Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/215

 This position for Izdubar or Nimrod, if it should turn out correct, will guide us to several valuable conclusions as to Babylonian history. So far as the dynasty is concerned, which Berosus calls Median, it is most probable that these kings were Elamites; certainly we have no knowledge of the Arian Medes being on the Assyrian frontier until several centuries later, and it is generally conceded that Berosus, in calling them Medes, has only expressed their Eastern origin. Allowing them to be Elamites, or inhabitants of Elam, there remains the question, to what race did they belong?

The later Elamites are believed to have been either Turanians or Arians; but we are by no means certain that no new race had come into the country since the time of Izdubar. There was a constant stream of immigration from the east and north, which gradually but surely altered the character of several of the races of Western Asia.

In Babylonia itself it is believed that a change of this sort took place in early times, the original Turanian population having been conquered and enslaved by Semitic tribes, and there has always been a difficulty as to where the Semitic peoples originated.

The Semitic race was already dominant in Babylonia two thousand years before the Christian era, and before this time there is only one conquest recorded—that of Babylonia by the Medes or Elamites, and I think it is most likely that from Elam the