Concerning the later life of Nimrod, the Scriptures give not the slightest information, nor even ground for conjecture. But, after seventeen or more centuries, a dubious and supposititious narrative got into credit, of which the earliest promoter that we know was Ctesias, but which, variously amplified, has been repeated by many compilers of ancient history down to our own times. Rollin, Shuckford, and Prideaux seem to have given it a measure of credit. It is briefly to this effect : Some make Nimrod to be Belus, and consider Nin (for OS and us are only the Greek and Latin grammatical terminations) to have been his son; others identify Nimrod and Ninus. It is further narrated that Ninus, in confederacy with Aric, an Arabian sovereign, in sev- enteen years spread his conquests over Mesopotamia, Media, and a large part of Armenia and other countries; that he married Semiramis, a warlike companion and a continuer of his conquests, and the builder of Baby- lon ; that their son Ninj-as succeeded, and was followed by more than thirty sovereigns of the same family, he and all the rest being effeminate voluptuaries; that their indolent and licentious character transmitted nothing to posterity ; that the crown descended in this unworthy line one thousand three hundred and sixtj'' j-ears ; that the last king of Assyria was Sardanapalus, proverbial for his luxury and dissipation ; that his Me- dian viceroy, Arbaces, with Belesis, a priest of Babylon, rebelled against him, took his capital, Nineveh, and de- stroyed it, according to the horrid practice of ancient conquerors — those pests of the earth — while the misera- ble Sardanapalus perished with his attendants by setting fire to his palace, in the 9th century before the Chris- tian iera. That some portion of true liistory lies inter- mingled with error or fable in this legend, especially the concluding part of it, is probable. Mr. Brj-ant is of opinion that there are a few scattered notices of the Assyrians and their confederates and opponents in Eu- polemus and other authors (of whom fragments are pre- served by Eusebius), and in an obscure passage of Di- odorus. To a part of this series, presenting a previous subjugation of some Canaanitish, of course Hamitic, nations to the Assyrians, a revolt, and a reduction to the former vassalage, Mr. Bryant thinks that the very remarkable passage. Gen. xiv, 1-10, refers ; and he sup- ports his argument in an able manner by a variety of ethnological coincidences (Anc. 3fylhol.\i, 195-208). But whatever wo know with certaintj' of an Assyrian monarchy commences with Pul, about B.C. 760; and we have then the succession in Tiglath-pileser, Shal- maneser, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. Under this last it is probable that the Assyrian kingdom was absorbed by the Chakteo - Babylonian, — Kitto. The chief events in the life of Nimrod, then, are (1) that he was a Cushite ; (2) that he established an empire in Shinar (the classical Babylonia), the chief towns being Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh ; and (3) that he ex- tended this empire northward along the course of the
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Tigris over Assyria, where he founded a second group of capitals, Nineveh, Itehoboth, Calah, and Resen. These events correspond to and may be held to represent the salient historical facts connected with the earliest stages of the great Babylonian empire.
1. There is abundant evidence that the race which first held sway in the lower Babylonian plain was of Cushite or Hamitic extraction. Tradition assigned to Belus, the mythical founder of Babylon, an Egyptian origin, inasmuch as it described him as the son of Poseidon and Libya (Diod. Sicul. i, 28; Apollodor. ii, 1, § 4: Pausan. iv, 23, § 5); the astrological system of Babylon (Diod. Sicul. i, 81), and perhaps its religious rites (Hestiieus ap. Josephus, A nt. i, 4, 3) were referred to the same quarter; and the legend of Oannes, the great teacher of Babylon, rising out of the Erj-^- thr»an sea, preserved by Syncellus {Chronogi: p. 28), points in the same direction. The name Cush itself was preserved in Babylonia and the adjacent countries under the forms of Cosssei, Cissia, Cuthah, and Susiana or Chuzistan. The earliest written language of Babylonia, as known to us from existing inscriptions, bears a strong resemblance to that of Egj-pt and Ethiopia, and the same words have been found in each countrj', as in the case of Mirikh, the Meroe of Ethiopia, the Mars of Babylonia (IJawlinson, Herod, i, 442). Even the name Nimrod appears in the list of the Egyptian kings of the 22d dynasty, but there are reasons for thinking that dynasty to have been of Assyrian extraction. Putting the above-men- tioned considerations together, they leave no doubt as to the connection between the ancient Babylonians and the Ethiopian or Egyptian stock (respectively the Nimrod and the Cush of the Mosaic table). More than this cainiot be fairly inferred from the data, and we must there- fore withhold our assent from Bunsen's view (^Bi- belwerJc, v, 69) that the Cushite origin of Nimrod betokens the westward progress of the Scythian or Turanian races from the countries eastward of Babylonia ; for, though branches of the Cush- ite familj' (such as the Cossrei) had pressed for- ward to the east of the Tigris, and though the early language of Babylonia bears in its structure a Scythic or Turanian character, yet both these features are susceptible of explanation in connection with the original eastward progress of the Cushite race.