ersons, or to occupy a small number of
important posts; they were followed by the whole nation, and
spread themselves over the entire country. The bulk of the invaders
instinctively betook themselves to districts where, if they could not
resume the kind of life to which they were accustomed in their own land,
they could, at least give full rein to their love of a free and wild
existence. As there were no mountains in the country, they turned to the
marshes, and, like the Hyksos in Egypt, made themselves at home about
the mouths of the rivers, on the half-submerged low lands, and on the
sandy islets of the lagoons which formed an undefined borderland between
the alluvial region and the Persian Gulf. The covert afforded, by the
thickets furnished scope for the chase which these hunters had been
accustomed to pursue in the depths of their native forests, while
fishing, on the other hand, supplied them with an additional element of
food. When their depredations drew down upon them reprisals from their
neighbours, the mounds occupied, by their fortresses, and surrounded
by muddy swamps, offered them almost as secure retreats as their former
strongholds on the lofty sides of the Zagros. They made alliances with
the native Aramaeans--with those Kashdi, properly called Chaldaeans, whose
name we have imposed upon all the nations who, from a very early
date, bore rule on the banks of the Lower Euphrates. Here they formed
themselves into a State--Karduniash--whose princes at times rebelled,
against all external authority, and at other times acknowledged the
sovereignty of the Babylonian monarchs.*

* The state of Karduniash, whose name appears for the first
time on the monuments of the Cossaean period, has been
localised in a somewhat vague manner, in the south of
Babylonia, in the country of the Kashdi, and afterwards
formally identified with the _Countries of the Sea_, and
with the principality which was called Bit-Yakin in the
Assyrian period. In the Tel-el-Amarna tablets the name is
already applied to the entire country occupied by the
Cossaean kings or their descendants, that is to say, to the
whole of Babylonia. Sargon II. at that time distinguishes
between an Upper and a Lower Karduniash; and in consequence
the earliest Assyriologists considered it as an Assyrian
designation of Babylon, or of the district surrounding it,
an opinion which was opposed by D