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Assyria was the oldest of the great empires, occupying Mesopotamia, the vast plain watered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, with adjacent countries to the north, west, and east.
Generous support was accorded to the savants who were desirous of exploring the artistic and literary treasures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. It has been affirmed by the biographer of Monge that the enthusiasm of this celebrated physicist first awakened Bonaparte's desire for the eastern expedition; but this seems to have been aroused earlier by Volney, who saw a good deal of Bonaparte in 1791.
Hence it happens, that in order to understand the Hebrews, their religion, their customs, and even their manner of thought, we must turn to Babylonia. Further discoveries beneath the mounds of Mesopotamia and further researches in Babylonian literature will add more evidence to the indebtedness of the Hebrews to Babylonia.
He started in alarm as the hoarse siren of the "Mesopotamia" screamed out its bellowing note of departure. A spasm of rage shook his trembling frame. He challenged some dark spectre seemingly floating on the midnight winds. "Down, down," he growled. "You are gone forever, under the black waters. Never to rise, and there's not a weak joint in my armor. I defy the very devil himself!
Lower Mesopotamia is entirely their creation, and if the time were to come when their vivifying streams were no longer to irrigate its surface, it would very soon be changed into a monotonous and melancholy desert. It hardly ever rains in Chaldæa. There are a few showers at the changes of the season, and, in winter, a few days of heavy rain.
Having received this rebuff, the envoys of Sapor took their departure, and conveyed to their sovereign the intelligence that he must prepare himself to resist a serious invasion. About the same time various offers of assistance reached the Roman emperor from the independent or semi-independent princes and chieftains of the regions adjacent to Mesopotamia.
When the confusion of tongues took place at Babel, and men were dispersed, the sons of Ham's grandson, Cush, remained in Mesopotamia, which took the name of Assyria, from Assur, the officer of Nimrod, the first king. This Assur began building, on the banks of the Tigris, the great city of Nineveh, one of the mightiest in all the world, and the first to be ruined.
But the many successes gained by British arms during the campaign in Mesopotamia had not failed to impress the Turkish troops and the tribesmen, their allies, with a wholesome respect for British valor.
Between the series of colours found upon the ruin in question and the list here given by Herodotus there is, so far as they go, an identity which cannot be due to chance. The Medes and Persians invented nothing; their whole art was no more than an eastern offshoot from that of Mesopotamia. It was in Chaldæa that the number seven first received an exceptional and quasi sacred character.
When he arrived he was dressed in a very ancient gunny-sack, and it was not without much regret at the desecration that I provided him with an outfit of the regulation khaki. My duties took me on long rides about the country. Here, and throughout Mesopotamia, the great antiquity of this "cradle of the world" kept ever impressing itself upon one, consciously or subconsciously.
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