VIII.] THE NORTHERN MONGOLS. 279 



time] kings of Persian race, who, after the destruction of the old 

 [Elamite] monarchy by Ashurbanipal, had established a new 

 dynasty at the city of Susa. Cyrus always traces his descent from 

 Achremenes, the chief of the leading Persian clan of Pasargadae 1 ." 

 Hence although wrong in speaking of Cyrus as an adventurer, 

 Herodotus rightly calls him a Persian, and at this late date Elam 

 itself may well have been already Aryanised in speech 2 , while still 

 retaining its old Akkadian religion. The Babylonian pantheon 

 survived, in fact, till the time of Darius Hystaspes, who introduced 

 Zoroastrianism with its supreme gods, Ahura-Mazda, creator of all 

 good, and Ahriman, author of all evil. 



The Akkadian deities, thus superseded by the eternal principles 

 of light and darkness, had themselves "begun by 

 being the actual material of the element which was ReHgi'on " 

 their attribute," and of which they successively be- 

 came the spirit and the ruler. They continued at first to reside 

 in this element, but in course of time were separated from it, each 

 being free to enter a rival's domain, dwell in, and even rule the 

 world from it, till at last most of them came to be identified with 

 the firmament. Bel, the lord of the earth, and Ea, ruler of the 

 waters, passed into the heavens, which did not originally belong 

 to them. Here they took their place beside Ana-Anu, who, at 

 first the material heaven itself, the starry vault encompassing the 

 earth, became successively the spirit of heaven (Zi-Ana) and 

 the supreme ruler of the universe. This transformation of 

 the primitive spirit into a personal god-king was, according to 



1 S. Laing, Human Origins, p. 74. 



2 And it has remained so ever since, the present Lur and Bakhtiari inhabit- 

 ants of Susiana speaking, not the standard Neo- Persian, but dialects of the 

 ruder Kurdish branch of the Iranian family, as if they had been Aryanised 

 from Media, the capital of which was Ekbatana. We have here, perhaps, 

 a clue to the origin of the Medes themselves, who were certainly the above- 

 mentioned Mandas of Nabonidus, their capital being also the same Ekbatana. 

 Now Sayce (Academy, Sept. 7, 1895, p. 189) identified the Kimmerians 

 with these Manda nomads, whose king Tukdamme (Tugdamme) was the 

 Lygdanis of Strabo (i. 3, 16), who led a horde of Kimmerians into Lydia and 

 captured Sardis. We know from Esar-haddon's inscriptions that by the 

 Assyrians these Kimmerians were called Manda, their prince Teupsa (Teispe) 

 being described as "of the people of the Manda." An oracle given to 



