Unfortunately for our investigation of Chaldean antiquity, the works of Berosus, the only native historian we know of, have come down to us in even a more fragmentary state than the lists of Manetho, and the monuments have not yet enabled us to supply those deficiencies so completely, though there is every prospect of their eventually doing so to a considerable extent. In the meanwhile the most successful attempt to restore the text which has been made, is that of Herr Gutschmid,[63] and it is probable that the dates he assigns are very near the truth. Rejecting the 1st dynasty of 86 Chaldeans and their 34,080 years as mythical, or as merely expressing the belief of the historian that the country was inhabited by a Chaldean race for a long time before the Median invasion, he places that event 2458 B.C. His table of dynasties then runs thus.— Years. B.C. II. 8 Medes 224 commencing 2458 III. 11 Chaldeans 258 2234 IV. 49 Chaldeans 458 1976 V. 9 Arabians 245 1518 VI. 45 Assyrians 526 1273 VII. 8 Assyrians 122 747 VIII. 6 Chaldeans 87 625 Persian conquest 538 As every advance that has been made, either in deciphering the inscriptions or in exploring the ruins since this reading was proposed, have tended to confirm its correctness, it may fairly be assumed to represent very nearly the true chronology of the country from Nimrod to Cyrus. Assuming this to be so, it is interesting to observe that the conquest of Babylonia by the Medes only slightly preceded the invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos, and that the fortification of Avaris “against the Assyrians”[64] was synchronous with the rise of the great Chaldean dynasty, most probably under Nimrod, B.C. 2234. If this is so, the whole of the old civilisation of Egypt under the pyramid-building kings had passed away before the dawn of history in Babylonia. The Theban kings of the 12th dynasty had spread their conquests into Asia, and thus it seems brought back the reaction of the Scythic invasion on their own hitherto inviolate land, and by these great interminglings of the nations Asia was first raised to a sense of her greatness. What we learn from this table seems to be that a foreign invasion of Medes—whoever they may have been—disturbed the hitherto peaceful tenor of the Chaldean kingdom some twenty-five centuries before the Christian era. They, in their turn, were driven out to make place for the Chaldean dynasties, which we have every reason to suppose were those founded by Nimrod about the year 2235 B.C.