Its principal source is at Tell el-Qadi, where it rises out of a basaltic mound whose summit is crowned by the ruins of Laish.*

The water collects in an oval rocky basin hidden by bushes, and flows down among the brushwood to join the Nahr el-Hasbany, which brings the waters of the upper torrents to swell its stream; a little lower down it mingles with the Banias branch, and winds for some time amidst desolate marshy meadows before disappearing in the thick beds of rushes bordering Lake Huleh.*

At this point the Jordan reaches the level of the Mediterranean, but instead of maintaining it, the river makes a sudden drop on leaving the lake, cutting for itself a deeply grooved channel. It has a fall of some 300 feet before reaching the Lake of Grenesareth, where it is only momentarily arrested, as if to gather fresh strength for its headlong career southwards.

Here and there it makes furious assaults on its right and left banks, as if to escape from its bed, but the rocky escarpments which hem it in present an insurmountable barrier to it; from rapid to rapid it descends with such capricious windings that it covers a course of more than 62 miles before reaching, the Dead Sea, nearly 1300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean.*

Nothing could offer more striking contrasts than the country on either bank. On the east, the ground rises abruptly to a height of about 3000 feet, resembling a natural rampart flanked with towers and bastions: behind this extends an immense table-land, slightly undulating and intersected in all directions by the affluents of the Jordan and the Dead Sea—the Yarmuk,* the Jabbok,** and the Arnon.***

The whole of this district forms a little world in itself, whose inhabitants, half shepherds, half bandits, live a life of isolation, with no ambition to take part in general history. West of the Jordan, a confused mass of hills rises into sight, their sparsely covered slopes affording an impoverished soil for the cultivation of corn, vines, and olives. One ridge—Mount Carmel—detached from the principal chain near the southern end of the Lake of Genesareth, runs obliquely to the north-west, and finally projects into the sea. North of this range extends Galilee, abounding in refreshing streams and fertile fields; while to the south, the country falls naturally into three parallel zones—the littoral, composed alternately of dunes and marshes—an expanse of plain, a “Shephelah,” dotted about with woods and watered by intermittent rivers,—and finally the mountains. The region of dunes is not necessarily barren, and the towns situated in it—Gaza, Jaffa, Ashdod, and Ascalon—are surrounded by flourishing orchards and gardens. The plain yields plentiful harvests every year, the ground needing no manure and very little labour. The higher ground and the hill-tops are sometimes covered with verdure, but as they advance southwards, they become denuded and burnt by the sun. The valleys, too, are watered only by springs, which are dried up for the most part during the summer, and the soil, parched by the continuous heat, can scarcely be distinguished from the desert. In fact, till the Sinaitic Peninsula and the frontiers of Egypt are reached, the eye merely encounters desolate and almost uninhabited solitudes, devastated by winter torrents, and overshadowed by the volcanic summits of Mount Seir. The spring rains, however, cause an early crop of vegetation to spring up, which for a few weeks furnishes the flocks of the nomad tribes with food.

We may summarise the physical characteristics of Syria by saying that Nature has divided the country into five or six regions of unequal area, isolated by rivers and mountains, each one of which, however, is admirably suited to become the seat of a separate independent state. In the north, we have the country of the two rivers—the Naharaim—extending from the Orontes to the Euphrates and the Balikh, or even as far as the Khabur:* in the centre, between the two ranges of the Lebanon, lie Coele-Syria and its two unequal neighbours, Aram of Damascus and Phoenicia; while to the south is the varied collection of provinces bordering the valley of the Jordan.

It is impossible at the present day to assert, with any approach to accuracy, what peoples inhabited these different regions towards the fourth millennium before our era. Wherever excavations are made, relics are brought to light of a very ancient semi-civilization, in which we find stone weapons and implements, besides pottery, often elegant in contour, but for the most part coarse in texture and execution. These remains, however, are not accompanied by any monument of definite characteristics, and they yield no information with regard to the origin or affinities of the tribes who fashioned them.* The study of the geographical nomenclature in use about the XVIth century B.C. reveals the existence, at all events at that period, of several peoples and several languages. The mountains, rivers, towns, and fortresses in Palestine and Coele-Syria are designated by words of Semitic origin: it is easy to detect, even in the hieroglyphic disguise which they bear on the Egyptian geographical lists, names familiar to us in Hebrew or Assyrian.

