The names of Belus and Cush, thus brought into juxtaposition, have remained attached to some portion or other of the region in question from ancient times to the present day.  The tract immediately east of the Tigris was known to the Greeks as Cissia or Cossaea, no less than as Elymais or Elam.  The country east of Kerman was named Kusan throughout the Sassanian period.  The same region is now Beloochistan, the country of the Belooches or Belus, while adjoining it on the east is Cutch, or Kooch, a term standing to Cush is Belooch stands to Belus.  Again, Cissia or Cossaea is now Khuzistan, or the land of Khuz a name not very remote from Cush; but perhaps this is only a coincidence.

To the traditions and traces here enumerated must be added, as of primary importance, the Biblical tradition, which is delivered to us very simply and plainly in that precious document the “Toldoth Beni Noah,” or “Book of the Generations of the Sons of Noah,” which well deserves to be called “the most authentic record that we possess for the affiliation of nations.”  “The sons of Ham,” we are told, “were Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan . . . .  And Cush begat Nimrod . . . .  And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.”  Here a primitive Babylonian kingdom is assigned to a people distinctly said to have been Cushite by blood, and to have stood in close connection with Mizraim, or the people of Egypt, Phut, or those of Central Africa, and Canaan, or those of Palestine.  It is the simplest and the best interpretation of this passage to understand it as asserting that the four races—­the Egyptians, Ethiopians, Libyans, and Canaanites—­were ethnically connected, being all descended from Ham; and further, that the primitive people of Babylon were a subdivision of one of these races, namely of the Cushites or Ethiopians, connected in some degree with the Canaanites, Egyptians, and Libyans, but still more closely with the people which dwelt anciently upon the Upper Nile.

The conclusions thus recommended to us by the consentient primitive traditions of so many races, have lately received most important and unexpected confirmation from the results of linguistic research.  After the most remarkable of the Mesopotamian mounds had yielded their treasures, and supplied the historical student with numerous and copious documents bearing upon the history of the great Assyrian and Babylonian empires, it was determined to explore Chaldaea Proper, where mounds of less pretension, but still of considerable height, marked the sites of a number of ancient cities.  The excavations conducted at these places, especially at Niffer, Senkereh, Warka, and Mugheir, were eminently successful.  Among their other unexpected results was the discovery, in the most ancient remains, of a new form of speech, differing greatly from the later Babylonian language and presenting analogies with the early language of Susiana, as well as with that of