inscriptions about 820 B.C., and were partially subdued by Tiglath-Pileser
II and his successors. At this time they lived in independent communities,
each governed by its "city-chief." The Median empire, which rose upon the
ruins of Nineveh, was really the creation of the kings of Ekbatana, the
modern Hamadan. The population of this district was known among the
Babylonians as _manda_, or "barbarians;" and through a confusion of the
latter word with the proper name Mada, or "Medes," historians have been
led to suppose that the empire of Ekbatana was a Median one.

Javan is the Greek word "Ionian," but in the Old Testament it is generally
applied to the island of Cyprus, which is called the Island of Yavnan, or
the Ionians, on the Assyrian monuments. A more specific name for it in
Hebrew is Kittim, derived from the name of the Phoenician colony of Kition,
now represented by Larnaka. Cyprus was first visited by the Babylonians at
a very remote period, since Sargon I of Accad, who, according to Nabonidos
(B.C. 550), lived 3,200 years before his time, carried his arms as far as
its shores. As for Tubal and Meshech, they are as frequently associated
together in the Assyrian inscriptions as they are in the Bible. The Tubal
or Tibareni spread in Old Testament times over the south-eastern part of
Kappadokia, while the Meshech or Moschi adjoined them on the north and
west. Ashkenaz is the Assyrian Asguza, the name of a district which lay
between the kingdoms of Ekbatana and the Minni.

Cush and Mizraim denote Ethiopia and Egypt, Ethiopia roughly corresponding
to the Nubia of today. As Ethiopia was largely peopled by tribes who had
come across the Red Sea from Southern Arabia, the name of Cush was given
in the Old Testament (as in verse 7 of this chapter) to Southern Arabia
also. Properly speaking, however, it denoted the country which commenced
on the southern side of the First Cataract. Mizraim means "the two
Matsors," that is Upper and Lower Egypt. Lower Egypt was the original
Matsor, a word which signifies "wall," and referred to the line of
fortification which defended the kingdom on the eastern side from the
attacks of Asiatic tribes. The word occurs more than once in the Biblical
writers, though its sense has been obscured in the Authorised Version.
Thus in Isaiah xxxvii. 25, Sennacherib boasts that he has "dried up all
the rivers of Matsor," that is to say, the mouths of the Nile; and in
Isaiah xix. 6, we ought to translate