But once across the Orontes, other forms present themselves which reveal no affinities to these languages, but are apparently connected with one or other of the dialects of Asia Minor.* The tenacity with which the place-names, once given, cling to the soil, leads us to believe that a certain number at least of those we know in Syria were in use there long before they were noted down by the Egyptians, and that they must have been heirlooms from very early peoples. As they take a Semitic or non-Semitic form according to their geographical position, we may conclude that the centre and south were colonized by Semites, and the north by the immigrant tribes from beyond the Taurus. Facts are not wanting to support this conclusion, and they prove that it is not so entirely arbitrary as we might be inclined to believe. The Asiatic visitors who, under a king of the XIIth dynasty, came to offer gifts to Khnûmhotpû, the Lord of Beni-Hasan, are completely Semitic in type, and closely resemble the Bedouins of the present day. Their chief—Abisha—bears a Semitic name,** as too does the Sheikh Ammianshi, with whom Sinûhit took refuge.***

Ammianshi himself reigned over the province of Kadimâ, a word which in Semitic denotes the East. Finally, the only one of their gods known to us, Hadad, was a Semite deity, who presided over the atmosphere, and whom we find later on ruling over the destinies of Damascus. Peoples of Semitic speech and religion must, indeed, have already occupied the greater part of that region on the shores of the Mediterranean which we find still in their possession many centuries later, at the time of the Egyptian conquest.

For a time Egypt preferred not to meddle in their affairs. When, however, the “lords of the sands” grew too insolent, the Pharaoh sent a column of light troops against them, and inflicted on them such a severe punishment, that the remembrance of it kept them within bounds for years. Offenders banished from Egypt sought refuge with the turbulent kinglets, who were in a perpetual state of unrest between Sinai and the Dead Sea. Egyptian sailors used to set out to traffic along the seaboard, taking to piracy when hard pressed; Egyptian merchants were accustomed to penetrate by easy stages into the interior. The accounts they gave of their journeys were not reassuring. The traveller had first to face the solitudes which confronted him before reaching the Isthmus, and then to avoid as best he might the attacks of the pillaging tribes who inhabited it.

Should he escape these initial perils, the Amu—an agricultural and settled people inhabiting the fertile region—would give the stranger but a sorry reception: he would have to submit to their demands, and the most exorbitant levies of toll did not always preserve caravans from their attacks.* The country seems to have been but thinly populated; tracts now denuded were then covered by large forests in which herds of elephants still roamed,** and wild beasts, including lions and leopards, rendered the route through them dangerous.

The notion that Syria was a sort of preserve for both big and small game was so strongly implanted in the minds of the Egyptians, that their popular literature was full of it: the hero of their romances betook himself there for the chase, as a prelude to meeting with the princess whom he was destined to marry,* or, as in the case of Kazarâti, chief of Assur, that he might encounter there a monstrous hyena with which to engage in combat.

These merchants’ adventures and explorations, as they were not followed by any military expedition, left absolutely no mark on the industries or manners of the primitive natives: those of them only who were close to the frontiers of Egypt came under her subtle charm and felt the power of her attraction, but this slight influence never penetrated beyond the provinces lying nearest to the Dead Sea. The remaining populations looked rather to Chaldæa, and received, though at a distance, the continuous impress of the kingdoms of the Euphrates. The tradition which attributes to Sargon of Agadê, and to his son Istaramsin, the subjection of the people of the Amanos and the Orontes, probably contains but a slight element of truth; but if, while awaiting further information, we hesitate to believe that the armies of these princes ever crossed the Lebanon or landed in Cyprus, we must yet admit the very early advent of their civilization in those western countries which are regarded as having been under their rule. More than three thousand years before our era, the Asiatics who figure on the tomb of Khnûmhotpû clothed themselves according to the fashions of Uru and Lagash, and affected long robes of striped and spotted stuffs. We may well ask if they had also borrowed the cuneiform syllabary for the purposes of their official correspondence,* and if the professional scribe with his stylus and clay tablet was to be found in their cities. The Babylonian courtiers were, no doubt, more familiar visitors among them than the Memphite nobles, while the Babylonian kings sent regularly to Syria for statuary stone, precious metals, and the timber required in the building of their monuments: Urbau and Gudea, as well as their successors and contemporaries, received large convoys of materials from the Amanos, and if the forests of Lebanon were more rarely utilised, it was not because their existence was unknown, but because distance rendered their approach more difficult and transport more costly. The Mediterranean marches were, in their language, classed as a whole under one denomination—Martu, Amurru,** the West—but there were distinctive names for each of the provinces into which they were divided.

