s
methods of action and its modes of thought, are so far apart from those
of the present day, that they seem to us to belong to a humanity utterly
different from our own. The names of its deities do not appeal to our
imagination like those of the Olympian cycle, and no traditional respect
serves to do away with the sense of uncouthness which we experience
from the jingle of syllables which enter into them. Its artists did not
regard the world from the same point of view as we do, and its writers,
drawing their inspiration from an entirely different source, made use of
obsolete methods to express their feelings and co-ordinate their ideas.
It thus happens that while we understand to a shade the classical
language of the Greeks and Romans, and can read their works almost
without effort, the great primitive literatures of the world, the
Egyptian and Chaldaean, have nothing to offer us for the most part but a
sequence of problems to solve or of enigmas to unriddle with patience.
How many phrases, how many words at which we stumble, require a
painstaking analysis before we can make ourselves master of their
meaning! And even when we have determined to our satisfaction their
literal signification, what a number of excursions we must make in the
domain of religious, ethical, and political history before we can compel
them to render up to us their full import, or make them as intelligible
to others as they are to ourselves! When so many commentaries are
required to interpret the thought of an individual or a people, some
difficulty must be experienced in estimating the value of the expression
which they have given to it. Elements of beauty were certainly, and
perhaps are still, within it; but in proportion as we clear away
the rubbish which encumbers it, the mass of glossaries necessary to
interpret it fall in and bury it so as to stifle it afresh.

While the obstacles to our appreciation of Chaldaeann literature are of
such a serious character, we are much more at home in our efforts to
estimate the extent and depth of their scientific knowledge. They
were as well versed as the Egyptians, but not more, in arithmetic
and geometry in as far as these had an application to the affairs of
everyday life: the difference between the two peoples consisted chiefly
in their respective numerical systems--the Egyptians employing almost
exclusively the decimal system of notation, while the Chaldaeans combined
its use with the duodecimal.