look
upon their epoch as that in which the first Chaldee Empire reached its
apogee. It then embraced all Mesopotamia, from the slopes of Mount Zagros
to the out-fall of the two great rivers.

The sovereigns of Chaldaea, like the Pharaohs of Egypt, toiled with
intelligence and unremitting perseverance to develop the resources of the
vast domain of which they found themselves masters. They set on foot great
public works whose memory survives here and there, to this day. From the
moment when the first colonists, of whatever race, appeared in the
country, they must have set about regulating the water courses; they must
have taken measures to profit by the floods to form reserves, and to
utilize the natural fall of the land, slight though it was, for the
distribution of the fertilizing liquid. The first groups of agriculturists
were established in the immediate neighbourhood of the Tigris and
Euphrates, where nothing more was required for the irrigation of the fields
than a few channels cut through the banks of the stream, but when the time
arrived for the settlement of the regions at some distance from both
rivers, more elaborate measures had to be taken; a systematic plan had to
be devised and carried out by concerted action. That the kings of Chaldaea
were quite equal to the task thus laid upon them is proved by the
inscriptions of HAMMOURABI, one of the successors of Ismi-Dagan, which have
been translated and commented upon by M. Joachim Menant.[65]

The canal to which this king boasts of having given his name, the
_Nahar-Hammourabi_, was called in later days the royal canal,
_Nahar-Malcha_. Herodotus saw and admired it, its good condition was an
object of care to the king himself, and we know that it was considerably
repaired by Nebuchadnezzar. It may be compared to a main artery; smaller
vessels flowed from it right and left, throwing off in their turn still
smaller branches, and ending in those capillaries which carried refreshment
to the roots of each thirsty palm. Even in our day the traveller in the
province of Bagdad may follow one of these ancient beds for an hour or two
without turning to the right or the left, and their banks, though greatly
broken in many places, still rise above the surrounding soil and afford a
welcome causeway for the voyager across the marshy plains.[66] All these
apparent accidents of the ground are vestiges left by the great hydraulic
works of that Chaldee Empire which began to loom thr