VIII.] THE NORTHERN MONGOLS. 2// 



for 45 years over Upper and Lower Mesopotamia, governed the 

 black-heads, as the Akkads are constantly called, rode in many 

 bronze chariots over rugged lands, and made expeditions thrice to 

 the sea-coast. The expeditions are confirmed by inscriptions from 

 Syria, and by the cylinder of his son, Naram-Sin, found by Cesnola 

 in Cyprus. As they also penetrated to Sinai their sway would 

 appear to have extended over the whole of Syria and North Arabia, 

 with Cyprus and perhaps other islands. They erected great struc- 

 tures at Nippur, which was at that time so ancient that Naram- 

 Sin's huge brick platform stood on a mass 30 feet thick of the 

 accumulated debris of earlier buildings. It was from the results 

 of the explorations especially of Dr Peters and Mr Haynes in 

 these de'bris that Dr Hilprecht wrote: "I do not hesitate to date 

 the founding of the temple of Bel and the first settlements in 

 Nippur somewhere between 6000 and 7000 B.C., and possibly 

 earlier 1 ." We come thus within measurable distance of the 

 10,000 years assigned to the duration of the Historic Period in 

 Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley 2 . 



Sennacherib's grandson, Ashurbanipal, who belongs to the late 

 Assyrian empire when the centre of power had been 

 shifted from Babylonia to Nineveh, has left recorded 

 on his brick tablets how he overran Elam and 

 destroyed its capital, Susa (645 B.C.). He states that from this 

 place he brought back the effigy of the goddess Nana, which had 

 been carried away from her temple at Erech by an Elamite king 

 by whom Akkad had been conquered 1635 years before, i.e. 2280 

 B.C. Over Akkad Elam ruled 300 years, and it was a king of 

 this dynasty, Khudur-Lagamar, who has been identified by Mr 

 Pinches with the " Chedorlaomer, king of Elam " routed by 

 Abraham (Gen. xiv. 14 iy) 3 . Thus is explained the presence 

 of Elamites at this time so far west as Syria, their own seat being 

 amid the Kurdish mountains in the Upper Tigris basin. 



The Elamites were probably of the same stock as their Akkad 

 neighbours, a short, robust people with coarse black hair, peaceful, 



1 Quoted in Academy, April 30, 1898, p. 465. 



2 Ethnology, p. 56. 



3 Babylonia and Elam Four Thousand Years Ago, in Knowledge, May i, 

 1896, p. 116 sq. and elsewhere. 



