fire in Chaldssa, where they put to death hie first-born son, Aran, travelled away with Abraham and Nachor, and the family of Aran, to Charran in Mesopotamia, where Thare1 died, at the end of two hundred and five years. CH. VI.—The Reign and Character ofSemiramis—Duration of the Assyrian Monarchy. Is the times of Thare reigned Ninus, the most powerful king of the Assyrians, the son of queen Semiramis. She, a woman of manly strength of mind, governed the kingdom of the Assyrians with great power, for two and thirty years. And in order to resemble a man more closely, she clothed her legs and arms in the dress of a man, and wore a tiara on her head. And that she might not by any chance be supposed to conceal any secret design under this unusual garb, she ordered the people in general to wear the same dress, and ever since the whole nation retains that fashion. She performed great exploits ; and as she was a woman of manly courage, she was not content with the boundaries of her dominions, which had been acquired by her husband, and to which she had succeeded, but she overwhelmed Ethiopia with war. She carried her arms into India ; a country which no one before her had ever subdued. She it was who built the city of Babylon, and surrounded it with a wall, and appointed it to be the metropolis of the kingdom of the Assyrians. At last she was slain by her own son ; and when he had succeeded his mother, he, being content with the kingdom as it had been made by his parent's toil, laid aside all thoughts of war ; and, as if he had changed sexes with his mother, seldom came into the sight of men, but grew old amid the bands of women. And hie posterity followed his example so far, as to give their answers to people by the intervention of messengers. After Ninus, thirty-six kings, in continual succession, possessed the monarchy of the Assyrians, for a period of thirteen hundred years, down to the time of Sardanapalus. CH. VII.—Generations from Noah to Abraham. BUT Noah lived after the deluge7 eight hundred and fifty • Called Terah, in Genesis. 7 There is a difficulty here : if he means that Noah lived after the