8 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



The upper part of the country inclosed between the two rivers 

 was properly called Mesopotamia, a term used also roughly to desig- 

 nate the whole. The valley of the Upper Tigris, or Upper Mesopo- 

 tamia, was Assyria, and the lower part of both valleys Babylonia. . . . 

 In these two fertile regions flourished two empires, the Chaldean- 

 Babylonian and the Assyrian. 



The Chaldeans, says a trustworthy authority, appear to have been 

 a branch of the great Hamite race of Akkad, which inhabited Baby- 

 lonia from the earliest times. With this race originated the art of 

 writing, the building of cities, the institution of a religious system, and 

 the cultivation of all science, and of astronomy in particular. In the 

 primitive Akkadian tongue were preserved all the scientific treatises 

 known to the Babylonians. It was in fact the language of science in 

 the East, as the Latin was in Europe during the Middle Ages. When 

 Semitic tribes established an empire in Assyria in the thirteenth cen- 

 tury B.C., they adopted the alphabet of the Akkad, and with certain 

 modifications applied it to their own language. . . . The mythological, 

 astronomical, and other scientific tablets found at Nineveh, are ex- 

 clusively in the Akkadian language, and are thus shown to belong to 

 a priestly class, exactly answering to the Chaldeans of profane history 

 and of the Book of Daniel. . . . 



From about 747 B.C., the accession of Nabonassar, the line of 

 kings at Babylon is supplied by the well-known work of Ptolemy, 

 the geographer. . . . Babylon, according to ancient historians, 

 was surrounded by walls over three hundred feet in height and 

 eighty in thickness, and was divided into two parts by the river 

 Euphrates, which flowed through it. Narrow streets led to the 

 river, on which they opened by gates. Quays enclosed the water, 

 and towards the centre a bridge crossed it, but the bridge was 

 movable and was only used during the day. At night the two sides 

 of the river were completely separated. . . . When, at the present 

 time, we visit these formerly prosperous countries, we can scarcely 

 believe in the universal fertility that so many witnesses have described. 

 The carelessness of the Turkish administration has allowed the irri- 

 gation canals to be silted up, and the inundations now form unhealthy 

 swamps in the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates. Mesopotamia was 

 wonderfully productive in wheat and barley, the enormous returns 

 obtained by Bablyonian farmers from their corn-lands being un- 

 exampled in modern times ; but it possessed neither olives, figs, nor 



