[Footnote 76: The Pennsylvania documents published by Poebel (see above, p. 114, n. 1) suggest that variant traditions were current with regard to the number of mythical and semi-mythical rulers of Babylonia and the duration of their rule. For instance, in two of the lists drawn up under the Nîsin kings, and separated from one another by an interval of only sixty-seven years, the total duration of the preceding dynasties appears to be given in one as 32,243, and in the other as 28,876 years. But this fact does not, of course, prevent the use of the figures which have come to us from Berossus, in order to ascertain the beginning of the historical period in the system he employed.] CHAPTER IV THE WESTERN SEMITES AND THE FIRST DYNASTY OF BABYLON The rise of Babylon to a position of pre-eminence among the warring dynasties of Sumer and Akkad may be regarded as sealing the final triumph of the Semite over the Sumerian. His survival in the long racial contest was due to the reinforcements he received from men of his own stock, whereas the Sumerian population, when once settled in the country, was never afterwards renewed. The great Semitic wave, under which the Sumerian sank and finally disappeared, reached the Euphrates from the coast-lands of the Eastern Mediterranean. But the Amurru, or Western Semites, like their predecessors in Northern Babylonia, had come originally from Arabia. For it is now generally recognized that the Arabian peninsula was the first home and cradle of the Semitic peoples. Arabia, like the plains of Central Asia, was, in fact, one of the main breeding-grounds of the human race, and during the historic period we may trace four great migrations of Semitic nomad tribes, which successively broke away from the northern margin of the Arabian pasture-lands and spread over the neighbouring countries like a flood. The first great racial movement of the kind is that of which the effects were chiefly apparent in Akkad, or Northern Babylonia, where the Semites first obtained a footing when overrunning the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. The second is distinguished from the first, as the Canaanite or Amorite, since it gave to Canaan its Semitic inhabitants; but how long an interval separated the one movement from the other it is impossible to say. The process may well have been a continuous one, with merely a change in the direction of advance; but it is convenient to distinguish them by their effects as separate movements, the sensitization of Canaan following that of Babylonia, but at the same time contributing to its complete success. Of the later migrations we are not for the moment concerned, and in any case only one of them falls within the period of this history. That was the third great movement, which began in the fourteenth century and has been termed the Aramean from the kingdom it established in Syria with its capital at Damascus. The fourth, and last, took place in the seventh