This Elamite conquest of Chaldæa is a memorable historical era, for it inaugurates the period of great wars and of the rise and fall of empires, which play such a conspicuous part in the subsequent annals of nations. Elam was a small province between the Kurdish mountains and the Tigris, extending to the Persian Gulf, and its capital, Susa, was an ancient and famous city; which afterwards became one of the principal seats of the Persian monarchs. The Elamites were originally a Turanian race like the Accads, and spoke a language which was a dialect of Accadian, but, as in Chaldæa and Assyria, the kings and aristocracy appear to have been Semites from an early period. It was apparently an organized and civilized State, and the conquest was not a passing irruption of barbarians, but the result of a campaign by regular troops, who founded a dynasty which lasted for more than 200 years. It evidently disturbed the equilibrium of Western Asia, and led to a succession of wars. The invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos followed closely on it. Then came the reaction which drove the Elamites from Chaldæa and the Hyksos from Egypt. Then the great wars of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, which carried the arms of Ahmes and Thotmes to the Euphrates and Black Sea, and established for a time the supremacy of Egypt over Western Asia. Then the rise of the Hittite Empire, which extended over Asia Minor, and contended on equal terms with Ramses II. in Syria. Then the rise of the Assyrian Empire, which crushed the Hittites and all surrounding nations, and twice conquered and overran Egypt. Finally, the rise of the Medes, the fall of Nineveh, the short supremacy of Babylon, and the establishment of the great Persian Empire. From the Persian we pass to the Greek, and then to the Roman Empire, and find ourselves in full modern history. It may be fairly said, therefore, that modern history, with its series of great wars and revolutions, commences with this record of the Elamite conquest of Chaldæa in 2280 B.C.