586th OKDINAEY GENERAL MEETING. 



HELD IN COMMITTEE BOOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, 

 WESTMINSTER, ON MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19th, 1917, 



AT 4.30 P.M. 



E. Walter Maunder, Esq., E.R.A.S., Lecture Secretary, took 



THE Chair. 



The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and contirmed. 



The Chairman said that hitherto his duties as Secretary had made it 

 impossible for him to be asked to preside at one of the public meetings. 

 He now felt extremely gratified that, the first time that he was eligible to 

 take the Chair, the Council should have invited iiim to do so, and that he 

 should have the pleasure and privilege of i^residing at one of Dr. Pinches, 

 lectures. 



FROM WORLD-DOMINION TO SUBJECTION : THE 

 STORY OF THE FALL OF NINEVEH AND 

 BABYLON By Theophilus G. Pinches, LL.D., M.R.A.S., 

 Lecturer in Assyrian at University College, London. 



THE romance connected with the power and the wonders of 

 Nineveh and Babylon has for ages attracted the attention 

 of the world, and this romance has, perhaps, been rather 

 increased than diminished by the legendary nature of what has 

 come down to us with regard to the realm of which Babylon 

 was the capital. Surrounded, as it was, by the mystery with 

 which tradition had invested it, hints of other wonders over and 

 above those related by the historians naturally fired the 

 student's imagination. 



And that Babylonia was in very deed a countrj^ of wonders 

 there can be no doubt. As everyone who has watched the 

 progress of the Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia knows, the 

 Persian Gulf region is, for Europeans, an inhospitable tract, 

 parched, dry, and rainless in summer, and swampy, notwith- 

 standing drainage (to a certain extent) by innumerable 

 waterways, in winter. In the wet season, malaria reigns, and 

 the stranger finds life altogether too burdensome. Babylonia's 

 fruitfulness in springtime, and later, is wonderful. It is one of 



