machine-shops, and emotions still
felt in our religion.

"The land," writes Herodotus[52], who saw it in its prime, "has a little
rain, and this nourishes the corn at the root; but the crops are matured
and brought to harvest by water from the river--not, as in Egypt, by the
river flooding over the fields, but by human labour and _shadufs_[53]
For Babylonia, like Egypt, is one network of canals, the largest of
which is navigable. It is far the best corn-land of all the countries I
know. There is no attempt at arboriculture--figs or vines or olives--but
it is such superb corn-land that the average yield is two-hundredfold,
and three-hundredfold in the best years. The wheat and barley there are
a good four inches broad in the blade, and millet and sesame grow as big
as trees--but I will not state the dimensions I have ascertained,
because I know that, for anyone who has not visited Babylonia and
witnessed these facts about the crops for himself, they would be
altogether beyond belief."

Harnessed in the irrigation channels, the Tigris and Euphrates had
become as mighty forces of production as the Nile and the Ganges, the
Yangtse and the Hoang-Ho.

"This," Herodotus adds[54], "is the best demonstration I can give of the
wealth of the Babylonians: All the lands ruled by the King of Persia are
assessed, in addition to their taxes in money, for the maintenance of
the King's household and army in kind. Under this assessment the King is
maintained for four months out of the twelve by Babylonia, and for the
remaining eight by the rest of Asia together, so that in wealth the
Assyrian province is equivalent to a third of all Asia."

The "Asia" over which the Achaemenids ruled included Russian Central
Asia and Egypt as well as modern Turkey and Persia, and Egypt, under the
same assessment, merely maintained the local Persian garrison[55]. Its
money contribution was inferior too--700 talents as compared with
Assyria's 1,000; and though these figures may not be conclusive, because
the Persian "province of Assyria" probably extended over the northern
steppes as well as the _Sawad_, it is certain that under the Arab
Caliphate, when Irak and Egypt were provinces of one empire for the
second time in history, Irak by itself paid 135 million _dirhems_
(francs) annually into Harun-al-Rashid's treasury and Egypt no more than
65 million, so that a thousand years ago the productiveness of the
_Sawad_ was more than double that of the Nile.