and
Elamites--End of the Kassite Dynasty--Babylonia contrasted with
Assyria.

It is possible that during the present century Babylonia may once
again become one of the great wheat-producing countries of the world.
A scheme of land reclamation has already been inaugurated by the
construction of a great dam to control the distribution of the waters
of the Euphrates, and, if it is energetically promoted on a generous
scale in the years to come, the ancient canals, which are used at
present as caravan roads, may yet be utilized to make the whole
country as fertile and prosperous as it was in ancient days. When that
happy consummation is reached, new cities may grow up and flourish
beside the ruins of the old centres of Babylonian culture.

With the revival of agriculture will come the revival of commerce.
Ancient trade routes will then be reopened, and the slow-travelling
caravans supplanted by speedy trains. A beginning has already been
made in this direction. The first modern commercial highway which is
crossing the threshold of Babylonia's new Age is the German railway
through Asia Minor, North Syria, and Mesopotamia to Baghdad.[407] It
brings the land of Hammurabi into close touch with Europe, and will
solve problems which engaged the attention of many rival monarchs for
long centuries before the world knew aught of "the glory that was
Greece and the grandeur that was Rome".

These sudden and dramatic changes are causing history to repeat
itself. Once again the great World Powers are evincing much concern
regarding their respective "spheres of influence" in Western Asia, and
pressing together around the ancient land of Babylon. On the east,
where the aggressive Elamites and Kassites were followed by the
triumphant Persians and Medes, Russia and Britain have asserted
themselves as protectors of Persian territory, and the influence of
Britain is supreme in the Persian Gulf. Turkey controls the land of
the Hittites, while Russia looms like a giant across the Armenian
highlands; Turkey is also the governing power in Syria and
Mesopotamia, which are being crossed by Germany's Baghdad railway.
France is constructing railways in Syria, and will control the ancient
"way of the Philistines". Britain occupies Cyprus on the Mediterranean
coast, and presides over the destinies of the ancient land of Egypt,
which, during the brilliant Eighteenth Dynasty, extended its sphere of
influence to the borders of Asia Minor. Once a