Note 358 — Chapter VI · THE PROTO-SIDERIC OR EARLY IRON AGE OF WEAPONS.

The first period extended from b.c. 1500 to 909. The second from b.c. 909 to 745: the most marking names being Assurnazirpal = ‘Ashur (arbiter of the gods) protects his son,’ who built the north-west palace of Nimrúd, b.c. 884; and his son Shalmanezer II. of the Black Obelisk (Brit. Museum), b.c. 850. The third period (b.c. 745–555) numbered Tiglath-Pileser II., b.c. 745–727 (a single generation before the first Olympic, b.c. 776, when the mythic age of Greece emerges into the historical); Sennacherib (705–681); Esarhaddon (680–668), Assur-bani-pal (668–640); Nebuchadnezzar in 604–561, a contemporary of Solon (b.c. 594); Nergalsharuzur (b.c. 557); and the last Nabonidus (b.c. 555). Herodotus (b.c. 450) wrote about a century after the end of the third period, Ctesias in b.c. 395, and Berosus in b.c. 280. We have, it is clear, absolutely no historic proof that ‘the patriarchal system of communities first locally developed itself at the mouth of the Euphrates Valley,’ or began in any part of the great Mesopotamian plain.