THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION 



135 



before that ; for the people whom we 

 meet at 4000 B. C. are already a highly 

 civilized and organized race. Already 

 they had towns of considerable size and 

 importance, each with its own great tem- 

 ple tower rising high above the houses 

 and dedicated to the town god. 



LIFE 6,000 YEARS AGO 



They had a system of government 

 whose unit was not the kingdom, but the 

 city-state — the city, that is, with as much 

 territory around it as it could conve- 

 niently lay hands on and protect from its 

 nearest neighbor, the adjoining city. 



At the head of each community was an 

 official who called himself, in his inscrip- 

 tions, the "patesi," of his own particular 

 state, and who seems to have been, like 

 Melchizedek, a combination of priest and 

 king. 



The inhabitants of the city were skilled 

 in various trades and professions ; their 

 social fabric was already sharply divided 

 into a considerable variety of classes ; and 

 their pottery and the fragments of their 

 sculpture which have survived show us 

 that they were by no means unskilled in 

 the fine arts. 



Most important of all, they had already 

 evolved a very complete and highly de- 

 veloped system of writing, which in itself 

 must have taken centuries to reach the 

 stage at which it is first found. It began, 

 no doubt, with pure picture-writing, as 

 the Egyptian hieroglyphic system began ; 

 but while the Egyptians maintained the 

 pictorial element of their system to the 

 end, developing alongside of it the hie- 

 ratic and demotic systems of writing for 

 ordinary purposes, the race in question 

 had already, when we first meet with 

 their writing, got away from any trace of 

 the picture stage. Their writing is al- 

 ready the arrow-headed or cuneiform 

 script which persisted right down to the 

 fall of the great empires of the ancient 

 East (see article by Professor Clay in 

 this number). 



WHENCE CAME THE SUMERIANS 



The wonderful people who had accom- 

 plished all this we call now by the name 

 of Sumerians, from their own name for 

 one of the divisions of their land. Whence 

 they came is unknown. 



It has been suggested that they drifted 

 across the mountains from India, and, 

 after settling for awhile in Persia, finally 

 found their resting-place in the Baby- 

 lonian plain ; and that the form which 

 they gave their temples, towering up like 

 mountains into the sky, may have been 

 due to a remembrance of early days 

 among the hills of India and Persia ; but 

 that is scarcely more than guesswork. 



In fact, we only see this people through 

 the mists for a short time at the very be- 

 ginning of things, and then they disap- 

 pear, driven out of their land, or brought 

 into subjection by a stronger and more 

 warlike race — that Semitic people from 

 whom Abraham and the Hebrews sprang. 



You are to imagine the land, then, as 

 dotted all over at pretty frequent inter- 

 vals with fairly important towns. Round 

 each town rises a high wall of brick, very 

 thick and strong, faced on the outside 

 with the harder kiln-burnt bricks. In the 

 center of the town rises the Ziggurat, or 

 temple-tower. It may have any number 

 of stages, from three to seven, according 

 to the wealth of the town or the devout- 

 ness of its priest-king. Beside it is the 

 palace of the latter, and under the shadow 

 of these two great buildings crouch the 

 smaller houses. 



WANT OF STONE MAKES NARROW ROOMS 



Even in the palace the rooms are long 

 and narrow, for the want of stone and 

 timber limits their breadth to the length 

 of such roof -beams as can conveniently 

 be procured ; and although the Babylo- 

 nians had already learned the principle 

 of the arch, they did not vault their build- 

 ings save on a small scale. 



In the town you would find business 

 thoroughly well organized. Business 

 documents were written in cuneiform 

 script on clay tablets, and when they had 

 been read over, the parties to the contract 

 each signed by pressing his thumb-nail 

 into the wet clay, which was then dried 

 and preserved. Later engraved seals 

 came into use for the purpose of authen- 

 ticating documents. 



Outside the walls lay a ring of fields, 

 some of them private property, some of 

 them common land, but all alike paying 

 tithes to the city-god. Beyond the culti- 



