History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0222/02228.txt

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$Unique_ID{how02228}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Foot Moore, George}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{god
goddess
gods
known
priests
unknown
heart
temple
appeased
dead}
$Date{1913}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of Babylonia And Assyria
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter II

Temples

     The only building material in Babylonia was loam brick, ordinarily
sun-dried; the scarcity of fuel made burnt brick so costly that they were used
only for a veneer, and rarely even for that purpose.  The heavy rainfall at
certain seasons of the year made necessary great attention to conductors and
drains for carrying off the water.  Structures for any reason neglected
speedily washed into a shapeless heap of earth.  Such mounds, often of vast
size, are all that remain of the Babylonian temples; only patient excavation
reveals anything of their plan, and even after much labour of this kind our
knowledge is in many respects incomplete.  The characteristic feature of the
Babylonian temple is the staged tower, or pyramid, of solid masonry, which
rose within the temple precincts.  A ramp led up to the summit, on which,
according to Herodotus, stood a small shrine.  The "Mountain House" at Nippur
was probably the oldest of these towers, which belonged primarily to the
worship of Enlil.  About the tower was a complex of buildings and courts
covering an extensive area and in some cases occupying an entire quarter of
the city.  Before the temple proper, in which the image of the god was housed,
lay one or more courts surrounded by rooms for the vessels used in worship and
the treasures of the god, the storage of materials for the offerings and the
revenues of the temple in agricultural products, and for the use of the
priests.  Other buildings served as record offices, where legal instruments of
every kind were deposited.  Schools, also, were connected with the temples in
which youths were taught to read and write the complicated script, and more
advanced students pursued the higher branches of priestly learning, the
liturgies and incantations, the arts of divination, the myths of the gods, the
history of the temple, and the like.  Probably young men destined to an
official career also got their education in the temple schools.

     The great temples were endowed with extensive lands, and had large
revenues from them as well as from the priests' fees and from pious donations.
Their capital was often put out to loan at the customary high rates of
interest.  In addition to their other functions, the temples thus, as
frequently in antiquity, did a banking business.

     Of the ranks of the hierarchy little is known.  A "great priest" is
frequently mentioned, probably the chief priest of a particular temple. The
multiplicity of titles - some thirty titles of priests have been collected,
besides twenty of priestesses - may in part be due to specialisation of
functions, but it is probable that many of them are names for the same classes
at different places and times.  That the priesthood early attained much power
- and abused it - is evident from the record of Urukagina's reforms at Lagash
in the twenty-ninth century.

     The priesthood was divided into several classes with distinct functions;
one class had to do particularly with the offerings; another intoned hymns or
wailed lamentations; a third knew the rites and incantations by which evil
spirits, especially the demons of disease, were exorcised and malicious magic
thwarted, as well as the manifold purifications and piacula that went with
them; while a fourth was expert in divination and the interpretation of omens
and portents.  All these, except perhaps the sacrificial priests, possessed
their own collections of texts, and the last two, at least, had a highly
elaborated traditional art to master.  There were also multitudes of
attendants and servants of inferior rank down to the temple slaves.  Women
dedicated to the service of the gods were attached to the temples, whether as
a kind of vestals (called, in the legislation of Hammurabi, "Sister of the
God") or as consecrated harlots ("holy women").  The latter were associated
with the worship of Ishtar at Uruk and elsewhere, so that another name for
them is Ishtaritu; whether they were exclusively connected with her cult is
doubtful.

     The animal sacrifices included bullocks, sheep and goats, fish, and
several kinds of birds; among the bloodless offerings are named grain, dates,
figs, wine, oil, milk, honey, and incense of sweet-smelling woods. The
worshipper is often represented with a lamb or kid in his arms, doubtless the
commonest victim.  The rituals sometimes make a difference between the
offerings to be made by the well-to-do and by the poor.  It appears that in
private sacrifices the god received only a part of the victim; the right hind
leg is occasionally named.  Regular offerings of food were set before the gods
daily; royal inscriptions record the provision made or renewed by the kings
for such stated sacrifices.  These offerings were not consumed by fire on the
altar, but placed on the table of the god, and subsequently, we may assume,
eaten by the priests.  The burning of an offering seems to occur only in
connection with magical or piacular rites.  Libations of water have a large
place in the ritual.  In the incantation texts frequent mention is made of
loaves of bread (twelve or a multiple of twelve) set out before the god.

