Physical Geography of Babylonia and Assyria.
If you will look closely at a map of the eastern hemisphere, you will see that a great tract of desert extends across northern Africa, and reaching beyond the Mediterranean Sea, the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea, traverses the entire width of Asia to the Pacific Ocean. This desert waste is so broken by plateaus and mountain ranges that its vast extent is scarcely realized. Rivers occasionally cross it, producing fertile valleys which, generally speaking, support the life of the whole area.
We are now concerned with the location and topography of the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian kingdoms, and of those districts lying adjacent. North of the Persian Gulf some considerable distance, we find the Armenian mountains. These ranges are loftier than most in Western Asia, piercing high above the eternal snow-line. During winter their sides and gorges are massed with snow, which melts rapidly with the warmth of spring and heat of summer. The drainage of the mountains has resulted in many streams, which unite to form the Euphrates on the western slopes, and on the eastern slopes, form the Tigris. Ages ago these two rivers emptied into the Persian Gulf at points some distance from each other. But such heavy deposits of rich mountain loam have been brought down by the streams, that they have extended the land far into the gulf, pushing the water back for some hundred miles. Joining one another in the area thus formed, the waters of the two streams reach the gulf today as one mighty river with many mouths. We may judge how great changes this land-building process has wrought by the fact that the town of Ur, now nearly two hundred miles from the gulf, was a sea-port at the time of which we are now studying. The annual increase of the land is about 115 feet.
Herodotus' statement that "Egypt is the gift of the Nile," might have been made with equal truth of the Euphrates and Babylonia. Here again an annual overflow refreshes a valley, while in antiquity a network of canals provided water, fertility, and humidity for districts sloping off gently on either side.
Today this territory is held by the Turks, and with their ruinous policy of trying to extract all possible revenue from their lands while doing nothing to improve them, the old canals are abandoned, none others take their place, and the rivers wander today at will, leaving part of the area parched and unproductive, and converting the rest into fever-breeding swamps and marshes.
The Euphrates is the longer of the two rivers. Taking its rise west of a lofty mountain, it receives several tributaries near its source, but none join it during the last eight hundred miles of its course. The snows melt gradually; in March the stream begins to overflow its channel; high water mark is reached by the first of June, and July finds the waters receding. This river is very winding in its course, at one place being but one hundred miles from the Mediterranean Sea and near Babylon running along within twenty-five miles of the Tigris, only to immediately branch off again to the south. Its entire length is about eighteen hundred miles, and most of the water is spent before it reaches the Gulf.
The Tigris is somewhat different from its sister stream. Its name signifies "the swift," or the "arrowy," and indicates its rapid current, whereas the Euphrates flows more gently. Not so broad as the Euphrates, the Tigris is much deeper. On the east of the high mountains wherein this river has its rise, spring comes quickly; the water rises rapidly, and the period of its overflow is short. Beginning to rise in March, the first of May sees the high water mark, and by the last of June the stream is fast finding its usual volume.
The territory between the Tigris and Euphrates the Greeks called Mesopotamia, meaning "between two rivers," but they applied the name to the northern portion of the district—the home of the Assyrians. As generally used today, the term Mesopotamia signifies the whole region.
The southern portion, bordering on the Persian Gulf, has a deep alluvial soil, built up by the yearly deposit of the rivers. Like the valley of the Nile, it has been the repository of fine silt. This portion from its capital city Babylon was called Babylonia. As we might expect, this was the country first settled because it was the more accessible. Its wide, monotonous plains, enriched with the fertile mountain loam, afforded the most productive farm lands in the world. Herodotus told of their prodigious yield of grain: "This territory is of all that we know the best by far for producing grain; as to trees, it does not attempt to bear them, either fig, or vine or olive, but for producing grain it is so good that it returns as much as two-hundred-fold for the average, and, when it bears its best, it produces three-hundred-fold. The blades of the wheat and barley there grew to be four fingers broad; and from millet and sesame seed, how large a tree grows, I know myself, but shall not record, being well aware that even what has already been said relating to the crops produced has been enough to cause disbelief in those who have not visited Babylonia." Theophrastus wrote: "In Babylon the wheat fields are regularly mown twice, and then fed off with beasts to keep down the luxuriance of the leaf; otherwise the plant does not run to ear. When this is done the return in lands that are badly cultivated is fiftyfold, while in those that are well farmed it is a hundredfold."
The land of Babylonia has been happily compared with the southern half of our state of Louisiana, which it resembles in marshy districts. Again it might be likened to the Egyptian Delta, being of course, larger,—something like Denmark in point of area. Possessing no rocks or mountains, the country seemed at first to be devoid of building material. It has been supposed that its primitive people first sheltered themselves in huts built of reeds which grew abundantly along the river banks. After awhile it was discovered that clay mud furnished a fair material when shaped into bricks and dried in the sun. A more enduring brick was later made by baking the brick in ovens. This oven-baked brick as well as the sun-dried brick constituted the great building material of Babylonia for all subsequent time.