Probably even at that date they called the north Khati,* and Cole-Syria, Amurru, the land of the Amorites. The scattered references in their writings seem to indicate frequent intercourse with these countries, and that, too, as a matter of course which excited no surprise among their contemporaries: a journey from Lagash to the mountains of Tidanum and to Gubin, or to the Lebanon and beyond it to Byblos,** meant to them no voyage of discovery. Armies undoubtedly followed the routes already frequented by caravans and flotillas of trading boats, and the time came when kings desired to rule as sovereigns over nations with whom their subjects had peaceably traded.

It does not appear, however, that the ancient rulers of Lagash ever extended their dominion so far. The governors of the northern cities, on the other hand, showed themselves more energetic, and inaugurated that march westwards which sooner or later brought the peoples of the Euphrates into collision with the dwellers on the Nile: for the first Babylonian empire without doubt comprised part if not the whole of Syria.*

Among the most celebrated names in ancient history, that of Babylon is perhaps the only one which still suggests to our minds a sense of vague magnificence and undefined dominion. Cities in other parts of the world, it is true, have rivalled Babylon in magnificence and power: Egypt could boast of more than one such city, and their ruins to this day present to our gaze more monuments worthy of admiration than Babylon ever contained in the days of her greatest prosperity. The pyramids of Memphis and the colossal statues of Thebes still stand erect, while the ziggurâts and the palaces of Chaldæa are but mounds of clay crumbling into the plain; but the Egyptian monuments are visible and tangible objects; we can calculate to within a few inches the area they cover and the elevation of their summits, and the very precision with which we can gauge their enormous size tends to limit and lessen their effect upon us. How is it possible to give free rein to the imagination when the subject of it is strictly limited by exact and determined measurements? At Babylon, on the contrary, there is nothing remaining to check the flight of fancy: a single hillock, scoured by the rains of centuries, marks the spot where the temple of Bel stood erect in its splendour; another represents the hanging gardens, while the ridges running to the right and left were once the ramparts.

The vestiges of a few buildings remain above the mounds of rubble, and as soon as the pickaxe is applied to any spot, irregular layers of bricks, enamelled tiles, and inscribed tablets are brought to light—in fine, all those numberless objects which bear witness to the presence of man and to his long sojourn on the spot. But these vestiges are so mutilated and disfigured that the principal outlines of the buildings cannot be determined with any certainty, and afford us no data for guessing their dimensions. He who would attempt to restore the ancient appearance of the place would find at his disposal nothing but vague indications, from which he might draw almost any conclusion he pleased.

Palaces and temples would take a shape in his imagination on a plan which never entered the architect’s mind; the sacred towers as they rose would be disposed in more numerous stages than they actually possessed; the enclosing walls would reach such an elevation that they must have quickly fallen under their own weight if they had ever been carried so high: the whole restoration, accomplished without any certain data, embodies the concept of something vast and superhuman, well befitting the city of blood and tears, cursed by the Hebrew prophets. Babylon was, however, at the outset, but a poor town, situated on both banks of the Euphrates, in a low-lying, flat district, intersected by canals and liable at times to become marshy. The river at this point runs almost directly north and south, between two banks of black mud, the base of which it is perpetually undermining. As long as the city existed, the vertical thrust of the public buildings and houses kept the river within bounds, and even since it was finally abandoned, the masses of debris have almost everywhere had the effect of resisting its encroachment; towards the north, however, the line of its ancient quays has given way and sunk beneath the waters, while the stream, turning its course westwards, has transferred to the eastern bank the gardens and mounds originally on the opposite side. E-sagilla, the temple of the lofty summit, the sanctuary of Merodach, probably occupied the vacant space in the depression between the Babil and the hill of the Kasr.*

