The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1: Chaldaea: The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.Rawlinson, George
History
The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1: Chaldaea: The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.
Several monarchs of the Sin series--i.e. monarchs into whose names the
word Sin, the name of the Moon-god, enters as an element--now present
themselves. The most important of them has been called Zur-Sin. This
king erected some buildings at Mugheir; but he is best known as the
founder of the very curious town whose ruins bear at the present day the
name of Abu-Shahrein. A description of the principal buildings at this
site has been already given. They exhibit certain improvements on the
architecture of the earlier times, and appear to have been very richly
ornamented, at least in parts. At the same time they contain among
their debris remarkable proofs of the small advance which had as yet
been made in some of the simplest arts. Flint knives and other
implements, stone hatchets, chisels, and nails, are abundant in the
ruins; and though the use of metal is not unknown, it seems to have been
comparatively rare. When a metal is found, it is either gold or bronze,
no trace of iron (except in ornaments of the person) appearing in any of
the Chaldaean remains. Zur-Sin, Rim-Sin, and three or four other
monarchs of the Sin series, whose names are imperfect or uncertain, may
be assigned to the period included between B.C. 1700 and B.C. 1546.
Another monarch, and the only other monumental name that we can assign to
Berosus’s fourth dynasty, is a certain Nur-Vul, who appears by the
Chaldaean sale-tablets to have been the immediate predecessor of Rim-Sin,
the last king of the _Sin_ series. Nur-Vul has left no buildings or
inscriptions; and we seem to see in the absence of all important
monuments at this time a period of depression, such as commonly in the
history of nations precedes and prepares the way for a new dynasty or a
conquest.
The remaining monumental kings belong almost certainly to the fifth, or
Arabian, dynasty of Berosus, to which he assigns the period of 245 years
--from about B.C. 1546 to B.C. 1300. That the list comprises as many as
fifteen names, whereas Berosus speaks of nine Arabian kings only, need
not surprise us, since it is not improbable that Berosus may have omitted
kings who reigned for less than a year. To arrange the fifteen monarchs
in chronological order is, unfortunately, impossible. Only three of them
have left monuments. The names of the others are found on linguistic and
other tablets, in a connection which rarely enables us to determine
anything with respect to their relative priority or posteriority. We
can, however, definitely place seven names, two at the beginning and five
toward the end of the series, thus leaving only eight whose position in
the list is undetermined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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