scribe translates it Bel-matati, lord of the world:  Buriash is, therefore, an epithet of the god who was called Ramman in Chaldaea.  The name of the moon-god is mutilated, and only the initial syllable Shi... remains, followed by an indistinct sign:  it has not yet been restored.

**** Halevy considers Khala, or Khali, as a harsh form of Gula:  if this is the case, the Cossaeans must have borrowed the name, and perhaps the goddess herself, from their Chaldaean neighbours.

The Chaldaean Ninip corresponded both to Gidar and Maruttash, Bel to Kharbe and Turgu, Merodach to Shipak, Nergal to Shugab.* The Cossaean kings, already enriched by the spoils of their neighbours, and supported by a warlike youth, eager to enlist under their banner at the first call,** must have been often tempted to quit their barren domains and to swoop down on the rich country which lay at their feet.  We are ignorant of the course of events which, towards the close of the XVIIIth century B.C., led to their gaining possession of it.  The Cossaean king who seized on Babylon was named Gandish, and the few inscriptions we possess of his reign are cut with a clumsiness that betrays the barbarism of the conqueror.  They cover the pivot stones on which Sargon of Agade or one of the Bursins had hung the doors of the temple of Nippur, but which Gandish dedicated afresh in order to win for himself, in the eyes of posterity, the credit of the work of these sovereigns.***

     * Hilprecht has established the identity of Turgu with Bel
     of Nippur.

** Strabo relates, from some forgotten historian of Alexander, that the Cossaeans “had formerly been able to place as many as thirteen thousand archers in line, in the wars which they waged with the help of the Elymaeans against the inhabitants of Susa and Babylon.”

*** The full name of this king, Gandish or Gandash, which is furnished by the royal lists, is written Gaddash on a monument in the British Museum discovered by Pinches, whose conclusions have been erroneously denied by Winckler.  A process of abbreviation, of which there are examples in the names of other kings of the same dynasty, reduced the name to Gande in the current language.

Bel found favour in the eyes of the Cossaeans who saw in him Kharbe or Turgu, the recognised patron of their royal family:  for this reason Gandish and his successors regarded Bel with peculiar devotion.  These kings did all they could for the decoration and endowment of the ancient temple of Ekur, which had been somewhat neglected by the sovereigns of purely Babylonian extraction, and this devotion to one of the most venerated Chaldaean sanctuaries contributed largely towards their winning the hearts of the conquered people.*