ylon was sure to lead to great industrial
and commercial activity in spite of any shortcomings in her rulers. She
stood in the centre of a marvellously fertile region, between upper and
western Asia. Two great rivers were at her doors, bringing her, without
cost or effort, the products of their upper basins, while, on the other
hand, they placed her in easy communication with the Persian Gulf and the
Indian Ocean. The merchants of Babylon had communication with the people of
the Levant by easy and well-worn roads crossing the fords of the middle
Euphrates. Less direct roads farther to the north were used nearly as much.
Some of these traversed the Cilician passes, crossed the Amanus and Taurus
into the plateau of Asia Minor, and ended at the coasts of the AEgaean and
the Euxine; others passed through Assyria into Media, and through the
Caspian passes up to the central plateau of Asia and into distant Bactria,
whence easy passes led down into the upper valley of the Indus. Babylon was
thus an _entrepot_ for caravans both from the east and west, and for
navigators coming from the ports of Africa, Arabia, and India.

There are, if we may use the expression, natural capitals and capitals that
are artificial. The sites of the first are determined by the configuration
of the earth. When they perish it is but a temporary death, to be followed
by a life often more full and brilliant than the first. The second owe
their prosperity to the caprice of a sovereign, or to political
combinations that pass away and leave no trace. Thebes and Nineveh were
artificial cities; both have disappeared and left behind them nothing but
their ruins; they have been replaced only by villages and unimportant
towns. On the other hand, Memphis lives again in Cairo, and, when the
depopulation of Babylon was complete, Seleucia and Ctesiphon, Kouffa and
Bagdad sprang up to carry on her work.

The centre of a refined civilization and of wide-stretching commercial
relations, Babylon could not have been without an original art, and one
marked with the peculiar characteristics of the national genius. Unhappily,
the materials at her command were far inferior to those of which the
Egyptians and Greeks could dispose. From this it has resulted that, on the
one hand, her productions never passed a certain level of excellence, and,
on the other, that they have been ill preserved. The Babylonians were not
among those happy peoples whose artists could exercise their