SCIENCE AND PRACTICAL NEEDS 13 



tanners, saddlers, smiths, carpenters, shoemakers, 

 stonecutters, ivory-cutters, brickmakers, porcelain- 

 makers, potters, vintners, sailors, butchers, engi- 

 neers, architects, painters, sculptors, musicians, deal- 

 ers in rugs, clothing and fabrics, who contributed to 

 the culture of this great historic people. It is not 

 surprising that science should find its matrix in so 

 rich a civilization. 



The lever and the pulley, lathes, picks, saws, ham- 

 mers, bronze operating-lances, sundials, water-clocks, 

 the gnomon (a vertical pillar for determining the sun's 

 altitude) were in use. Gem-cutting was highly de- 

 veloped as early as 3800 B.C. The Babylonians made 

 use of copper hardened with antimony and tin, lead, 

 incised shells, glass, alabaster, lapis-lazuli, silver, and 

 gold. Iron was not employed before the period of con- 

 tact with Egyptian civilization. Their buildings were 

 furnished with systems of drains and flushes that seem 

 to us altogether modern. Our museums are enriched 

 by specimens of their handicraft realistic statuary 

 in dolerite of 2700 B.C. ; rock crystal worked to the 

 form of a plano-convex lens, 3800 B.C. ; a beautiful 

 silver vase of the period 3950 B.C. ; and the head of 

 a goat in copper about 4000 B.C. 



Excavation has not disclosed nor scholarship in- 

 terpreted the full record of this ancient people in the 

 valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, not far from 

 the Gulf of Persia, superior in religious inspiration, 

 not inferior in practical achievements to the Egyp- 

 tians. Both these great nations of antiquity, however, 

 failed to carry the sciences that arose in connection 

 with their arts to a high degree of generalization. 

 That was reserved for another people of ancient 

 times, namely, the Greeks. 



