cadian (or rather Sumirian) name of the town, Ca-dimira, where Ca is
"gate" and dimira "God." Chaldean tradition assigned the construction of
the tower and the consequent confusion of languages to the time of the
autumnal equinox; and it is possible that the hero-king Etanna (Titan in
Greek writers), who is stated to have built a city in defiance of the will
of heaven, was the wicked chief under whom the tower was raised.

The confusion of tongues was followed by the dispersion of mankind. The
earth was again peopled by the descendants of the three sons of Noah--Shem,
Ham, and Japhet. Shem is the Assyrian Samu, "olive-coloured," Ham is
Khammu, "burned black," and Japhet Ippat, "the white race." The tribes and
races which drew their origin from them are enumerated in the tenth
chapter of Genesis. The arrangement of this chapter, however, is
geographical, not ethnological; the peoples named in it being grouped
together according to their geographical position, not according to their
relationship in blood or language. Here it is that the non-Semitic
Elamites are classed along with the Semitic Assyrians, and that the
Phoenicians of Canaan, who spoke the same language as the Hebrews, and
originally came from the same ancestors, are associated with the
Egyptians. When this fact is recognised, there is no difficulty in showing
that the statements of the chapter are fully consistent with the
conclusions of modern research.

The Assyrian inscriptions have thrown a good deal of light upon the names
contained in it. Gomer, the son of Japhet, represents the Gimirrai of the
inscriptions, the Kimmerians of classical writers. Pressed by the Scyths
of the Russian steppes, they threatened to overrun the Assyrian empire
under a leader named Teispes, but were defeated by Esar-haddon, in B.C.
670, in a great battle on the north-eastern frontier of his kingdom, and
driven westwards into Asia Minor. There they sacked the Greek town of
Sinope, and spread like locusts over the fertile plains of Lydia. Among
the gifts sent to Nineveh by the Lydian king, Gugu or Gyges--a name in
which we may see the Gog of Ezekiel--were two Kimmerian chieftains whom he
had captured with his own hand. Gyges was afterwards slain in battle with
the barbarians, and it required some years before they could be finally
extirpated.

Madai are the Medes, a title given by the Assyrians to the multifarious
tribes to the east of Kurdistan. They are first mentioned in the