take of it, it seems that the researches of
Assyriologists have led to the following conclusion: That primitive Chaldaea
received and retained various ethnic elements upon its fertile soil; that
those elements in time became fused together, and that, even in the
beginning, the diversities that distinguished them one from another were
less marked than a literal acceptance of the tenth chapter of Genesis might
lead us to believe.

We cannot here undertake to explain all the conjectures to which this point
has given rise. We are without some, at least, of the qualifications
necessary for the due appreciation of the proofs, or rather of the
probabilities, which are relied on by the exponents of this or that
hypothesis. We must refer curious readers to the works of contemporary
Assyriologists; or they may, if they will, find all the chief facts brought
together in the writings of MM. Maspero and Francois Lenormant, whom we
shall often have occasion to quote.[36] We shall be content with giving, in
as few words as possible, the theory which appears at present to be
generally admitted.

There is no doubt as to the presence in Chaldaea of the Kushite tribes. It
is the Kushites, as represented by Nimrod, who are mentioned in Genesis
before any of the others; a piece of evidence which is indirectly confirmed
by the nomenclature of the Greek writers. They often employed the terms
Kissaioi and Kissioi to denote the peoples who belonged to this very part
of Asia,[37] terms under which it is easy to recognize imperfect
transliterations of a name that began its last syllable in the Semitic
tongues with the sound we render by _sh_. As the Greeks had no letters
corresponding to our _h_ and _j_, they had to do the best they could with
breathings. Their descendants had to make the same shifts when they became
subject to the Turks, and had to express every word of their conqueror's
language without possessing any signs for those sounds of _sh_ and _j_ in
which it abounded.

The same vocable is preserved to our day in the name borne by one of the
provinces of Persia, Khouzistan. The objection that the Kissaioi or Kissioi
of the classic writers and poets were placed in Susiana rather than in
Chaldaea will no longer be made. Susiana borders upon Chaldaea and belongs,
like it, to the basin of the Tigris. There is no natural frontier between
the two countries, which were closely connected both in peace and war. On
the other hand, the name of