It was not the first time that Elam had audaciously interfered in the affairs of her neighbours. In fabulous times, one of her mythical kings--Khumbaba the Ferocious--had oppressed. Uruk, and Gilgames with all his valour was barely able to deliver the town. Sargon the Elder is credited with having subdued Elam; the kings and vicegerents of Lagash, as well as those of Uru and. Larsam, had measured forces with Anshan, but with no decisive issue. From time to time they obtained an advantage, and we find recorded in the annals victories gained by Gudea, Ine-sin, or Bursin, but to be followed only by fresh reverses; at the close of such campaigns, and in order to seal the ensuing peace, a princess of Susa would be sent as a bride to one of the Chaldaean cities, or a Chaldaean lady of royal birth would enter the harem of a king of Anshan. Elam was protected along the course of the Tigris and on the shores of the Nar-Marratum by a wide marshy region, impassable except at a few fixed and easily defended places. The alluvial plain extending behind the marshes was as rich and fertile as that of Chaldaea. Wheat and barley ordinarily yielded an hundred and at times two hundredfold; the towns were surrounded by a shadeless belt of palms; the almond, fig, acacia, poplar, and willow extended in narrow belts along the rivers' edge. The climate closely resembles that of Chaldaja: if the midday heat in summer is more pitiless, it is at least tempered by more frequent east winds. The ground, however, soon begins to rise, ascending gradually towards the north-east. The distant and uniform line of mountain-peaks grows loftier on the approach of the traveller, and the hills begin to appear one behind another, clothed halfway up with thick forests, but bare on their summits, or scantily covered with meagre vegetation. They comprise, in fact, six or seven parallel ranges, resembling natural ramparts piled up between the country of the Tigris and the table-land of Iran. The intervening valleys were formerly lakes, having had for the most part no communication with each other and no outlet into the sea. In the course of centuries they had dried up, leaving a thick deposit of mud in the hollows of their ancient beds, from which sprang luxurious and abundant harvests. The rivers--the Uknu,* the Ididi,** and the Ulai***--which water this region are, on reaching more level ground, connected by canals, and are constantly shifting their beds in the light soil of the Susian plain: they soon attain a width equal to that of the Euphrates, but after a short time lose half their volume in swamps, and empty themselves at the present day into the Shatt-el-Arab. They flowed formerly into that part of the Persian Gulf which extended as far as Kornah, and the sea thus formed the southern frontier of the kingdom. * The Uknu is the Kerkhah of the present day, the Choaspes of the Greeks.