for want of anything better:  Oppert makes it Eaga, simply transcribing the signs; and Hilprecht, who took up the question again after him, has no reading to propose.

*** I give here the list of the kings of the second dynasty, from the documents discovered by Pinches:  No monument remains of any of these princes, and even the reading of their names is merely provisional:  those placed between brackets represent Delitzsch’s readings.  A Gulkishar is mentioned in an inscription of Belnadiuabal; but Jensen is doubtful if the Gulkishar mentioned in this place is identical with the one in the lists.

[Illustration:  Table]

These Kashshu, who spring up suddenly out of obscurity, had from the earliest times inhabited the mountainous districts of Zagros, on the confines of Elymai’s and Media, where the Cossaeans of the classical historians flourished in the time of Alexander.*

* The Kashshu are identified with the Cossaeans by Sayce, by Schrader, by Fr. Delitzsch, by Halevy, by Tiele, by Hommel, and by Jensen.  Oppert maintains that they answer to the Kissians of Herodotus, that is to say, to the inhabitants of the district of which Susa is the capital.  Lehmann supports this opinion.  Winckler gives none, and several Assyriologists incline to that of Kiepert, according to which the Kissians are identical with the Cossaeans.

It was a rugged and unattractive country, protected by nature and easy to defend, made up as it was of narrow tortuous valleys, of plains of moderate extent but of rare fertility, of mountain chains whose grim sides were covered with forests, and whose peaks were snow-crowned during half the year, and of rivers, or, more correctly speaking, torrents, for the rains and the melting of the snow rendered them impassable in spring and autumn.  The entrance to this region was by two or three well-fortified passes:  if an enemy were unwilling to incur the loss of time and men needed to carry these by main force, he had to make a detour by narrow goat-tracks, along which the assailants were obliged to advance in single file, as best they could, exposed to the assaults of a foe concealed among the rocks and trees.  The tribes who were entrenched behind this natural rampart made frequent and unexpected raids upon the marshy meadows and fat pastures of Chaldaea:  they dashed through the country, pillaging and burning all that came in their way, and then, quickly regaining their hiding-places, were able to place their booty in safety before the frontier garrisons had recovered from the first alarm.* These tribes were governed by numerous chiefs acknowledging a single king—­ianzi—­whose will was supreme over nearly the whole country:** some of them had a slight veneer of Chaldaean civilization, while among the rest almost every stage of barbarism might be found.  The remains of their language show that it was remotely allied to the dialect of Susa, and contained many Semitic words.*** What is recorded of their religion reaches us merely at second hand, and the groundwork of it has doubtless been modified by the Babylonian scribes who have transmitted it to us.****