582 A SKETCH OF BABYLONIAN SOCIETY. 



tion after a period of its decay, his main efforts were especially directed 

 toward the restoration of the neglected canals. 



(2) During a decline of the central authority the canals became 

 choked with sand. 



(3) The Babylonians imagined the period of such political weakness 

 to be a time of anger of the gods, who were deserting the country and 

 giving the supremacy over to its enemies. 



(4) The hydrographic conditions of the country of the two rivers 

 were of such nature as in themselves to call for regulation and utiliza- 

 tion. For, while the bed of the Tigris in its northern portion is lower 

 than the Euphrates, so that the latter seeks an outlet toward the former 

 during inundations, farther on, at the second confluence of the rivers, 

 it is higher. This peculiarity, which apparently contradicts the fact 

 that the Tigris in that part flows much more swiftly than the Euphrates, 

 is explained by the fact that the former flows in a straight course, and 

 thus has a much shorter distance to traverse than the Euphrates, 

 which describes a large loop. And while the swifter course of the Tigris 

 prevents it from choking its channel, the Euphrates at once covers its 

 domain, its bed, and channels with its alluvial drift whenever a sys- 

 tematic regulation is not kept in continuous operation. It repeatedly 

 fills its own channel, tears away the banks, and reduces the painfully 

 acquired agricultural land to swamp and waste again. 



In reply, then, to the inquiry as to the cause of this ever- reappearing 

 centralization, it maybe answered that the nomads who first settled in 

 the country of the two rivers were compelled by the hydrographic con- 

 ditions to regulate the river system; this regulation demanded and 

 developed an administrative center; these conditions gave as a result 

 the idea that the country belonged to the gods; and this idea had 

 force to bring about a real centralization. Ideas continue in activity 

 thousands of years after the conditions out of which they arose have 

 altered. We must not be surprised, therefore, at finding this idea 

 operative under later conditions; we may even use it as a clue to the 

 complicated life of New Babylon. 



If, now, we consider the State — I speak, of course, of the individual 

 States in their inward and outward design — we have to regard two 

 factors: (1) The State centers about one focus of cult. For the Orient 

 this cult center is of the greatest importance, since the development of 

 the State is most closely connected with it. (2) The other point of view 

 is the political-economic. The citizensof each oneof these States became 

 landowners soon after they had settled in Mesopotamia. They did not 

 cultivate the land themselves, however, but the work was done by serfs 

 or semiserfs, obtained by military expeditions and by purchase. We 

 have private contracts from which we see how boat expeditions were 

 undertaken up the Euphrates against the northern provinces, where 

 the less civilized tribes lived, and in which the contractors, who in this 

 case were merchants and freebooters, undertook to procure slaves. 



