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On the strength of the latter discovery we noted the possibility that future excavation in Babylonia would lay bare stages of primitive culture similar to those we have already recovered in Egyptian soil.

Had Nebuchadnezzar himself, or a prince of his mental calibre, been the contemporary of Cyrus, the issue of the contest might have been doubtful. Babylonia possessed naturally vast powers of resistance powers which, had they been made use of to the utmost, might have tired out the patience of the Persians.

Neither Prester John, that is emperor of the high India, nor the Sultan of Babylonia, nor the Emperor of Persia. All these be not in comparison to the great Khan, neither of might, nor of nobleness, nor of royalty, nor of riches; for in all these he passeth all earthly princes. Wherefore it is great harm that he believeth not faithfully in God."

Thus the stream of philosophical thought which rose among the Jews in Babylonia and flowed on through the ages, ever widening and deepening its channel, passing into Spain and reaching its high water mark in the latter half of the twelfth century in Maimonides, began to narrow and thin out while spreading into France and Italy, until at last it dried up entirely in that very land which opened up a new world of thought, beauty and feeling in the fifteenth century, the land of the Renaissance.

It is natural, in view of this, that Ramman should have been to the Assyrians also the 'mightiest of the gods. Through the Assyrian inscriptions we learn something of the consort of Ramman. Shala. Sennacherib tells us that in the course of his campaign against Babylonia he removes out of the city of Babylon, and replaces in Ekallâte the statues of Ramman and Shala.

In the days of Abraham, Chedor-laomer, king of Elam and lord over the kings of Babylonia, marched westward with his Babylonian allies, in order to punish his rebellious subjects in Canaan. The invading army entered Palestine from the eastern side of the Jordan. Instead of marching along the sea-coast, it took the line of the valley of the Jordan.

But as he understood, in a little time, that his father Nabolassar was dead, he set the affairs of Egypt and the other countries in order, and committed the captives he had taken from the Jews, and Phoenicians, and Syrians, and of the nations belonging to Egypt, to some of his friends, that they might conduct that part of the forces that had on heavy armor, with the rest of his baggage, to Babylonia; while he went in haste, having but a few with him, over the desert to Babylon; whither, when he was come, he found the public affairs had been managed by the Chaldeans, and that the principal person among them had preserved the kingdom for him.

But there is no doubt that the despoiling and partial destruction of Shirpurla in the reign of Urukagina had a lasting effect upon the fortunes of that city, and effectively curtailed her influence among the greater cities of Southern Babylonia.

Called in the east the Sherghis, and in the west the Khamsin, this fiery sirocco comes laden with fine particles of heated sand, which at once raise the temperature and render the air unwholesome to breathe. In Syria these winds occur commonly in the spring, from February to April; but in Susiana and Babylonia the time for them is the height of summer.

The winged bulls and eagle-headed men of Babylonian art represent the same rise of the gods which we know to have taken place in Egypt, from the animal to the semi-human, and then to the fully human form. An intermediate stage in Babylonia is that the god stands on the back of the animal with which presumably he was formerly identified.