In early times it must have presented much the same appearance as the sanctuaries of Central Chaldæa: a mound of crude brick formed the substructure of the dwellings of the priests and the household of the god, of the shops for the offerings and for provisions, of the treasury, and of the apartments for purification or for sacrifice, while the whole was surmounted by a ziggurât. On other neighbouring platforms rose the royal palace and the temples of lesser divinities,* elevated above the crowd of private habitations.

The houses of the people were closely built around these stately piles, on either side of narrow lanes. A massive wall surrounded the whole, shutting out the view on all sides; it even ran along the bank of the Euphrates, for fear of a surprise from that quarter, and excluded the inhabitants from the sight of their own river. On the right bank rose a suburb, which was promptly fortified and enlarged, so as to become a second Babylon, almost equalling the first in extent and population.

Beyond this, on the outskirts, extended gardens and fields, finding at length their limit at the territorial boundaries of two other towns, Kutha and Borsippa, whose black outlines are visible to the east and south-west respectively, standing isolated above the plain. Sippara on the north, Nippur on the south, and the mysterious Agadê, completed the circle of sovereign states which so closely hemmed in the city of Bel. We may surmise with all probability that the history of Babylon in early times resembled in the main that of the Egyptian Thebes. It was a small seigneury in the hands of petty princes ceaselessly at war with petty neighbours: bloody struggles, with alternating successes and reverses, were carried on for centuries with no decisive results, until the day came when some more energetic or fortunate dynasty at length crushed its rivals, and united under one rule first all the kingdoms of Northern and finally those of Southern Chaldæa.

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.*

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 Chaldæa, 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 wormwood, forming together a vari-coloured vegetation which gives shelter to the ostrich and the wild ass, and affords the flocks of the nomads a grateful pasturage when the autumn has set in. The Euphrates bounds these solitudes, but without watering them. The river flows, as far as the eye can see, between two ranges of rock or bare hills, at the foot of which a narrow strip of alluvial soil supports rows of date-palms intermingled here and there with poplars, sumachs, and willows. Wherever there is a break in the two cliffs, or where they recede from the river, a series of shadufs takes possession of the bank, and every inch of the soil is brought under cultivation. The aspect of the country remains unchanged as far as the embouchure of the Khabur; but there a black alluvial soil replaces the saliferous clay, and if only the water were to remain on the land in sufficient quantity, the country would be unrivalled in the world for the abundance and variety of its crops.

The fields, which are regularly sown in the neighbourhood of the small towns, yield magnificent harvests of wheat and barley: while in the prairie-land beyond the cultivated ground the grass grows so high that it comes up to the horses’ girths. In some places the meadows are so covered with varieties of flowers, growing in dense masses, that the effect produced is that of a variegated carpet; dogs sent in among them in search of game, emerge covered with red, blue, and yellow pollen. This fragrant prairie-land is the delight of bees, which produce excellent and abundant honey, while the vine and olive find there a congenial soil. The population was unequally distributed in this region. Some half-savage tribes were accustomed to wander over the plain, dwelling in tents, and supporting life by the chase and by the rearing of cattle; but the bulk of the inhabitants were concentrated around the affluents of the Euphrates and Tigris, or at the foot of the northern mountains wherever springs could be found, as in Assur, Singar, Nisibis, Tilli,* Kharranu, and in all the small fortified towns and nameless townlets whose ruins are scattered over the tract of country between the Khabur and the Balikh. Kharranu, or Harran, stood, like an advance guard of Chaldæan civilization, near the frontiers of Syria and Asia Minor.** To the north it commanded the passes which opened on to the basins of the Upper Euphrates and Tigris; it protected the roads leading to the east and south-east in the direction of the table-land of Iran and the Persian Gulf, and it was the key to the route by which the commerce of Babylon reached the countries lying around the Mediterranean. We have no means of knowing what affinities as regards origin or race connected it with Uru, but the same moon-god presided over the destinies of both towns, and the Sin of Harran enjoyed in very early times a renown nearly equal to that of his namesake.

