Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/218

 There is one serious objection to this idea. Although the date B.C. 2280 appears to be given in the inscription of Assurbanipal for the ravages of Kudur-nanhundi, yet the other mutilated notices of this Elamite monarch are combined with names of Babylonian monarchs who do not appear to be anything like so ancient. One of these, said in the inscription, "Cuneiform Inscriptions," vol. iii. p. 38, No. 2, to be contemporary with Kudur-nanhundi, is Bel-zakir-uzur. No name compounded in this form has yet been found earlier than B.C. 1500.

Although the dates transmitted through ancient authors are as a rule vague and doubtful, there are many independent notices which seem to point to somewhere about the twenty-third century before the Christian era for the foundation of the Babylonian and Assyrian power. Several of these dates are connected either directly or by implication with Nimrod, who first formed a united empire over these regions.

The following are some of these notices:—

Simplicius relates that Callisthenis, the friend of Alexander, sent to Aristotle from Babylon a series of stellar observations reaching back 1,903 years before the taking of Babylon by Alexander. This would make 1903 + 331 = B.C. 2234.

Philo-biblius, according to Stephen, made the foundation of Babylon 1,002 years before Semiramis and the Trojan war, as these later were supposed to