B. C. the everyday life of a great empire. Anterior to this had come the invasion of the Hyksos; prior to the Hyksos the civilization of the twelfth dynasty (about 2600 B. C.); then back beyond a period of decay, the civilization of the Old Kingdom (4500-3500 B. C.) that built the grandest of the pyramids and monumental remains. This was preceded by the invasion of a people probably from the direction of the Red Sea (about 5000 B. C.), who brought with them much of the base of the civilization of the Old Kingdom; and dating probably from as early as 6000-5000 B. C. are found relics of a primitive Egyptian race that built towns of brick, used linen, leather, pottery, wood, ivory, copper, and polished flint. The remains in Chaldea seem to be even more ancient. The religious literature given in the first volume dates further back than any literature of Egypt. Libraries of clay tablets seem to have been in existence before 3000 B. C. Researches have not been as extensive in the sites of towns as in Egypt and the oldest civilization is not as well known. We give below a summary of the facts of the Babylonian period. In Greece, archæology has discovered the remains of high civilizations existing in the Mycenian age before the Doric invasion of about 1000 B. C. The earliest relics of civilization seem to go back to about 3000 B. C. But archæology pushes its researches into the study of primitive man far back before the eras of even Chaldea or Egypt. The great ages of these countries correspond to the ages when men used bronze largely for weapons and ornaments (about 3000-1000 B. C.) and even to the age of copper (5000-3000 B. C.). The lake dwellers belonged to the latter period or even before. Prior to them there were workers in polished stone. The ages of the cave dwellers, who at the last were workers in bone, and at the first were rude shapers of stone, carry us back no man knows how many thousand or tens of thousand years. F. E. PEISER A SKETCH OF BABYLONIAN SOCIETY THE PREPARATION of a history of Babylonian culture is surrounded with so many difficulties that only those but slightly acquainted with its aspects would dare to undertake the task. In fact, the most necessary preliminary studies have been begun only within the last few years. Historical works on the subject show a disregard or ignorance of the elements of the history of culture, while the preliminary works which have appeared lack more or less the bond of interrelationship. It is, therefore, not an unimportant work to give for a part of the history of culture an outline, or skeleton, about which the scattered and disconnected studies, thus far attempted, may rally, and thus make it possible to proceed more methodically in the consideration of individual questions. For these reasons I have decided to condense several lectures written some years ago into the present publication, which neither claims. completeness nor to pronounce the final word. On the contrary, I hope that sharp criticism will be aroused by this sketch, through which the common aim or object may be advanced. As this is really a sketch of the subject, I have refrained from citing and collating authorities which are to find their place in monographs to follow; and this also explains why I have taken up society as a unit, and scarcely more than indicated its development. The work is based mainly upon the conditions of Babylon in the sixth and seventh centuries before the Christian era. In going still farther backward, the task is to unravel the close-meshed fabric of Babylonian culture and to study the history of its development along the individual strands. In the activity of thousands of years the Euphrates and the Tigris have built up from alluvial drift the territory between their arms. Sand and stones, stripped by the melting snow from the Armenian Mountain peaks, have formed deposits which pushed the Persian Gulf ever farther back toward the south and east. Thus we have in the south |