December, 1912.] 



435 



gradually civilized. " Amalek was the first of the nations " was 

 spoken with knowledge of the Arabs stretching from the delta of the 

 Nile to the upper Euphrates. Living in tents and using gourds for vessels, 

 they have left no traces such as we see in Egypt and Babylonia ; but 

 Arabia has been able to pour forth from her parched loins her virile sons 

 who began the subjugation of both the Nile valley and the valley of the 

 Euphrates- Everything in Egypt was easy and to hand ; the Nile was and 

 is the most stately and majestic of rivers and carrying a moderate amount 

 of deposit creates no serious difficulties for the dwellers on its banks ; the 

 Garden of the Lord, the land of Egypt, is very fertile ; and the climate is 

 mild in winter and never parches in summer. Egypt, therefore, produced 

 no world ideas. None of her sons were possessed of a fine frenzy with eyes 

 glancing from heaven to earth and earth to heaven. It was far different 

 with Babylonia. The Tigris and Euphrates in flood are raging torrents 

 and their ungoverned and turbid waters need curbing with no ordinary 

 bridle. Babylonia's soil is very fertile, but the winters are severe indeed 

 and the summers savage and prolonged. The range of temperature is 

 between 20° and 120" in the shade. Brought up in a hard school they 

 possessed virile intellects. Moses' first contact with Babylonian belief's 

 and creations in the house of the priest of Midian on the slopes of Horeb, 

 entranced him ; in the burning bush of the deserts he saw the footsteps of 

 the Almighty, while heavenly voices spoke to him out of the storms 

 raging on the summit of Sinai. In connection with this we must remember 

 that Moses' wife is called, in one place, a daughter of the priest of Midian, 

 and in another a Cushite or Babylonian woman. Her father was probably 

 a learned Babylonian exercising priestly functions among the Arabs. 



The extraordinary dry heat of the summer, by day and by night, gives a 

 lustre to tne stars, a distinctness to the constellations, and a glow to the 

 fields of powdered stars (called here the milky way) which cannot be 

 conceived by one who has not spent the whole summer in the plains of 

 Shinar. The sons of Sumer and Akkad were the first astronomers and 

 thinkers of the world. They divided the year into months, the mouths into 

 weeks and the weeks into days, on a system which lasted to the days of 

 Julius Caesar. They created the sabbath day, peopled heaven with Che- 

 rubim and Seraphim, and they first saw Orion leading out the starry 

 hosts of heaven. Perennial irrigation was their creation and that in the 

 face of floods such as the Tigris and Euphrates bring down. By their skill 

 they introduced wheat on the Earth, but in the domain of abstract 

 thought they were especially predominant. In evolution they out- 

 Darwined Darwin. 



Seeing the delta of the rivers which had been at the mercy of the high 

 floods, gradually reclaimed, and steady progress on every side of them, 

 they cast their thoughts back and saw as the beginning and origin of 

 everything, infinite chao3 represented by the devastating spirit of the 

 floods of the river mingling with the wasteful spirit of the sea and produ- 

 cing monstrous births ; but less monstrous than themselves. Tiamat, 

 through her union with Ap3u, gave birth to Lakhmu and Lakhamu, and 

 ages increased, adn Ansar and Kisar were born. Long were the days 

 and indifferent gods came into existence ; then long intervals of time 

 elapsed and the good gods were evolved, each better than those who 

 gave them birth, until finally Marduk appeared, the greatest and most 

 beneficent of all, 