     Festivals were celebrated at fixed times in the year; each temple
doubtless had its own sacred calendar.  In the inscriptions of Gudea, king of
Lagash, there is repeated mention, for example, of a New-Year's festival of
the goddess Bau, and of the "wedding gifts" which the king made on that
occasion, as though a, the marriage of the goddess with Ningirsu the tutelary
deity of the city, was celebrated on that occasion.  A divine marriage seems
to have been part of the New-Year's festival at Nippur also. The New-Year's
festival at Babylon at the beginning of the month Nisan (March-April) was
observed with great pomp; the god Nabu of Borsippa was carried in procession
to visit his father Marduk, and when he returned Marduk escorted him on his
way.  On the eighth and eleventh days of the month was a great assembly of the
gods, in whose presence Marduk, seated on his throne, decreed the fates of
mankind for the coming year.  The festival of Tammuz, to which we shall return
in another connection, was a midsummer festival.  It lies in the nature of our
sources that we hear much less about the calendar festivals than about those
which were appointed by the rulers on the occasion of the building or
restoration of a temple or in celebration of their victories.  At such times,
besides multiplied sacrifices, images of the gods were dedicated, and
offerings of gold, silver, precious stones, and votive objects of various
kinds were presented; many such, bearing the inscription of the royal donors,
have been preserved.

     The Babylonians perpetuated and systematised in a higher stage of culture
the universal belief of savages that misfortunes of every kind, especially
disease and death, are caused by evil spirits, either out of spontaneous
malevolence or instigated by human enemies.  The primitive defence against
them is apotropaic magic, which by words and gestures averts their onsets or
expels them from the body of their victim.  This early developed into a
mysterious art, which was often transmitted from one generation to another in
the families of its adepts.  An essential part of it was the diagnosis: it was
necessary to recognise the particular mischief-maker in each case, for
knowledge of his secret name gave the magician power over him, and the
treatment by which a headache devil was exorcised would not expel the
toothache worm.  Often the demon is detected and driven away by a more
powerful spirit which is under the control of the practitioner, as in what is
called shamanism.  Upon a higher stage, the gods, as the patrons and
protectors of the community, are invoked to defend its members against their
malignant foes, and the ordinary forms of religious appeal are combined with
the methods of magical self-defence. With a more advanced conception of both
the power and the character of the gods, it comes to be thought, at least by
those who have made this advance, that the demons have power to harm men only
when permitted to do so by the gods, and that the gods give their license only
when a man has offended them by his misdeeds.  Thus the propitiation of the
offended god by confession and contrition may come to have a prominent place
in ceremonies which bear the indelible impress of magical origin; hymns in
praise of the gods appear in similar contexts, and myths telling how a god
escaped some peril or attained some good are combined with incantations which
enable the user to do the same.

     In Babylonia all this formed a recognised part of the public religion,
and was the special province of a class of priests who from their functions
bear the title Ashipu, or incantation priest.  Magical performances are joined
with sacrifices and purifications, prayers with exorcisms, all together
forming a great body of temple ritual.  It is not probable that the official
magic of the priests wholly supplanted unofficial practice among the common
people; but of such quacks - from the regular point of view - we learn as
little as we should of herb-doctors and bone-setters in orthodox medical
treatises.  Of the practitioners of the black art, on the other hand, of
wizards and witches who use their diabolical art to injure and destroy honest
folk, there is much to say in the incantation texts; their procedure is
described, and is imitated to turn their malice back upon them and entangle
them in their own snares.  Making an image of the victim, containing, if
possible, some particle of himself, or at least identified with him by the
name, and burning or melting it, sticking pins in it, shooting arrows into it,
drowning it in water, are universal forms of sympathetic magic well known to
Babylonian witches, as are also magic knots by which the victim is bound fast
in evil, potions and poisonous herbs, or plants to which, on magical
principles, harmful properties were attributed.

     The Ashipu priest had his library of rituals and incantations for all
cases; his only embarrassment can have been to select the efficacious text for
the particular occasion.  Numerous series of such texts have been more or less
completely preserved: one is entitled "Evil Demons," another "Headache," a
third "Fevers"; one whole series is devoted to a she-demon named Labartu; two
others are "Burning" series, because the consumption by fire of magical
figures with the proper charms is in some of the tablets the climax of the
performance.  The texts of these incantations have been preserved chiefly in
Assyrian copies.  It is intrinsically probable that the collections grew
larger with time in the effort to provide for every contingency; the forms in
high repute for efficacy at one temple would be borrowed by the priests of
another, and adapted by introducing their own gods into the catalogues.  It is
possible in some cases to recognise such changes.  There is no reason to
think, however, that their character was materially altered.

