The name of Elam has first received its explanation from the decipherment of the Assyrian texts. It was the name of the mountainous region to the east of Babylonia, of which Shushan or Susa was at one time the capital, and is nothing more than the Assyrian word _elam_, “high.” _Elam_ was itself a translation of the Accadian _Numma_, under which the Accadians included the whole of the highlands which bounded the plain of Babylonia on its eastern side. It was the seat of an ancient monarchy which rivalled in antiquity that of Chaldea itself, and was long a dangerous neighbour to the latter. It was finally overthrown, however, by Assur-bani-pal, the Assyrian king, about B.C. 645. The native title of the country was Anzan or Ansan, and the name of its capital, Susan or Shushan, seems to have signified “the old town” in the language of its inhabitants. Asshur or Assur was originally the name of a city on the banks of the Tigris, the ruins of which are now known as Kalah Sherghat. The name was of Accadian derivation, and signified “water-bank.” The city long continued to be the capital of the district which was called after it Assyria, but was eventually supplanted by Ninua or Nineveh. Nineveh lay opposite the present town of Mosul, and it is from the remains of its chief palace, now buried under the mounds of Kouyunjik, that most of the Assyrian inscriptions in the British Museum have been brought. A few miles to the south of Nineveh, on the site now known as Nimrûd, was Calah, a town built by Shalmaneser I, who lived B.C. 1300. Calah subsequently fell into ruins, but was rebuilt in the ninth century before our era. “Between Nineveh and Calah” stood Resen, according to Genesis. Resen is the Assyrian _Ris-eni_, “head of the stream,” which is once mentioned in an inscription of Sennacherib. Rehoboth ´Ir, or “the open spaces of the city,” must have denoted the suburbs of Nineveh, and cannot be identified with Dur-Sarrukin, founded by Sargon at Khorsabad, several miles to the north. It is plain from the context that Arphaxad must signify Chaldea; and this conclusion is verified by the fact that the name might also be pronounced Arpa-Chesed, or “border of Chaldæa.” Chesed is the singular of Casdim, the word used in the Old Testament to denote the inhabitants of Babylonia. The origin of it is doubtful, but, as has been suggested above, it most probably represents the Assyrian _casidi_, “conquerors,” a term which might very well be applied to the Semitic conquerors of Sumir and Accad. The Greek word Chaldeans is derived from the Kaldâ, a tribe which lived on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and is first heard of in the ninth century before our era. Under Merodach-Baladan, the Kaldâ made themselves masters of Babylonia, and became so integral a part of the population as to give their name to the whole of it in classical times.