* Halevy has at least proved that the Khabiri mentioned in. the Tel el-Amarna tablets were Cossaeans, contrary to the opinion of Sayce, who makes them tribes grouped round Hebron, which W. Max Mueller seems to accept; Winckler, returning to an old opinion, believes them to have been Hebrews. To the last they were an undisciplined militia, dangerous, and difficult to please: one day they would hail their chiefs with acclamations, to kill them the next in one of those sudden outbreaks in which they were accustomed to make and unmake their kings.* The first invaders were not long in acquiring, by means of daily intercourse with the old inhabitants, the new civilization: sooner or later they became blended with the natives, losing all their own peculiarities, with the exception of their outlandish names, a few heroic legends,** and the worship of two or three gods--Shumalia, Shugab, and Shukamuna. * This is the opinion of Hommel, supported by the testimony of the _Synchronous Hist._: in this latter document the Cossaeans are found revolting against King Kadashmankharbe, and replacing him on the throne by a certain Nazibugash, who was of obscure origin. ** Pr. Delitzsch and Schrader compare their name with that of Kush, who appears in the Bible as the father of Nimrod (_Gen._ x. 8-12); Hommel and Sayce think that the history of Nimrod is a reminiscence of the Cossaean rule. Jensen is alone in his attempt to attribute to the Cossaeans the first idea of the epic of Gilgames. As in the case of the Hyksos in Africa, the barbarian conquerors thus became merged in the more civilized people which they had subdued. This work of assimilation seems at first to have occupied the whole attention of both races, for the immediate successors of Gandish were unable to retain under their rule all the provinces of which the empire was formerly composed. They continued to possess the territory situated on the middle course of the Euphrates as far as the mouth of the Balikh, but they lost the region extending to the east of the Khabur, at the foot of the Masios, and in the upper basin of the Tigris: the vicegerents of Assur also withdrew from them, and, declaring that they owed no obedience excepting to the god of their city, assumed the royal dignity. The first four of these kings whose names have come down to us, Sulili, Belkapkapu, Adasi, and Belbani,* appear to have been but indifferent rulers, but they knew bow to hold their own against the attacks of their neighbours, and when, after a century of weakness and inactivity, Babylon reasserted herself, and endeavoured to recover her lost territory, they had so completely established their independence that every attack on it was unsuccessful. The Cossaean king at that time--an active and enterprising prince, whose name was held in honour up to the days of the Ninevite supremacy--was Agumkakrime, the son of Tassigurumash.**