EARLY CIVILIZATIONS 11 



If, in a final summing up, the question be asked, What was the 

 legacy which Babylonia and Assyria left to the world after an exist- 

 ence of more than three millenniums, the answer would be, that through 

 the spread of dominion the culture of the Euphrates Valley made its 

 way throughout the greater part of the ancient world, leaving its im- 

 press in military organization, in the government of people, in com- 

 mercial usages, in the spread of certain popular rites such as the 

 various forms of divination, in medical practices and in observation 

 of the movements of heavenly bodies albeit that medicine continued 

 to be dependent upon the belief in demons as the source of physical 

 ills, and astronomy remained in the service of astrology and lastly 

 in a certain attitude towards life which it is difficult to define in 

 words, but of which it may be said that, while it lays an undue em- 

 phasis on might, is yet not without an appreciation of the deeper 

 yearnings of humanity for the ultimate triumph of what is right. 

 Morris Jastrow, Jr. The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria. 



EGYPT. Another highly important ancient civilization whose 

 beginnings are lost for us in the darkness of prehistoric times is 

 that which flourished in the valley of the Nile. 



Near the point where Africa approaches Asia lies a narrow valley, 

 walled in by two ranges of mountains, enclosed on the farther side by 

 two deserts, and fertilized by the periodical inundations of a mighty 

 river. This long and narrow strip of verdure, surrounded by moun- 

 tains and menaced by the desert sands, is Egypt. ... A few years 

 ago, the beginnings of Egyptian history, and even the source of the 

 great river that fertilizes the land of Egypt, were hidden in mystery. 

 The sources of the Nile have been at last discovered, and archseo- 

 logists have now retraced the commencement of a history which is 

 practically the commencement of all authentic history. To Speke 

 and Grant in 1862, and to Baker in 1864, we owe the knowledge of 

 the lakes Victoria Nyanza and Albert Nyanza, whence come the 

 abundant waters, that swollen by the equatorial rains, at fixed in- 

 tervals overflow and fertilize with their mud the soil that borders their 

 bed, and refresh a land which lies beneath a sky where a rain-cloud is 

 seldom seen. We know, too, how the abundant harvests that regu- 

 larly result from the inundations of the Nile, returning ample food to 

 moderate labour, promoted the development of the Egyptian nation ; 



