ned in
the great inscription of Tiglath-pileser II., as having
lived 641 years before King Assurdan, who himself had
preceded Tiglath-pileser by sixty years: they thus reigned
between 1900 and 1800 years before our era, according to
tradition, whose authenticity we have no other means of
verifying.

** The name of the last is read Eagamil, for want of
anything better: Oppert makes it Eaga, simply transcribing
the signs; and Hilprecht, who took up the question again
after him, has no reading to propose.

*** I give here the list of the kings of the second dynasty,
from the documents discovered by Pinches: No monument
remains of any of these princes, and even the reading of
their names is merely provisional: those placed between
brackets represent Delitzsch's readings. A Gulkishar is
mentioned in an inscription of Belnadiuabal; but Jensen is
doubtful if the Gulkishar mentioned in this place is
identical with the one in the lists.

[Illustration: Table]

These Kashshu, who spring up suddenly out of obscurity, had from the
earliest times inhabited the mountainous districts of Zagros, on the
confines of Elymai's and Media, where the Cossaeans of the classical
historians flourished in the time of Alexander.*

* The Kashshu are identified with the Cossaeans by Sayce, by Schrader,
by Fr. Delitzsch, by Halevy, by Tiele, by Hommel, and by Jensen. Oppert
maintains that they answer to the Kissians of Herodotus, that is to say,
to the inhabitants of the district of which Susa is the capital. Lehmann
supports this opinion. Winckler gives none, and several Assyriologists
incline to that of Kiepert, according to which the Kissians are
identical with the Cossaeans.

It was a rugged and unattractive country, protected by nature and easy
to defend, made up as it was of narrow tortuous valleys, of plains of
moderate extent but of rare fertility, of mountain chains whose grim
sides were covered with forests, and whose peaks were snow-crowned
during half the year, and of rivers, or, more correctly speaking,
torrents, for the rains and the melting of the snow rendered them
impassable in spring and autumn. The entrance to this region was by two
or three well-fortified passes: if an enemy were unwilling to incur the
loss of time and men needed to carry these by main force, he had to make
a detour by narrow goat-tracks, along which the assailants w