245 
races — to Congo, to Dahomey, and to other parts of Africa, 
where (as far as the argument drawn from serpent deification 
is concerned) much might be produced of an interesting 
character. But I am not disposed to lay so much stress on 
this point as many persons do, excepting only those pictorial 
traditions which I have noted in sections 9, 22, 37, 38, 46, 
and 47 ; consequently I now pass on to 
III. The Semitic Nations. 
(1.) Pre-Assyrian Ghaldcea . 
32. Berosus, a native of Babylon, whose works are unfor- 
tunately lost, save a few small fragments preserved in Eusebius, 
wrote an elaborate history of Chaldaea from its earliest times, 
chronicling the most primitive records of his country. Now, 
it is a very singular fact that, in apparent contradiction to all 
other historical testimony, this writer introduces a Median 
dynasty of kings, who ruled for 224 years as conquerors of 
Chaldsea, ending b.c. 2234.* The circumstance of this early 
mention of the Medes, however (when usually they are not 
introduced into history till b.c. 647), furnishes us with a most 
remarkable ethnic testimony to the truth of Gen. x. 2, where 
Madai (the word used elsewhere for the Medes) is expressly 
named in the very earliest period after the Flood, and may 
therefore naturally have represented a primeval Median people. t 
33. It was at this period, viz. b.c. 2234, that Berosus re- 
presented the first Chaldaean kingdom to be really established ; 
and although, as I have already remarked, the Hamitic ele- 
ment was then to be found in it, yet it would be a mistake to 
divorce the Semitic element from it. Indeed, there is strong 
ground for supposing that this kingdom was, at a very early 
period, composed of a mixed people, representing the four 
constituent elements of human speech, viz., the Scythic or 
Turanian, the Hamitic, Semitic, and Aryan, about the gradual 
evolution of which I have already spoken. For, “ the early 
kings,” says Rawlinson, “are continually represented on the 
monuments as sovereigns over the ( four tongues whence we 
may conclude that the people were distinguished from one 
another by a variety in their forms of speech.” J Does not 
* Rawlinson’s Five Great Monarchies , i. 193. 
f The history of Berosus, if we except one part obviously mythical, has 
been generally confirmed, and in no instance contradicted by the monu- 
ments. 
t Rawlinson’s Five Great Monarchies , i. 77-79. 