     The most famous source of this particular kind of wisdom was Eridu, with
its wise and benevolent god, Ea.  In many instances in our copies Marduk lays
a case before Ea, who makes the stereotyped reply that his son Marduk knows
all that he knows, but after this perfunctory preamble Ea reveals the rites
and charms that will be effective in the circumstances. We shall hardly err if
we see in the somewhat otiose introduction of Marduk an adaptation of the
incantations of Ea by the priests of Babylon after that city had become a
great political and religious centre, just as the part of Marduk in the combat
with Tiamat is a usurpation of the role of Enlil.

     The texts in which a long array of deities, including not only the great
gods of the pantheon, but many obscure or otherwise unknown figures, are
invoked to thwart the wiles of the adversary or undo the mischief he has
wrought, and the fact that in many cases the ritual is principally occupied
with offerings and incense to these gods, show how the resources of religion
are added to those of both primitive and sophisticated magic; but, as in
similar circumstances elsewhere, religion in taking magic into its service
itself descends to the plane of magic.  Of greater interest are the
incantations in which the possibility is reckoned with that the misfortunes of
the sufferer may have been occasioned by some misdeed. Thus, in the second
tablet of the Shurpu series, the priest recites a catalogue of offences
against gods and men, inquiring whether his client has been guilty of any of
them: ^1

     Has he offended his god or goddess? ^2 . . .  Did he put discord between
father and son, mother and daughter, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law,
brother and brother, friend and friend, comrade and comrade?  Is it that he
did not free a captive, release one in bonds, let a prisoner see the light of
day? . . .  Is it a sin against a god, a transgression against a goddess?  Has
he offended a god, contemned a goddess?  Is it a sin against his own god, a
fault against his own goddess? Violence toward his lord, hatred of his elder
brother?  Has he scorned father and mother, insulted his elder sister, given
in little and withheld in great matters, to Nay said Yea, to Yea, Nay, spoken
basely or wickedly, used false weights, taken false money, refused good money,
deprived a lawful son of his inheritance and set in the inheritance one who
had no right, marked out false boundaries or failed to mark right ones,
displaced the landmarks?  Has he occupied his neighbour's house, approached
his neighbour's wife, shed his neighbour's blood, robbed his neighbour of his
garment?  Has he kept a man under his power, driven an honest man out of his
family, broken up a united clan, resisted a superior?  Was he upright with his
mouth and false at heart, with his mouth full of Yea, his heart full of Nay?
Is it because of unrighteousness which he devised to destroy and ruin upright
men, to rob and permit robbery and busy himself with evil? Is his mouth vile,
his lips rebellious? . . .  Has he meddled with magic and witchcraft?  Is it
on account of gross injustice that he has done, the many sins that he has
committed? . . .  Is it because of aught wherein he has despised his god and
his goddess?  Has he promised with heart and mouth but not kept his word,
contemned the name of his god with a gift, vowed something but kept it back,
given something but consumed it himself?  Did he withhold an offering he was
bound to make, incensing his god and his goddess?  Did he rise up in an
assembly and utter mischief?  Loosed be all wherewith he is banned!

[Footnote 1: Zimmern, Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Babylonischen Religion, I.
The heathenish repetitions on which so much depends in incantations and
liturgies are here retrenched.]

[Footnote 2: That is, the god and goddess who were his special patrons and
protectors.  These patrons were not an inferior class of deities, but were
taken from among the great gods.]

     It will be observed that there is no question here of penitence or
reparation; the important thing is not to overlook any possible reason why the
man may have fallen under the ban; and in the sequel, where gods and goddesses
in scores are invoked, it is not to forgive, but to "loose" by their superior
magic the ban which is upon him.  Ea, and after him Marduk, is often called
"the arch-magician of the gods."

