Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/216

 Semites first came. The usual theory is that the Semitic race came from Arabia; but this is quite unlikely, as there is no known conquest of Babylonia from this direction previous to the sixteenth century before the Christian era.

In the Book of Genesis Elam is counted as the first son of Shem or Semitic nation, and I think this may indicate a knowledge, at the time that book was written, that the Semitic race came from this direction; they were probably driven westward by the advance of the Arians, and these latter in their progress may have obliterated nearly all the traces of the Semites whom they dispossessed.

The next question which strikes an observer is as to the date of these events. Some years back I published a curious inscription, of which I gave the texts and translations in my "History of Assurbanipal," pp. 234 to 251, referring to the goddess Nana, the Ishtar of Erech, also called Uzur-amat-sa. In these inscriptions a period of 1635 is mentioned as ending