that a period of almost two thousand years separates the
times of writing of these two estimates, the estimates themselves are
singularly in unison. They show that the greatest of Oriental nations
has not suffered in reputation at the hands of posterity. It is indeed
almost impossible to contemplate the monuments of Babylonian and
Assyrian civilization that are now preserved in the European and
American museums without becoming enthusiastic. That certainly was
a wonderful civilization which has left us the tablets on which are
inscribed the laws of a Khamurabi on the one hand, and the art
treasures of the palace of an Asshurbanipal on the other. Yet a candid
consideration of the scientific attainments of the Babylonians and
Assyrians can scarcely arouse us to a like enthusiasm. In considering
the subject we have seen that, so far as pure science is concerned,
the efforts of the Babylonians and Assyrians chiefly centred about the
subjects of astrology and magic. With the records of their ghost-haunted
science fresh in mind, one might be forgiven for a momentary desire
to take issue with Canon Rawlinson's words. We are assured that the
scientific attainments of Europe are almost solely to be credited to
Babylonia and not to Egypt, but we should not forget that Plato, the
greatest of the Greek thinkers, went to Egypt and not to Babylonia to
pursue his studies when he wished to penetrate the secrets of Oriental
science and philosophy. Clearly, then, classical Greece did not consider
Babylonia as having a monopoly of scientific knowledge, and we of
to-day, when we attempt to weigh the new evidence that has come to us
in recent generations with the Babylonian records themselves, find that
some, at least, of the heritages for which Babylonia has been praised
are of more than doubtful value. Babylonia, for example, gave us our
seven-day week and our system of computing by twelves. But surely the
world could have got on as well without that magic number seven; and
after some hundreds of generations we are coming to feel that the
decimal system of the Egyptians has advantages over the duodecimal
system of the Babylonians. Again, the Babylonians did not invent the
alphabet; they did not even accept it when all the rest of the world had
recognized its value. In grammar and arithmetic, as with astronomy, they
seemed not to have advanced greatly, if at all, upon the Egyptians. One
field in which they stand out in startling pre-eminence