* Olivier, who was a physician and naturalist, and had
visited Egypt as well as Mesopotamia, thought that Babylonia
was somewhat less fertile than Egypt. Loftus, who was
neither, and had not visited Egypt, declares, on the
contrary, that the banks of the Euphrates are no less
productive than those of the Nile.
** Native traditions collected by Berossus confirm this, and
the testimony of Olivier is usually cited as falling in with
that of the Chaldæan writer. Olivier is considered, indeed,
to have discovered wild cereals in Mesopotamia. Pie only
says, however, that on the banks of the Euphrates above Anah
he had met with “wheat, barley, and spelt in a kind of
ravine;” from the context it clearly follows that these were
plants which had reverted to a wild state—instances of
which have been observed several times in Mesopotamia. A. de
Oandolle admitted the Mesopotamian origin of the various
species of wheat and barley.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a cylinder in the Museum at the
Hague. The original measures almost an inch in height.
“The date palm meets all the other needs of the population; they make from it a kind of bread, wine, vinegar, honey, cakes, and numerous kinds of stuffs; the smiths use the stones of its fruit for charcoal; these same stones, broken and macerated, are given as a fattening food to cattle and sheep.” Such a useful tree was tended with a loving care, the vicissitudes in its growth were observed, and its reproduction was facilitated by the process of shaking the flowers of the male palm over those of the female: the gods themselves had taught this artifice to men, and they were frequently represented with a bunch of flowers in their right hand, in the attitude assumed by a peasant in fertilizing a palm tree. Fruit trees were everywhere mingled with ornamental trees—the fig, apple, almond, walnut, apricot, pistachio, vine, with the plane tree, cypress, tamarisk, and acacia; in the prosperous period of the country the plain of the Euphrates was a great orchard which extended uninterruptedly from the plateau of Mesopotamia to the shores of the Persian Gulf.
The flora would not have been so abundant if the fauna had been sufficient for the supply of a large population. A considerable proportion of the tribes on the Lower Euphrates lived for a long time on fish only. They consumed them either fresh, salted, or smoked: they dried them in the sun, crushed them in a mortar, strained the pulp through linen, and worked it up into a kind of bread or into cakes. The barbel and carp attained a great size in these sluggish waters, and if the Chalæans, like the Arabs who have succeeded them in these regions, clearly preferred these fish above others, they did not despise at the same time such less delicate species as the eel, murena, silurus, and even that singular gurnard whose habits are an object of wonder to our naturalists. This fish spends its existence usually in the water, but a life in the open air has no terrors for it: it leaps out on the bank, climbs trees without much difficulty, finds a congenial habitat on the banks of mud exposed by the falling tide, and basks there in the sun, prepared to vanish in the ooze in the twinkling of an eye if some approaching bird should catch sight of it. Pelicans, herons, cranes, storks, cormorants, hundreds of varieties of seagulls, ducks, swans, wild geese, secure in the possession of an inexhaustible supply of food, sport and prosper among the reeds. The ostrich, greater bustard, the common and red-legged partridge and quail, find their habitat on the borders of the desert; while the thrush, blackbird, ortolan, pigeon, and turtle-dove abound on every side, in spite of daily onslaughts from eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Nimrûd, in
the British Museum.