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TKEOPHILUS G. PIXCHES, LL.P.. M.E.A.S., OX 



the principal homes of the date-palm — that tree whose fruit 

 both Babvlonians and Eiu'opeans have always highly appreciated. 

 Otherwise, however, the tract north of the Persian Gulf is a 

 treeless plain, into which all timber which the people need has 

 to be imported. Before the fierce heats of summer it is a land 

 of corn, and the fruits of the eartk which are able to grow there, 

 and it might become one of the ?i^naries of the world. 



Here, in this land of the ^Middle East, were located, of old, two 

 races — the Sumerians and the Akkadians — non-Semites and 

 Semites respectively ; races suited to the sod, who became 

 thoroughly acclimatized to their fruitful but sun-scorched 

 countiy. Divided, in the beginning, Kke the Heptarchy in 

 England, into several small states, a great nation ultimately 

 arose by their gi-adual amalgamation under the military pressure 

 and leadership of Babylon, and became the pioneer of ancient 

 civdization in the Semitic East. The irrigation of theii' land 

 had made the states of Babylonia great canal-diggers ; the 

 dearth of stone made them great users of brick in the constnic- 

 tions and buildings : and the bitumen-springs of Hit supplied 

 them with a substitute for mortar ( * shnie The floods which 

 inundate the country in the early spring, when the snows melt 

 in the Annenian moimtains, probably obliged the Babylonians 

 to l^ecome geometricians, as they had to find and reinstate the 

 boundaries of their plots. As agriculturists they were, in 

 their day, probably unsurpassed, and they were among the 

 earliest of great cattle-raisers and ass-breeders. Their literatiu'e 

 was largely drawn upon by the Greeks and the Eomans in the 

 domain of sacred myth and history, and many thousands of 

 documents testify to their knowledge and acuteness as lawyers, 

 their inventiveness as writers and poets, and the wonders of 

 their mythology and their religious system — their teachings in 

 the domain of cosmology and theology. Tlieir trying climate 

 and the other disadvantages under wliich they laboured do not, 

 therefore, seem to have impaired their energy as workers and as 

 inventors, or their- progress in war, art, literature, or such of the 

 sciences as they were acquainted with, for besides agriculture it 

 is proL«able that not only writing, but also astronomy, b^an in 

 the Land of Shinar. 



These primitive states of Babylonia had begun their political 

 careers mure than 3000 years before Christ, and they progressed 

 from the position of small states to that of a united kingdom " 

 under one political head. This took place about 2000 years B.C. ; 

 and during the period following the great Hammu-rabi. who is 

 identified with AmrapheL the realm of Babylon saw many 



