d loving toward one another?

5. In what way do the oral traditions of a people throw light on the
ideals and relationships they most valued?

6. Compare the dietary available to Americans with that of the ancient
Hebrews.

CHAPTER III

DESERT PILGRIMS

According to one of the Hebrew traditions recorded in the book of
Genesis, the earliest home of their ancestors was Ur of the Chaldees.
This was one of the leading cities of ancient Babylonia. It was
situated southwest of the Euphrates River, near the plains which were
the nation's chief grazing grounds. And it is possible that of the
shepherds who brought their sheep to market in Ur some were, indeed,
among the ancestors of the Hebrews.

BABYLONIAN CIVILIZATION

Babylonia is one of the two lands (Egypt being the other) where human
civilization began. This rich alluvial plain, lying between the lower
Tigris and the lower Euphrates Rivers, became the home of a gifted
race which at least in its later history through intermarriage was in
part Semitic and thus related to the Hebrews. Several thousand years
before Christ the people of this land began to till the soil, to
control the floods in the rivers by means of irrigating canals, to
make bricks out of the abundant clay and with them to build houses and
cities. They also invented a system of writing upon clay tablets.
These were baked in the sun after the letters were inscribed.
Commercial records and written laws and histories were thus made
possible and in time a varied literature was created. Whole libraries
of these baked clay tablets have been unearthed and deciphered by
modern investigators.

=Evidences of ancient culture.=--By B.C. 4000 there flourished on the
plains of Babylonia a splendid civilization in many ways similar to
ours to-day. The people raised enormous crops of grain and exported it
by ship and caravan to distant lands. They had developed to a high
point the arts of the weaver, the dyer, the potter, the metal worker,
and the carpenter. They had devised a system of geometry for the
measuring of their wheat fields and city streets. Through astronomy
they had worked out the calendar of days, weeks, months, and years
which with modifications we still use. They had erected magnificent
temples to their gods. From translations of the inscriptions on their
clay tablets we can gain a clear knowledge of their life and customs.
Here, for example, is a translation of part of a letter from a so