty, which was succeeded by a human dynasty of fabulous duration. These
legendary sovereigns, like the patriarchs of the Bible, each lived for many
centuries, and to them, as well as to the gods who preceded them, certain
myths were attached of which we find traces in the surviving monuments.
Such myths were the fish god, Oannes, and the Chaldaic deluge with its
Noah, Xisouthros.[58]

This double period, with its immoderate duration, corresponds to those dark
and confused ages during which the intellect of man was absorbed in the
constant and painful struggle against nature, during which he had no
leisure either to take note of time or to count the generations as they
passed. After this long succession of gods and heroes, Berosus gives what
he calls a _Medic_ dynasty, in which, it has been thought, the memory of
some period of Aryan supremacy has survived. In any case, we have serious
reasons for thinking that the third of the dynasties of Berosus, with its
eleven kings, was of Susian origin. Without speaking of other indications
which have been ingeniously grouped by modern criticism, a direct
confirmation of this hypothesis is to be found in the evidence of the
Bible. In the latter we find Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, master of the
whole basin of the Tigris and Euphrates in the time of Abraham. Among his
vassals were Amraphel, king of Shinar, and Arioch, king of Ellasar, the two
principal cities of Assyria.[59] All doubts upon this point have been
banished since the texts in which Assurbanipal, the last of the Ninevite
conquerors, vaunts his exploits, have been deciphered. In two of these
inscriptions he tells us how he took Susa 1,635 years after
Chedornakhounta, king of Elam, had conquered Babylon; he found, he says, in
that city sacred statues which had been carried off from Erech by the king
of Elam. He brought them back again to Chaldaea and re-established them in
the sanctuary from which they had been violently removed.[60]

Assurbani