     The belief that the gods themselves inflict evils on men for their
misdeeds is, of course, not foreign to the Babylonian religion, and there are
litanies in which a suppliant in deep distress through personal or public
calamity implores the gods to turn their anger and restore the transgressor to
favour.  The recitation of these lamentations seems to have been the business
of a special class of priests; some of them have been published under the
title "Babylonial Penitential Psalms." Perhaps the most interesting of them
begins:

     May the anger of my lord's heart be appeased!  May the god whom I know
not be appeased; the goddess whom I know not be appeased!  Known and unknown
god be appeased; known and unknown goddess be appeased!  May the heart of my
god be appeased; the heart of my goddess be appeased!  Known and unknown god
and goddess be appeased!  May the god who is angry with me be appeased!

     The sin that I have committed I know not.  The misdeeds that I have
committed I know not.  A gracious name may my god - my goddess, known and
unknown god, known and unknown goddess - name!  Pure food I have not eaten;
clear water I have not drunk.  The suffering sent by my god, unnoted it was my
food; the misery sent by my goddess, unnoted it trod me down.  O lord, my sins
are many, great are my misdeeds.  My god, my sins are many, great are my
misdeeds.  My goddess, my sins are many, great are my misdeeds. Known and
unknown god, my sins are many, great are my misdeeds.  Known and unknown
goddess, my sins are many, great are my misdeeds.  The sin that I committed I
know not; the misdeed that I committed I know not.  The suffering that was my
food, I understand it not; the misery that trod me down, I understand it not.
The lord in the anger of his heart looked upon me.  The god in the wrath of
his heart visited me.  The goddess was angry with me and brought me to grief.
Known or unknown god has brought me into straits; known or unknown goddess has
brought me to woe.  I sought for help but none took me by the hand; I wept but
no one came to my side.  I cry aloud but no one hears me.  In anguish I lie on
the ground and look not up. To my compassionate god I turn, I sigh aloud.  I
kiss the feet of my goddess . . . .  To known and unknown god I sigh aloud; to
known and unknown goddess I sigh aloud.  O lord - goddess, known and unknown
god, known and unknown goddess - look upon me, accept my prayer!  When at
length, oh my god - goddess, etc. - will thy wrath be appeased?  Mankind is
perverse and knows nothing.  Men, so many as they are, what do they know?
Whether they do good or ill, they know nothing at all.  O lord, thy servant,
cast me not down.  In the miry waters take me by the hand.  The sin that I
have committed change to favour.  The misdeed I have done, let the wind bear
it away!  Rend in twain my wickedness like a garment!

     My god - goddess, known and unknown god, known and unknown goddess - my
sins are seven times seven.  Forgive my sins!  Forgive my sins!  I will bow
humbly before thee.  May thy heart like the heart of a mother be glad; like
the heart of a father to whom a child is born, may thy heart be glad!

     The suppliant knows from the evils that have come upon him that he must
have offended some deity, he knows not whom - by some fault, he knows not what
- and pleads for forgiveness and restoration.

     As the Ashipu priests were the legitimate magicians, adept in all the
arts of frustrating the wiles of demons and witches, so their colleagues, the
diviners, were learned in all methods of discovering the mysterious meaning of
strange happenings, the outcome of public and private undertakings, the lucky
and unlucky days for inaugurating them, and the like.

     In this domain the Babylonians were pre-eminent.  Out of the crude
procedures of savage sorcerers they gradually developed a whole group of
pseudosciences.  The interpreters of dreams systematised their art in manuals
of oneiromancy.  Omens and portents were classified and their significance
noted.  A text dealing with monstrosities, for example, begins, "If a woman
bears a child with lion's ears, there will be a mighty king in the land; if
the child's right ear is lacking, the prince will come to old age; if the left
is lacking, there will be distress in the land and its territory will be
diminished," and so through defects or deformities of the various members of
the body from head to foot.

     The exegetes of dreams and prodigies formed an inferior class of
diviners; above them, in the very foremost rank of the priesthood, were the
Baru, or "seers," who had the art of taking omens, and were thus able to
answer inquiries of every kind.  One method much employed by them was to drop
oil into a basin of water, or water into a basin of oil, and observe its forms
and movements.  Another way was by examining the liver of a sheep or goat.
The liver is a very variable organ, and every variation in the dimensions of
the lobes, the markings on them, the size and position of the gall-bladder and
ducts or the great blood-vessels, had a meaning which the priest by his art
could read off as if it were an oracle written on a tablet.  Models of the
liver mapped off geometrically in regions, with catch-words inscribed on them,
have been preserved, besides many texts telling just what is to happen in case
this or that peculiarity exists. Divination by the liver is very common; the
head-hunters of Borneo to-day learn from the liver of a pig whether it is a
good time for an expedition; but the Babylonians made a science of it, which
in later times the Greeks and Etruscans learned from them.

