ABSTRACT
The importance of Babylon to the world does not rest on her record as a political force, or on her material greatness as the typical embodiment of the pride of life, but upon something less tangible and more enduringthe contribution which she has made to the intellectual and spiritual development of the human race. Sharer, with the other great riverine kingdom of Egypt. of the glory of having given letters and literature to the world; founder of science, especially of astronomical science, in
a sense in which the Egyptian cannot claim to shar'e her glory; perhaps above all the fountain of law, and the creator of thalt sense of order and security within the limits of a land, out of which spring all the developments of that business in which she led the world-commerce, banking, and sanctity of contracts between man and man: it is upon such things as these that Babylon's claim to greatness rests, and not upon her might in arms, which never was proportionate to her fame, or upon her political influence, which was oftener secondary, that of a check on Assyria, or a benevolent neutral towards Egypt, than direct, as that of a protagonist in the arena.
