were always held. Their ancient divinities--Nana, Sin, Anu, and Ra--were
adopted, if we may use the term, by the Babylonians, who claimed the
protection of these gods as fully as they did that of Merodach or of
Nebo, and prided themselves on amply supplying all their needs. As the
inhabitants of Babylon had considerable resources at their disposal,
their appeal to these deities might be regarded as productive of more
substantial results than the appeal of a merely local kinglet. The
increase of the national wealth and the concentration, under one head,
of armies hitherto owning several chiefs, enabled the rulers, not
of Babylon or Larsa alone, but of the whole of Chaldaea, to offer
an invincible resistance to foreign enemies, and to establish their
dominion in countries where their ancestors had enjoyed merely a
precarious sovereignty. Hostilities never completely ceased between
Elam and Babylon; if arrested for a time, they broke out again in
some frontier disturbance, at times speedily suppressed, but at others
entailing violent consequences and ending in a regular war. No document
furnishes us with any detailed account of these outbreaks, but it
would appear that the balance of power was maintained on the whole with
tolerable regularity, both kingdoms at the close of each generation
finding themselves in much the same position as they had occupied at its
commencement. The two empires were separated from south to north by
the sea and the Tigris, the frontier leaving the river near the present
village of Amara and running in the direction of the mountains. Durilu
probably fell ordinarily under Chaldaean jurisdiction. Umliyash was
included in the original domain of Kham-murabi, and there is no reason
to believe that it was evacuated by his descendants. There is every
probability that they possessed the plain east of the Tigris, comprising
Nineveh and Arbela, and that the majority of the civilized peoples
scattered over the lower slopes of the Kurdish mountains rendered them
homage. They kept the Mesopotamian table-land under their suzerainty,
and we may affirm, without exaggeration, that their power extended
northwards as far as Mount Masios, and westwards to the middle course of
the Euphrates.

At what period the Chaldaeans first crossed that river is as yet unknown.
Many of their rulers in their inscriptions claim the title of suzerains
over Syria, and we have no evidence for denying their pretensions.
Kudur-mabug pr