     Unusual astronomical and meteorological phenomena are everywhere regarded
as ominous.  The Babylonian priests reduced these signs also to a system.
They could tell what a lunar eclipse, for example, portended according to the
month in which it occurred, and what the king should do or avoid in order to
avert the unfavourable omens.  Certain conspicuous constellations took in
their imagination the form of animals or of the strange composite monsters
which were associated with particular gods; the mythical beast of Ea, half
goat, half fish, was discovered in the sky in the constellation which we call
Capricorn.  On the so-called boundary stones of the Kassite times and later,
these creatures are represented in varying order and number, and in one, at
least, the names of the gods to whom they belong, or whom they represent, as a
kind of coat of arms, accompany them.  A few of the most brilliant of the
fixed stars were also named.  In course of time a much more elaborate system
of astral divination was worked out, and the observations and records made for
this purpose were the foundations of Babylonian astronomy.

     It has been noted that the incantation priests derive their wisdom from
Ea.  The diviners are a hereditary class who trace their descent from
Enmeduranki (Edoranchus), the seventh in Berossos' catalogue of antediluvian
kings, but the gods who initiated him in these arts, the gods whose names
occur regularly in the divination texts, are Shamash and Adad, and many of the
classical oracles purport to be from the age of Sargon. The frequent
interpretation of omens as referring to Akkad and Amurru points to the same
period.  We may, therefore, with some confidence infer that the systematic
elaboration of the science of divination was Semitic rather than Sumerian.

     A striking difference between Egypt and Babylonia is the paucity in the
latter, through all periods, of material from the tombs.  The "eternal houses"
of the dead in Egypt, with their inscriptions and decorations and the funerary
texts written on the walls or deposited in the coffins, reveal to us in much
detail the life of this world as well as the notions of the other world.  To
all this there is no counterpart in Babylonia.  The fact itself is
significant; the hereafter never occupied the imagination of the Babylonians
as it did that of the Egyptians, and their notions about it never got beyond a
very primitive stage.

     In the old Babylonian cities the dead seem ordinarily to have been buried
beneath the houses in which they had lived, sometimes in pottery coffins or
great jars, sometimes simply wrapped in reed mats.  A water-jar and
drinking-cup, ornaments, tools, and weapons, were deposited with the body.
If, as it is natural to suppose, food and drink were offered to the dead after
the interment, it must have been in the house itself, and no trace of the
custom is to be looked for.  From an inscription in which Urukagina records
his reforms it appears that priests officiated at funerals, and that they
demanded extortionate fees for their services - seven jars of wine or beer,
four hundred and twenty loaves of bread, a hundred and twenty measures of
corn, a garment, a kid, a bed, and a seat. These exactions were sharply
retrenched by the king, though, according to our notions, the compensation was
still ample.  Wherein the services of the priests consisted does not appear,
and, singularly enough, in the voluminous ritual literature burial offices
seem not to have turned up.

     From literary sources we learn that the Babylonians imagined the nether
world as a vast cavern in the heart of the earth, into which the light of day
never penetrates; its inhabitants sit in darkness, their food is dust and mud.
A vivid description of this gloomy abode is given in a poem which tells how
the goddess Ishtar went down into it to recover - if the obscure lines at the
end are rightly understood - her lost lover, the youthful Tammuz.  She takes
her way to the "land whence is no return" by the "road on which there is no
turning back," to the dismal house which they who enter never leave.  Arrived
at the portal, she imperiously orders the gate-keeper to open to her,
threatening, if he refuse, to batter down the door and bring up the dead,
outnumbering the living.  The porter announces the visitor to Ereshkigal, the
queen of Hades, who falls into a rage at the intrusion, but orders that she be
admitted and treated "according to the ancient laws." Through seven gates in
as many concentric walls of the infernal city Ishtar is conducted; at the
outer gate her crown is taken from her head, and at each succeeding passage
some ornament or piece of apparel, till at the last her girdle is stripped
off, and she stands stark naked before the mistress of hell, who commands
Namtar, the demon of plague, to shut her up and inflict on her sixty diseases.
The disappearance of Ishtar from the earth threatens to be the end of the race
of men and the beasts of the field, for with her departure all procreation
ceases.  The gods take counsel to avert this disaster, and send a messenger,
who after a rough reception persuades Ereshkigal to release her divine
prisoner.  Namtar is ordered to sprinkle Ishtar with the "water of life," and
take her back by the way she came; at each gate she is invested again with the
apparel she had been despoiled of, and so returns to the world above.  The
last verses, as has been said, speak of Tammuz, who is to be washed with pure
water, anointed with choice oil, and clad in a red robe; further there is
mention of music and of mourning-men and mourning-women, but in what sense is
not clear.

