Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/201

] was divided into two halves, the Sumir (Sungir, or Shinar) in the north-west, and the Accad in the south-east, corresponding most remarkably to the Suomi and Akkarak, into which the Finnic race believed itself to have been separated in its first mountain home. Like Suomi, Sumir signified &quot; (the people) of the rivers,&quot; and just as Finnic tradition makes Kemi a district of the Suomi, so Came was another name of the Babylonian Sumir. The Accadai, or Accad, were &quot; the highlanders &quot; who had descended from the mountainous region of Elam on the east, and it was to them that the Assyrians ascribed the origin of Chaldean civilisation and writing. They were, at all events, the dominant people in Babylonia at the time to which our earliest contemporaneous records reach back, although the Sumir, or &quot; people of the home language,&quot; as they are sometimes termed, were named first in the royal titles out of respect to their prior settlement in the country. A survey of the syllabary has led to the conclusion that the first attempts at writing were made before the Accad had descended into the plains and exchanged papyrus as a writing material for clay ; other considerations, however, go to show that although the system of writing may have been invented before they had entered Babylonia, it was not completed until after they had done so. In harmony with this, we find Berosus ascribing the culture of &quot; the mixed population of Chaldea &quot; to Cannes and other similar creatures from the Persian} Gulf. So far as we can judge, the civilisation of Elam is at least coeval with that of Babylonia, and the capture of Babylon by the Medes, with whom the historical dynasties of Berosus are commonly supposed to begin, must be explained by an Elamite conquest. Media was the Accadian Mada, &quot;the land&quot; par excellence; and Accadian tradition looked back upon the mountainous district to the south-west of the Caspian as the cradle of their race. Among these &quot; mountains of the east,&quot; and in the land of Nisir (the furthermost division of Gutium beyond the Lesser Zab), rose &quot; the mountain of the world,&quot; the Turanian Olympus, on which the ark of the Chaldean Noah was believed to have rested. From this centre Turanian tribes spread in all directions, meeting Alarodians on the north, and Semites on the south-west. The Aryans had not yet penetrated across the great Sagartian desert. The numerous tribes of Susiana, both civilised and uncivilised, spoke languages more closely Ugrian than even that of the Accadians ; the oldest towns of Northern Syria, where the Semite afterwards reigned supreme, bore Accadian names, and, as in the case of Haran, were mythologically connected with Babylon ; while the chief cities of Assyria were founded by Accadians, were denoted by Accadian symbols, and were ruled by Accadian princes, in strict accordance with the statement of Genesis that out of Babylonia &quot; went forth Asshur.&quot; An Elamite conqueror of Chaldea, like Chedorlaomer (Gen. xiv. 1), imposed his authority not only over Shiuar, but over Assyria and Gutium as well. The earliest geographical lists know only of Nuvva, or Elam, on the east, the Khani on the west, Martu, the land of &quot; the path of the setting sun,&quot; Subarti, or Syria, with its four races, and Gutium, which stretched across Mesopotamia from the Euphrates on the one side to the mountains of Media on the other. To these must be added Anzan, or southern Elam, with its capital Susa, Dilvun, or Nituk, on the Persian Gulf, and, at a considerably later date, the Hittites, with their chief city Carchemish. The first monarchs whose monumental records we possess had their seat at Ur, on the right bank of the Euphrates. Ur, in Accadian, signified &quot; the city &quot; par excellence, and BO bore testimony to the supremacy claimed by its rulers over the rest of Babylonia. The great temple of the Moon-god there was one of the oldest buildings in the country, and its erection was due to a prince who claimed sovereignty over the whole of Babylonia, and adorned Erech, Nipur, Larsa, and other cities with temples of vast size, dedicated to the sun, to Istar, and to Bel. He seems to have been the first great Babylonian builder; and this would imply that it was under him that Ur rose to its prominent position, and united the numerous principalities of Chaldea under one head. The enormous brick structures were cemented with bitumen in the place of lime mortar; but the use of the buttress, of drains, and of external ornamentation, shows that architectural knowledge was already advanced. The cuneiform system of writing had attained its full development, signet stones were carved with artistic skill, and the amount of human force at the disposal of the monarch may be estimated from the fact that the Bowariyeh mound at Warka, on the site of the temple of the Sun-god, is 200 feet square and 100 feet high, so that above 30,000,000 bricks must have been employed upon its construction. The vicinity of Ur to the Semitic tribes of Arabia implies that the Accadian sovereigns had been turning their attention in that direction, and we find nothing surprising therefore in the Scriptural account of Abraham's migration from this place, or the Phoenician tradition of the original home of the Cauaanitish race on the shores of the Persian Gulf (Strab., i. 2, 35, xvi. 3, 4, 27 ; Justin, xviii. 3, 2 ; Pliny, N. H., iv. 3G). Indeed, we have clear evidence that Semitic was spoken in Ur itself at this remote epoch. Although the ruling caste were Accadian, and generally wrote their inscriptions in that language, Dungi, one of their earliest monarchs, inspite of his Turanian name, has left us a short legend in Semitic ; and it is more than probable that the imperial title of &quot;Sumir and Accad &quot; was soon to be assumed to mark a linguistic as well as a geographical distinction. The brick legends of the various viceroys who governed the cities of Chaldea under this dynasty are all, however, in Accadian. The supremacy of Ur had been disputed by its more ancient rival Erech, but had finally to give way before the rise of Nisin or Karrak, a city whose site is uncertain, and Karrak in its turn was succeeded by Larsa. Elamite conquest seems to have had something to do with these transferences of the seat of power. In 2280 B.C. the date is fixed by an inscription of Assur-bani-pal s Cudur-nankhundi, the Elamite, conquered Chaldea at a time when princes with Semitic names appear to have been already reigning there, and Cudur-rnabug not only overran &quot; the west,&quot; or Palestine, but established a line of monarchs in Babylonia. His son and successor took an Accadian name, and extended his sway over the whole country. Twice did the Elamite tribe of Cassi or Kossceans furnish Chaldea with a succession of kings. At a very early period we find one of these Kosssean dynasties claiming homage from Syria, Gutium, and Northern Arabia, and rededicating the images of native Babylonian gods, which had been carried away in war, with great splendour and expense. The other Cassite dynasty was founded by Khammuragas, who established his capital at Babylon, which henceforward continued to be the seat of empire in the south. The dynasty is probably to be identified with that called Arabian by Berosus, and it was during its domination that Semitic came gradually to supersede Accadian as the language of the country. Khammuragas himself assumed a Semitic name, and a Semitic inscription of his is now in the Louvre. A large number of canals were constructed during his reign, more especially the famous Nahr-Malcha, and an embankment built along the banks of the Tigris. The king s attention seems to have been turned to the subject of irrigation by a flood which overwhelmed the important city of Mullias. His 