crushed its
rivals, and united under one rule first all the kingdoms of Northern and
finally those of Southern Chaldaea.

The lords of Babylon had, ordinarily, a twofold function, religious
and military, the priest at first taking precedence of the soldier, but
gradually yielding to the latter as the town increased in power.
They were merely the priestly representatives or administrators of
Babel--_shakannaku Babili_--and their authority was not considered
legitimate until officially confirmed by the god. Each ruler was obliged
to go in state to the temple of Bel Merodach within a year of his
accession: there he had to take the hands of the divine statue, just
as a vassal would do homage to his liege, and those only of the native
sovereigns or the foreign conquerors could legally call themselves Kings
of Babylon--_sharru Babili_--who had not only performed this rite, but
renewed it annually.*

* The meaning of the ceremony in which the kings of Babylon
"took the hands of Bel" has been given by Winckler; Tiele
compares it very aptly with the rite performed by the
Egyptian kings--at Heliopolis, for example, when they
entered alone the sanctuary of Ra, and there contemplated
the god face to face. The rite was probably repeated
annually, at the time of the Zakmuku, that is, the New Year
festival.

Sargon the Elder had lived in Babylon, and had built himself a palace
there: hence the tradition of later times attributed to this city the
glory of having been the capital of the great empire founded by the
Akkadian dynasties. The actual sway of Babylon, though arrested to the
south by the petty states of Lower Chaldaea, had not encountered to the
north or north-west any enemy to menace seriously its progress in that
semi-fabulous period of its history. The vast plain extending between
the Euphrates and the Tigris is as it were a continuation of the
Arabian desert, and is composed of a grey, or in parts a whitish, soil
impregnated with selenite and common salt, and irregularly superimposed
upon a bed of gypsum, from which asphalt oozes up here and there,
forming slimy pits. Frost is of rare occurrence in winter, and rain is
infrequent at any season; the sun soon burns up the scanty herbage
which the spring showers have encouraged, but fleshy plants successfully
resist its heat, such as the common salsola, the salsola soda, the
pallasia, a small mimosa, and a species of very fragrant wor