Chronology--Berosus--His Dates mythical--Dates in Genesis--Synchronisms with Egypt and Assyria--Monuments--Cuneiform Inscriptions--How deciphered--Behistan Inscription--Grotefend and Rawlinson--Layard--Library of Koyunjik--How preserved--Accadian Translations and Grammars--Historical Dates--Elamite Conquest--Commencement of Modern History--Ur-Ea and Dungi--Nabonidus--Sargon I., 3800 B.C.--Ur of the Chaldees--Sharrukin's Cylinder--His Library--His son Naram-Sin--Semites and Accadians--Accadians and Chinese--Period before Sargon I.--Patesi--De Sarzec's find at Sirgalla--Gud-Ea, 4000 to 4500 B.C.--Advance of Delta--Astronomical Records--Chaldæa and Egypt give similar results--Historic Period 6000 or 7000 years--and no trace of a beginning. Chaldæan chronology has within the last few years been brought into the domain of history, and carried back to a date almost, if not quite, as remote as that of Egypt. And this has been effected by a process identical in the two cases, the decipherment of an unknown language in inscriptions on ancient monuments. Until this discovery the little that was known of the early history of Chaldæa was derived almost entirely from two sources: the Bible, and the fragments quoted by later writers from the lost work of Berosus. Berosus was a learned priest of Babylon, who lived about 300 B.C., shortly after the conquest of Alexander, and wrote in Greek a history of the country from the most ancient times, compiled from the annals preserved in the temples, and from the oldest traditions. He began with a Cosmogony, fragments of which only are preserved, from which little could be inferred, except that it bore some general resemblance to that of Genesis, until the complete Chaldæan Cosmogony was deciphered by Mr. George Smith from tablets in the British Museum. Then followed a mythical period of the reigns of ten gods or demi-gods, reigning for 432,000 years, in the middle of which period the divine fish-man, Ea-Han or Oannes, was said to have come up out of the Persian Gulf, and taught mankind letters, sciences, laws, and all the arts of civilization; 259,000 years after Oannes, under Xisuthros (the Greek translation of Hasisastra), the last of the ten kings, a Deluge is said to have occurred; which is described in terms so similar to the narrative of Noah's deluge in Genesis, as to leave no doubt that they are different versions of the same legend.