     In the second tablet of the epic of Gilgamesh, in a dream of Eabani which
he repeats to Gilgamesh, there is a description of the underworld which
agrees, in part even in phraseology, with that in the Descent of Ishtar to
Hades.  Here also the inhabitants of that world sit in darkness with dust for
their food and without hope of escape.  Among them Eabani sees some who had
ruled as kings on earth, and priests of various classes, besides mythical
figures such as Etana and the god Gira.  Above them Ereshkigal, the queen of
Hades, sits enthroned, while the goddess Belit-seri who serves her as scribe
kneels before her and reads.  In this vision Nergal also appears as a god of
the nether world.  In the last tablet of the same poem the fate of the dead is
again the theme: "He who met death by the sword - sawest thou this?  Yea, I
saw it! - in his chamber he rests, drinks pure water.  He who was slain in the
battle - sawest thou this?  Yea, I saw it! - his father and mother lift up his
head and his wife. . . .  He whose body was cast out upon the field - sawest
thou this? Yea, I saw it! - his ghost has upon earth no rest.  He whose ghost
has none to care for him - sawest thou this?  Yea, I saw it! - remnants of the
pot, scraps of food, what is cast out into the street, must he eat." The lines
just quoted show that for the Babylonians as for many other peoples there was
one fate worse than to go to the dismal abode of the dead, the realm of
Ereshkigal; namely, to wander upon earth as the restless ghost of the unburied
dead and feed upon offal with the neglected spirits.

     In the Descent of Ishtar to the lower world we recognise without question
a poetical version of an old vegetation myth; the disappearance of the goddess
from earth is the death of nature, which revives at her return. Her youthful
lover Tammuz, for whom, as Gilgamesh taunts her, she has ordained mourning
year by year, is originally a vegetation demon.  The mourning for Tammuz is
mentioned in the myth of Adapa, who sees him, however, not in Hades, but at
the door of the celestial palace of Anu.  The fourth month of the Babylonian
year, corresponding roughly to July, has its name Tammuz from the mourning for
the god, and several hymns sung at this season have been preserved.  There is
no indication, however, that at the time when these myths and hymns took shape
the Babylonians were conscious of the primitive significance of the story or
the rites; and if the myth in its complete form told of the restoration of
Tammuz to life or his return to earth, as is made likely by the transition
from mourning to rejoicing in the hymns, it is certain that it did not suggest
to the Babylonians, as the myth of Osiris did to the Egyptians, the conception
of a new life of blessedness for the dead, though it has been thought, with
some probability, that the myth was rehearsed in an incantation for the
recovery of persons who were mortally ill.

     Beyond this dismal outlook neither the Assyrians nor the Babylonians of
later times appear ever to have advanced.  Of a judgment of the dead or of any
deliverance from the gloomy world below there is no suggestion. Even the
association of dead kings with the gods in the worship of the temples does not
seem to be connected with the notion of the immortality of the deified ruler.

     About a hundred miles north of Babylon the alluvial plain between the two
rivers ends; the limit may be roughly defined by a line running from the
Tigris below Samarra to Hit on the Euphrates.  This is the natural boundary of
Babylonia, and seems to have been also at most times its political boundary.
With a small increase of elevation the character of the country completely
changes.  The Mesopotamian plain is for the most part pure desert; only on the
banks of the Euphrates and Chaboras and along the Tigris are narrow strips of
arable land, in which here and there towns early sprang up.  Between the
Tigris and the mountains which form its eastern line is a region of larger
extent watered by the streams which fall into the Tigris.  This territory was
occupied by Semitic tribes, some of which even penetrated into the mountains
and subdued the native peoples whom they found there.