suitable for agricultural pursuits. Its
original inhabitants were nomadic pastoral and hunting tribes, and
there appears to be little doubt that agriculture was introduced along
the banks of the Tigris by colonists from Babylonia, who formed city
States which owed allegiance to the kings of Sumer and Akkad.

After the Hammurabi period Assyria rose into prominence as a predatory
power, which depended for its stability upon those productive
countries which it was able to conquer and hold in sway. It never had
a numerous peasantry, and such as it had ultimately vanished, for the
kings pursued the short-sighted policy of colonizing districts on the
borders of their empire with their loyal subjects, and settling aliens
in the heart of the homeland, where they were controlled by the
military. In this manner they built up an artificial empire, which
suffered at critical periods in its history because it lacked the
great driving and sustaining force of a population welded together by
immemorial native traditions and the love of country which is the
essence of true patriotism. National sentiment was chiefly confined to
the military aristocracy and the priests; the enslaved and uncultured
masses of aliens were concerned mainly with their daily duties, and no
doubt included communities, like the Israelites in captivity, who
longed to return to their native lands.

Assyria had to maintain a standing army, which grew from an alliance
of brigands who first enslaved the native population, and ultimately
extended their sway over neighbouring States. The successes of the
army made Assyria powerful. Conquering kings accumulated rich booty by
pillaging alien cities, and grew more and more wealthy as they were
able to impose annual tribute on those States which came under their
sway. They even regarded Babylonia with avaricious eyes. It was to
achieve the conquest of the fertile and prosperous mother State that
the early Assyrian emperors conducted military operations in the
north-west and laid hands on Mesopotamia. There was no surer way of
strangling it than by securing control of its trade routes. What the
command of the sea is to Great Britain at the present day, the command
of the caravan roads was to ancient Babylonia.

Babylonia suffered less than Assyria by defeat in battle; its natural
resources gave it great recuperative powers, and the native population
was ever so intensely patriotic that centuries of alien sway could not
ob