Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/59

THE HISTORY OF CHALD.EA AND ASSYRIA. 39 thousand years before our era, that the intermingling of ideas and races took place which gave birth to the civilization of Chaldaea. In order to find a king to whom we can give a probable date we have to come clown as far as Ismi-Dagan, who should figure in the fourth dynasty of Berosus. Tiglath-Pileser the First, who reigned in Assyria at the end of the twelfth century, has left us an official document in which he recounts how he had restored in Ellasar (now Kalck-Shergaf], a temple of Oannes founded by Ismi-Dagan seven hundred years before. We are led therefore to place the latter king about iSoo. 1 We learn at the same time that Assyria was inhabited, in the clays of Ismi-Dagan, by a people who borrowed their gods from Chaldsea, and were dependents of the sovereign of the latter country. It was in fact upon the shores of the Persian Gulf, far enough from Assyria, that Oannes made his first revelation, and it is at Ur in the same region that the names o of Ismi-Dagan and of his sons Goun-goun and Samsibin are to be found stamped upon the bricks. We may, therefore, look upon their epoch as that in which the first Chaldee Empire reached its apogee. It then embraced all Mesopotamia, from the slopes of Mount Zaoros to the out-fall of the two great rivers. <_> <> The sovereigns of Chaldaea, like the Pharaohs of Egypt, toiled with intelligence and unremitting perseverance to develop the resources of the vast domain of which they found themselves masters. They set on foot great public works whose memory survives here and there, to this day. From the moment when the of Kars, which was charged with the delimitation of the Turco-Persian frontier, he was accompanied by sufficient escorts and could stay wherever he pleased. He was an ardent traveller and excellent observer, and science experienced a real loss in his death. The only work which he has left behind him may still be read with pleasure and profit, namely, Travels and Researches in Chaldcea and Susiana, with an Account of Excavations at Warka, the " Ereich" of Nimrod, and Shush, " Shushan ^the palace" of Esther, 8vo, London: 1857. The articles contributed by J. E. TAYLOR, English vice-consul at Bassorah, to vol. xv. of the Journal of the Asiatic Society (1855), may also be read with advantage. He passed over the same ground, and also made excavations at certain points in Lower Chaldsea which were passed over by Mr. Loftus. Finally, M. de Sarzec, the French consul at Bassorah, to whom we owe the curious series of Chaldaean objects which have lately increased the riches of the Louvre, was enabled to explore the same region through the friendship of a powerful Arab chief. It is much to be desired that he should give us a complete account of his sojourn and of the searches he carried on. 1 LENORMANT, Manuel de f Histoire ancienne, vol. ii. p. 30.