Chaldea: From the Earliest Times to the Rise of AssyriaRagozin, Zénaïde A. (Zénaïde Alexeïevna)
History
Chaldea: From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria
Ragozin, Zénaïde A. (Zénaïde Alexeïevna)
Babylonia -- History
expressly mentions, laid waste the land of Accad and desecrated its
temples--evidently the same ones which Ur-ea and Dungi so piously
constructed. Nor was this a passing inroad or raid of booty-seeking
mountaineers. It was a real conquest. Khudur-Nankhundi and his
successors remained in Southern Chaldea, called themselves kings of the
country, and reigned, several of them in succession, so that this series
of foreign rulers has become known in history as "the Elamite dynasty."
There was no room then for a powerful and temple-building national
dynasty like that of the kings of Ur.
28. This is the first time we meet authentic monumental records of a
country which was destined through the next sixteen centuries to be in
continual contact, mostly hostile, with both Babylonia and her northern
rival Assyria, until its final annihilation by the latter. Its capital
was SHUSHAN, (afterwards pronounced by foreigners "Susa"), and its own
original name SHUSHINAK. Its people were of Turanian stock, its language
was nearly akin to that of Shumir and Accad. But at some time or other
Semites came and settled in Shushinak. Though too few in number to
change the country's language or customs, the superiority of their race
asserted itself. They became the nobility of the land, the ruling
aristocracy from which the kings were taken, the generals and the high
functionaries. That the Turanian mass of the population was kept in
subjection and looked down upon, and that the Semitic nobility avoided
intermarrying with them is highly probable; and it would be difficult
otherwise to explain the difference of type between the two classes, as
shown in the representations of captives and warriors belonging to both
on the Assyrian sculptures. The common herd of prisoners employed on
public labor and driven by overseers brandishing sticks have an
unmistakably Turanian type of features--high cheek-bones, broad,
flattened face, etc., while the generals, ministers and nobles have all
the dignity and beauty of the handsomest Jewish type. "Elam," the name
under which the country is best known both from the Bible and later
monuments, is a Turanian word, which means, like "Accad," "Highlands."
It is the only name under which the historian of Chap. X. of Genesis
admits it into his list of nations, and, consistently following out his
system of ignoring all members of the great yellow race, he takes into
consideration only the Semitic aristocracy, and makes of Elam a son of
Shem, a brother of Asshur and Arphakhshad. (Gen. x. 22.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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