The heavens having been put in order, he set about peopling the earth.  Many such fables concerning the cosmogony were current among the races of the lower Euphrates, who seem to have belonged to three different types.  The most important were the Semites, who spoke a dialect akin to Armenian, Hebrew and Phoenician.  Side by side with these the monuments give evidence of a race of ill-defined character, whom we provisionally call Sumerians, who came, it is said, from some northern country, and brought with them a curious system of writing which, adopted by ten different nations, has preserved for us all that we know in regard to the majority of the empires which rose and fell in Western Asia before the Persian conquest.  The cities of these Semites and Sumerians were divided into two groups, one in the south, near the sea, the other more to the north, where the Euphrates and the Tigris are separated by a narrow strip of land.  The southern group consisted of seven, Eridu lying nearest the coast.  Uru was the most important.  Lagash was to the north of Eridu.  The northern group consisted of Nipur, “the incomparable,” Borsip, Babylon (gate of the god and residence of life, the only metropolis of the Euphrates region of which posterity never lost reminiscence), Kishu, Kuta, Agade, and, lastly, the two Sipparas, that of Shamash, and that of Annuit.

The earliest Chaldaean civilisation was confined almost to the banks of the lower Euphrates; except at the northern boundary it did not reach the Tigris and did not cross the river.  Separated from the rest of the world, on the east by the vast marshes bordering on the river, on the north by the Mesopotamian table-land, on the west by the Arabian desert, it was able to develop its civilisation as Egypt had done, in an isolated area, and to follow out its destiny in peace.

According to Ferossasi the first king was Aloros of Babylon.  He was chosen by the god Oannes, and reigned supernaturally for ten sari, or 36,000 years, each saros being 3,600 years.  Nine kings follow, each in this mythical record reigning an enormous period.  Then took place the great deluge, 691,000 years after the creation, in consequence of the wickedness of men, who neglected the worship of the gods, and excited their wrath.  Shamashnapishtim, king at this time in Shurippak, was saved miraculously in a great ship.  Concerning him and his voyage strange fables are recorded.  After the deluge, 86 kings ruled during 34,080 years.  One of these was Nimrod, the mighty hunter of the Bible, who appears as Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and is the hero of extraordinary adventures.

History proper begins with Sargon the Elder, king at the first in Agade, who soon annexed Babylon, Sippara, Kishu, Uruk, Kuta and Nipur.  His brilliant career was like an anticipation of that of the still more glorious life of Sargon of Nineveh.  His son, Naramsin, succeeded him about 3750 B.C.  He conquered Elam and was a great builder.  After him the most famous king of that epoch was Gudea, of Lagash, the prince of whom we possess the greatest number of monuments.  But in these records we have but the dust of history rather than history itself.  The materials are scanty in the extreme and the framework also is wanting.