in Reply to Mr. Beke. 193 



see, had even then taken place between the Euphrates and the 

 Tigris, and that a long space then also existed between that 

 junction and the sea, the first glance at this author seemed to 

 me rather to give a direct negative to the whole matter. 



But going back 400 years before Pliny, to the reign of Alex- 

 ander the Great, I adduced in my last paper the voyage of 

 Nearchus, illustrated by the masterly exposition of that sub- 

 ject by Dean Vincent, and the navigation of those rivers per- 

 formed by Alexander and his fleet, as affording conclusive 

 facts in proof that the broad outline of the coast, had, as to 

 any point in question between Mr. Beke and me, undergone 

 no material change for the last 2200 years. This is all passed 

 over in the reply; but it states that I had "asserted the fact," 

 " much strained and qualified many ancient authorities," 

 and then, from some early measurements, in all their uncer- 

 tainty, which Pliny, while he gives them, points out, it con- 

 cludes that " a very considerable advance of land" (the great 

 delta, I presume,) "is a fact established beyond dispute." Not 

 quite so, 1 apprehend. Let us examine a little. 



A delta which has been forming during 3300 years, and 

 whose formation is said to have been in high activity at the 

 end of 1600, or the commencement of the Christian aera, can 

 offer no territory, in the whole or nearly the whole of any line 

 of its extent, which was the scene of very early events. Take 

 Susiana, being that part of it on the east or north-east of the 

 Tigris. Its capital, Susa, is said to have been founded by 

 Tithonus*, father of the celebrated Memnon ; its origin, in fact, 

 lost in remote antiquity, but pointing to about 1200 years 

 B.C., at less than a ninth of this delta's present age. Nebu- 

 chadnezzar, about 600 B.C., had a palace at Shushan (probably 

 Sinister), on the Susian Ulai or Euleus. Susiana was one of 

 the satrapies of Darius Hystaspes, 500 B.c.f Turning to this 

 delta's longer line, let us take the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar. 

 At that time the city being about the site of Hillah, there 

 could have been, on this theory, little or no advance of the 

 delta beyond it. We have now, at the lowest calculation, on 

 the common chronology, less than a thousand years to the 

 division of the lands, and yet in the time of Isaiah, more re- 

 mote still by nearly two hundred years, the identical Chaldean 

 Babel is spoken of as a settlement of the earliest antiquity. 

 " Behold," says Isaiah, " the land of the Chaldeans; this 

 people was not, till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell 

 in the wilderness ; they set up the towers thereof, they raised up 



* Strabo, l.xv. 729. f Herodotus, Thalia, 91. 



Third Series. Vol. 7. No. 39. Sept. 1835. 2 C 



