Bel found favour in the eyes of the Cossaeans who saw in him Kharbe or Turgu, the recognised patron of their royal family: for this reason Gandish and his successors regarded Bel with peculiar devotion. These kings did all they could for the decoration and endowment of the ancient temple of Ekur, which had been somewhat neglected by the sovereigns of purely Babylonian extraction, and this devotion to one of the most venerated Chaldaean sanctuaries contributed largely towards their winning the hearts of the conquered people.* * Hilpreoht calls attention on this point to the fact that no one has yet discovered at Nippur a single ex-voto consecrated by any king of the two first Babylonian dynasties. The Cossaean rule over the countries of the Euphrates was doubtless similar in its beginnings to that which the Hyksos exercised at first over the nomes of Egypt. The Cossaean kings did not merely bring with them an army to protect their persons, or to occupy a small number of important posts; they were followed by the whole nation, and spread themselves over the entire country. The bulk of the invaders instinctively betook themselves to districts where, if they could not resume the kind of life to which they were accustomed in their own land, they could, at least give full rein to their love of a free and wild existence. As there were no mountains in the country, they turned to the marshes, and, like the Hyksos in Egypt, made themselves at home about the mouths of the rivers, on the half-submerged low lands, and on the sandy islets of the lagoons which formed an undefined borderland between the alluvial region and the Persian Gulf. The covert afforded, by the thickets furnished scope for the chase which these hunters had been accustomed to pursue in the depths of their native forests, while fishing, on the other hand, supplied them with an additional element of food. When their depredations drew down upon them reprisals from their neighbours, the mounds occupied, by their fortresses, and surrounded by muddy swamps, offered them almost as secure retreats as their former strongholds on the lofty sides of the Zagros. They made alliances with the native Aramaeans--with those Kashdi, properly called Chaldaeans, whose name we have imposed upon all the nations who, from a very early date, bore rule on the banks of the Lower Euphrates. Here they formed themselves into a State--Karduniash--whose princes at times rebelled, against all external authority, and at other times acknowledged the sovereignty of the Babylonian monarchs.*