He was worshipped under the symbol of a conical stone, probably an aerolite, surmounted by a gilded crescent, and the ground-plan of the town roughly described a crescent-shaped curve in honour of its patron. His cult, even down to late times, was connected with cruel practices; generations after the advent to power of the Abbasside caliphs, his faithful worshippers continued to sacrifice to him human victims, whose heads, prepared according to the ancient rite, were accustomed to give oracular responses.* The government of the surrounding country was in the hands of princes who were merely vicegerents:** Chaldæan civilization before the beginnings of history had more or less laid hold of them, and made them willing subjects to the kings of Babylon.***

These sovereigns were probably at the outset somewhat obscure personages, without much prestige, being sometimes independent and sometimes subject to the rulers of neighbouring states, among others to those of Agadê. In later times, when Babylon had attained to universal power, and it was desired to furnish her kings with a continuous history, the names of these earlier rulers were sought out, and added to those of such foreign princes as had from time to time enjoyed the sovereignty over them—thus forming an interminable list which for materials and authenticity would well compare with that of the Thinite Pharaohs. This list has come down to us incomplete, and its remains do not permit of our determining the exact order of reigns, or the status of the individuals who composed it. We find in it, in the period immediately subsequent to the Deluge, mention of mythical heroes, followed by names which are still semi-legendary, such as Sargon the Elder; the princes of the series were, however, for the most part real beings, whose memories had been preserved by tradition, or whose monuments were still existing in certain localities. Towards the end of the XXVth century before our era, however, a dynasty rose into power of which all the members come within the range of history.*

The dates of this dynasty are not fixed with entire certainty. The first of them, Sumuabîm, has left us some contracts bearing the dates of one or other of the fifteen years of his reign, and documents of public or private interest abound in proportion as we follow down the line of his successors. Sumulaîlu, who reigned after him, was only distantly related to his predecessor; but from Sumulaîlu to Sam-shusatana the kingly power was transmitted from father to son without a break for nine generations, if we may credit the testimony of the official lists.*

Contemporary records, however, prove that the course of affairs did not always run so smoothly. They betray the existence of at least one usurper—Immêru—who, even if he did not assume the royal titles, enjoyed the supreme power for several years between the reigns of Zabu and Abilsin. The lives of these rulers closely resembled those of their contemporaries of Southern Chaldæa. They dredged the ancient canals, or constructed new ones; they restored the walls of their fortresses, or built fresh strongholds on the frontier;* they religiously kept the festivals of the divinities belonging to their terrestrial domain, to whom they annually rendered solemn homage.

They repaired the temples as a matter of course, and enriched them according to their means; we even know that Zabu, the third in order of the line of sovereigns, occupied himself in building the sanctuary Eulbar of Anunit, in Sippara. There is evidence that they possessed the small neighbouring kingdoms of Kishu, Sippara, and Kuta, and that they had consolidated them into a single state, of which Babylon was the capital. To the south their possessions touched upon those of the kings of Uru, but the frontier was constantly shifting, so that at one time an important city such as Nippur belonged to them, while at another it fell under the dominion of the southern provinces. Perpetual war was waged in the narrow borderland which separated the two rival states, resulting apparently in the balance of power being kept tolerably equal between them under the immediate successors of Sumuabîm* —the obscure Sumulaîlu, Zabum, the usurper Immeru, Abîlsin and Sinmuballit—until the reign of Khammurabi (the son of Sinmuballit), who finally made it incline to his side.** The struggle in which he was engaged, and which, after many vicissitudes, he brought to a successful issue, was the more decisive, since he had to contend against a skilful and energetic adversary who had considerable forces at his disposal. Birnsin*** was, in reality, of Elamite race, and as he held the province of Yamutbal in appanage, he was enabled to muster, in addition to his Chaldæan battalions, the army of foreigners who had conquered the maritime regions at the mouth of the Tigris and the Euphrates.