us of the writings of the great
Babylonian historian, Berosus,(3) who was born in Babylon about 330
B.C., and who was, therefore, a contemporary of Alexander the Great.
But the writings of Berosus also, or at least such parts of them as have
come down to us, leave very much to be desired in point of explicitness.
They give some glimpses of Babylonian history, and they detail at some
length the strange mythical tales of creation that entered into the
Babylonian conception of cosmogony--details which find their counterpart
in the allied recitals of the Hebrews. But taken all in all, the
glimpses of the actual state of Chaldean(4) learning, as it was commonly
called, amounted to scarcely more than vague wonder-tales. No one
really knew just what interpretation to put upon these tales until
the explorers of the nineteenth century had excavated the ruins of the
Babylonian and Assyrian cities, bringing to light the relics of their
wonderful civilization. But these relics fortunately included vast
numbers of written documents, inscribed on tablets, prisms, and
cylinders of terra-cotta. When nineteenth-century scholarship had
penetrated the mysteries of the strange script, and ferreted out the
secrets of an unknown tongue, the world at last was in possession of
authentic records by which the traditions regarding the Babylonians
and Assyrians could be tested. Thanks to these materials, a new science
commonly spoken of as Assyriology came into being, and a most important
chapter of human history was brought to light. It became apparent that
the Greek ideas concerning Mesopotamia, though vague in the extreme,
were founded on fact. No one any longer questions that the Mesopotamian
civilization was fully on a par with that of Egypt; indeed, it is rather
held that superiority lay with the Asiatics. Certainly, in point of
purely scientific attainments, the Babylonians passed somewhat beyond
their Egyptian competitors. All the evidence seems to suggest also that
the Babylonian civilization was even more ancient than that of Egypt.
The precise dates are here in dispute; nor for our present purpose need
they greatly concern us. But the Assyrio-Babylonian records have much
greater historical accuracy as regards matters of chronology than
have the Egyptian, and it is believed that our knowledge of the early
Babylonian history is carried back, with some certainty, to King Sargon
of Agade,(5) for whom the date 3800 B.C. is generally accepted;