Just as new discoveries have been made in Egypt, which have modified our previous conception of her history, so also have the excavators of the ancient sites in the Mesopotamian valley made, during the last few years, far-reaching discoveries, which have enabled us to add to and revise much of our knowledge of the history of Babylonia and Assyria.  In Palestine and the Sinaitic peninsula also the spade has been used with effect, but a detailed account of work in Sinai and Palestine falls within the limits of a description of Biblical discoveries rather than of this book.  The following chapters will therefore deal chiefly with modern discoveries which have told us new facts with regard to the history of the ancient Sumerians themselves, and of the Babylonians, Elamites, Kassites, and Assyrians, the inheritors of the ancient Sumerian civilization, which was older than that of Egypt, and which, as we have seen, probably contributed somewhat to its formation.  These were the two primal civilizations of the ancient world.  For two thousand years each marched upon a solitary road, without meeting the other.  Eventually the two roads converged.  We have hitherto dealt with the road of the Egyptians; we now describe that of the Mesopotamians, up to the point of convergence.

CHAPTER IV—­RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN WESTERN ASIA AND THE DAWN OF CHALDAEAN HISTORY

In the preceding pages it has been shown how recent excavations in Egypt have revealed an entirely new chapter in the history of that country, and how, in consequence, our theories with regard to the origin of Egyptian civilization have been entirely remodelled.  Excavations have been and are being carried out in Mesopotamia and the adjacent countries with no less enthusiasm and energy than in Egypt itself, and, although it cannot be said that they have resulted in any sweeping modification of our conceptions with regard to the origin and kinship of the early races of Western Asia, yet they have lately added considerably to our knowledge of the ancient history of the countries in that region of the world.  This is particularly the case in respect of the Sumerians, who, so far as we know at present, were the earliest inhabitants of the fertile plains of Mesopotamia.  The beginnings of this ancient people stretch back into the remote past, and their origin is still shrouded in the mists of antiquity.  When first we come across them they have already attained a high level of civilization.  They have built temples and palaces and houses of burnt and unburnt brick, and they have reduced their system of agriculture to a science, intersecting their country with canals for purposes of irrigation and to ensure a good supply of water to their cities.  Their sculpture and pottery furnish abundant evidence that they have already attained a comparatively high level in the practice of the arts, and finally they have evolved a complicated system of writing which originally had its origin in picture-characters, but afterwards had been developed along phonetic lines.  To have attained to this pitch of culture argues long periods of previous development, and we must conclude that they had been settled in Southern Babylonia many centuries before the period to which we must assign the earliest of their remains at present discovered.