35. There are inscriptions of Hammurabi's son. But after him a new catastrophe seems to have overtaken Chaldea. He is succeeded by a line of foreign kings, who must have obtained possession of the country by conquest. They were princes of a fierce and warlike mountain race, the KASSHI, who lived in the highlands that occupy the whole north-western portion of Elam, where they probably began to feel cramped for room. This same people has been called by the later Greek geographers COSSAEANS or CISSIANS, and is better known under either of these names. Their language, of which very few specimens have survived, is not yet understood; but so much is plain, that it is very different both from the Semitic language of Babylon and that of Shumir and Accad, so that the names of the Kasshi princes are easily distinguishable from all others. No dismemberment of the empire followed this conquest, however, if conquest there was. The kings of the new dynasty seem to have succeeded each other peacefully enough in Babylon. But the conquering days of Chaldea were over. We read no more of expeditions into the plains of Syria and to the "Sea of the Setting Sun." For a power was rising in the North-West, which quickly grew into a formidable rival: through many centuries Assyria kept the rulers of the Southern kingdom too busy guarding their frontiers and repelling inroads to allow them to think of foreign conquests. FOOTNOTES: [AH] Names are often deceptive. That of the Hindu-Cush is now thought to mean "Killers of Hindus," probably in allusion to robber tribes of the mountains, and to have nothing to do with the Cushite race. [AI] "Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient," 1878, p. 160. [AJ] Translation of Professor A. H. Sayce. [AK] A. H. Sayce. [AL] Translated by A. H. Sayce, in his paper "Babylonian Folk-lore" in the "Folk-lore Journal," Vol. I., Jan., 1883. [AM] See Figs. 44 and 45, p. 101. [AN] This name was at first read Urukh, then Likbabi, then Likbagash, then Urbagash, then Urba'u, and now Professor Friedr. Delitzsch announces that the final and correct reading is in all probability either Ur-ea or Arad-ea. [AO] Geo. Rawlinson, "Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World" (1862), Vol. I., pp. 198 and ff. [AP] Geo. Smith, in "Records of the Past," Vol. V., p. 75. Fritz Hommel, "Die Semiten," p. 210 and note 101. [AQ] It should be mentioned, however, that scholars have of late been inclined to see in this name an allusion to the passage of the Jordan at the time of the conquest of Canaan by Israel, after the Egyptian bondage. V. BABYLONIAN RELIGION.