A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



practical civilization give us incidental references of 

 no small importance. Somewhat more detailed ref- 

 erences to the scientific attainments of the Babylonians 

 are found in the fragments that have come down to us 

 of the writings of the great Babylonian historian, 

 Berosus, 3 who was born in Babylon about 330 B.C., and 

 who was, therefore, a contemporary of Alexander the 

 Great. But the writings of Berosus also, or at least 

 such parts of them as have come down to us, leave 

 very much to be desired in point of explicitness. They 

 give some glimpses of Babylonian history, and they 

 detail at some length the strange mythical tales of 

 creation that entered into the Babylonian conception 

 of cosmogony details which find their counterpart in 

 the allied recitals of the Hebrews. But taken all in all, 

 the glimpses of the actual state of Chaldean 4 learning, 

 as it was commonly called, amounted to scarcely more 

 than vague wonder -tales. No one really knew just 

 what interpretation to put upon these tales until the 

 explorers of the nineteenth century had excavated the 

 ruins of the Babylonian and Assyrian cities, bringing to 

 light the relics of their wonderful civilization. But 

 these relics fortunately included vast numbers of writ- 

 ten documents, inscribed on tablets, prisms, and 

 cylinders of terra-cotta. When nineteenth-century 

 scholarship had penetrated the mysteries of the 

 strange script, and ferreted out the secrets of an un- 

 known tongue, the world at last was in possession of 

 authentic records by which the traditions regarding 

 the Babylonians and Assyrians could be tested. 

 Thanks to these materials, a new science commonly 

 spoken of as Assyriology came into being, and a most 



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