136 MIL boscavven on the HJSToraCAJ, 



the Greek account must have suffered in its passage from one author to 

 another. 



'Sumu-abi (fifteen years) will correspond to Khomas-belos (seven and a 

 half years) ; 'Sumu-la-ilu (thirty-five years) to Poros (thirty-five years), where 

 the regnal years agree, but not the names. Poros was followed by 

 Nekhoubes, or rather Ekhoubes, since the initial n seems derived from the 

 last letter of the preceding word Iftaa'CKivaiv. Ekhoubes is Zabu, who, 

 however, reigned only fourteen years, instead of the forty- three ascribed to 

 Nekhoubes. But the Greek numerals are certainly corrupt, since both 

 Nekhoubes and his three successors are assigned reigns of more than forty 

 years each. Evidently, the cipher " forty " has made its way from one line of 

 the text into another. Nekhoubes is followed by Abios, the Abi(l-Sin) of 

 the cuneiform list. He is given forty-eight years instead of eighteen, through 

 the graphic corruption already explained. Then comes Oni-ballos for forty 

 years, obviouslj'' the same name as Sin-muballidh (like Arkeanosfor Sargon), 

 the thirty years of Sin-muballidh being again corrupted into forty. Oni- 

 ballos is succeeded by Zin-ziros for forty-six years, the length of whose reign 

 agrees almost exactly with that of Khammu-ragas, but his name is quite 

 different. Khammu-ragas, however, did not become king of all Babylonia 

 until the conquest of Rim-Sin, the king of Shinar or Southern Babylonia, 

 who allied himself with the Elamites ; and my belief is that Eim-Sin is the 

 Zin-ziros of the Greek writers, the two elements of the name being transposed, 

 as in Xisuthros for Adra-khasis. The Synkellos seems to make Zoroaster the 

 leader of the Median dynasty, — a name which is clearly corrupt, and may be 

 transformed from Khammu-ragas. However this may be, the Kassites would 

 naturally be called Medes by Berossos, since they lived in that part of the 

 East which was known to the Greeks as Media. Similarly, he has called the 

 dynasty of Pase Arabian, since (according to W. A. I., ii. 53, 13) Pase 

 was a city of " Gush," or Arabia. I cannot explain why Berossos expanded 

 the five successors of Khammu-ragas into seven, and gave them an additional 

 lease of power of forty-two years. 



If Eim-Sin were the legitimate son and successor of Sin-nmballidh, he 

 cannot have been the same as Eri-Agu, the son of Kudur-Mabug, as I 

 formerly supposed. On the other hand, the true date of Khammu-ragas, 

 B.C. 2280, exactly corresponds to the date of the invasion of Babylonia by the 

 Elamite king, Kudur-Nakhunte, and Mr. Boscawen has drawn attention to 

 the fact that Khammu-ragas gives the same title, "Lord of Yavutbal," to his 

 Elamite antagonist that Kudur-Mabug claims for himself. Perhaps, there- 

 fore, it will be best to adhere to the view first propounded by Mr. George 

 Smith, that Rim-Sin and Eri-Agu are one and the same, and to suppose that 

 Sin-muballidh was overthrown by Kudur-Nakhunte, the result being the 

 Kassitc conquest, first of Babylon and Northern Babylonia, and then of 



