SG. G. Hubbard—Geographic Progress of Civilization. 
East of Mesopotamia were the mountains and deserts of Scythia, 
early inhabited by nomad tribes without permanent or fixed 
habitations. As they increased they required more land for their 
herds, and the overflowing population was forced into the plains 
of Mesopotamia, where they began the cultivation of the valley. 
Mesopotamia was successively ruled by Babylonian, Assyrian, 
Chaldean, Syrian, Median, and Persian monarchs. The kings 
were the religious as well as the secular heads, despots of the 
most absolute kind, ruling over a nation of slaves. They built 
a vast number of great cities. As there were no stones in the 
lower valley the buildings were constructed of sun-dried brick, 
and although there was stone in Assyria, brick was generally 
used as in Babylon. 
In Nineveh and Babylon the architecture of the palaces and 
city walls surpassed in variety, beauty, and taste that of Egypt. 
Hieroglyphics were gradually superseded by cuneiform char- 
acters, running from left to right, in which many books and in- 
- struments were written. As early as the twentieth century B. C. 
their annals were engraved on stone, and every great city had 
its library of baked bricks or tablets, stamped in minute char- 
acters, arranged in order and numbered, so that the student had 
only to give the number of the tablet and receive it from the 
librarian. But notwithstanding their architecture, their libra- 
ries and luxury, the people were intellectually and morally 
barbarous. Mesopotamia, unlike Egypt, was not protected by 
deserts from incursions. The nomads of Scythia, tempted by 
the wealth and luxury of the inhabitants of the plains, again 
and again left their flocks and poured into the valley, and though 
often repulsed, finally overthrew the empire and destroyed the 
irrigating canals; the land was then covered with sand, and 
Mesopotamia has become a desert waste. 
To the inhabitants of Babylonia and Assyria we owe the de- 
velopment of trade and commerce by the caravan. 
Syria. 
Between Mesopotamia and Arabia lies. Syria, a small country 
remarkable for its physical features and its wonderful history. 
In the east a great desert with beautiful oases, where were 
Palmyra, Baalbec and Damascus; west of these oases the moun- 
tains of Moab and Gilead; beyond the mountains in the valley 
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