Page:Herodotus and the Empires of the East.djvu/63

Rh by the Scythian invasion); (5) victory of the Scythians over the Medes; (6) destruction of the Scythians by Cyaxares; (7) conquest of Nineveh by the Medes. Since this table shows that the Assyrian power in Western Asia reached its end many years before the fall of Nineveh, we cannot regard this last event as the terminus ad quem for the five hundred and twenty years. But in the period before 1126 there was no important event by which the Assyrian dominion could have been established over any considerable part of Western Asia. The statement of Herodotus (I., 96), that the Assyrians ruled "Upper Asia" five hundred and twenty years, must therefore be considered inaccurate.

But in order to ascertain how Herodotus reached this estimate let us compare the corresponding accounts of the other Greek writers. Ctesias, who mentions the duration of the reigns of Ninos and Semiramis, names also in his lost work the successors of Ninos from Ninyas to Ashurbanipal; Diodorus, his compiler, however, records only the fall of the Assyrian empire under Sardanapalos (Ashurbanipal), after an existence of more than thirteen hundred years. The sources on which Ctesias relied appear, therefore, to be entirely independent of those which Herodotus used.

Berossus enumerates as follows the several dynasties which ruled Babylon: (a) Dynasty of the Medes (2458–2224 B. C.); (b) dynasty of the Elamites (2224–1976); (c) dynasty of the Chaldeans (1976–1518); (d) dynasty of the Arabians (1518–1273). The next ruler mentioned is Semiramis, who in turn is followed by a dynasty of forty-five kings, who ruled