mound has been traced and uncovered.  We are thus enabled to reconstitute the scene of the most solemn rite of the Babylonian festival of the New Year, when the statue of the god Marduk was carried in solemn procession along this road from the temple to the palace, and the Babylonian king made his yearly obeisance to the national god, placing his own hands within those of Marduk, in token of his submission to and dependence on the divine will.

[Illustration:  425.jpg WITHIN THE SHRINE OP E-MAKH, THE TEMPLE OP THE GODDESS NIN-MAKH.]

Though recent excavations have not led to any startling discoveries with regard to the history of Western Asia during the last years of the Babylonian empire, research among the tablets dating from the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods has lately added considerably to our knowledge of Babylonian literature.  These periods were marked by great literary activity on the part of the priests at Babylon, Sippar, and elsewhere, who, under the royal orders, scoured the country for all remains of the early literature which was preserved in the ancient temples and archives of the country, and made careful copies and collections of all they found.  Many of these tablets containing Neo-Babylonian copies of earlier literary texts are preserved in the British Museum, and have been recently published, and we have thus recovered some of the principal grammatical, religious, and magical compositions of the earlier Babylonian period.

[Illustration:  426.jpg TRENCH IN THE BABYLONIAN PLAIN]

     Between The Mound Of The Kasr And Tell Amran Ibn-Ali,
     Showing A Section Of The Paved Sacred Way.

Among the most interesting of such recent finds is a series of tablets inscribed with the Babylonian legends concerning the creation of the world and man, which present many new and striking parallels to the beliefs on these subjects embodied in Hebrew literature.  We have not space to treat this subject at greater length in the present work, but we may here note that discovery and research in its relation to the later empires that ruled at Babylon have produced results of literary rather than of historical importance.  But we should exceed the space at our disposal if we attempted even to skim this fascinating field of study in which so much has recently been achieved.  For it is time we turned once more to Egypt and directed our inquiry towards ascertaining what recent research has to tell us with regard to her inhabitants during the later periods of her existence as a nation of the ancient world.

CHAPTER IX—­THE LAST DAYS OF ANCIENT EGYPT