NOTABLE DATES OF ANCIENT CIVILISATION
| EGYPT | BABYLONIA | |||
| B.C. | B.C. | |||
| 8000 | Continuous civilisation of prehistoric age began | S.D. 30 | Before | |
| 7000 | Asiatic invasion | S.D. 40 | 6000 | Susa founded |
| 5800 | Invasion of dynastic race | |||
| 5500 | Mena rules all Egypt | S.D. 80 | 5000 | Ea founds Eridu and civilises the land |
| 4700 | Khufu builds Great Pyramid | 4700 | Earliest monuments of Kings | |
| 4500 | Urnina | |||
| 4000 | Invasion from north | 3800 | Sargon and Naramsin, Semitic rule | |
| 3400 | Middle Kingdom, twelfth dynasty | 3300 | Gudea | |
| 2500 | Hyksos invasion, fifteenth dynasty | |||
| 2250 | Second Hyksos movement | 2280 | Elamites conquer Babylonia | |
| 2129 | Hammurabi | |||
| 1580 | New Kingdom, eighteenth dynasty | 1572 | Kassite dynasty | |
| 1380 | Tell el Amarna letters | 1380 | Burnaburiash | |
| 701 | Taharqa (Tirhakah) | 690 | Sennacherib | |
| 570–26 | Aahmes (Amasis) | 556–38 | Nabonaid, fall of Babylon |
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THE first impression that strikes the reader in passing from the Egyptian to the Mesopotamian civilisation is the lack of that unity and conciseness which makes history in the Nile valley so intelligible, and its problems so well defined.
Disunion of Early Babylonia
In place of the well ordered history of Manetho, with its numbered dynasties, and totals stated throughout, there is practically nothing stated before Nabunasir in 747 B.C. The mythological extracts from Berosus, and the list of Ktesias, which cannot be identified with any known facts, give no help in arranging the outlines of the history. In place of the uniform language and writing, which develops without a break during the whole history of Egypt, there is the entire break from Sumerian to Semitic. In place of the continuous importance of Egyptian capitals, there is the change from the principalities to Babylon, and thence to Nineveh. In place of the unified kingdom of the Nile valley, through the whole written history, the greater part of the documentary period is filled with rival principalities, within thirty or forty miles of each other, the tops of whose temples must have been visible over the entire territory of their respective states.
As the general scale of Egypt is so familiar to the modern reader and traveller, it will be well to compare Mesopotamia with that. Babylon was twice as far from the sea as Cairo; and from Babylon to Nineveh was the distance from Cairo to Sohag. Or in other terms, starting from the sea, Babylon was as distant as Oxyrhynchos, Nineveh in place of Thebes, and the highlands of Carchemish, Commagene, and Lake Van were the equivalent of Nubia. The old land of Shumer was just the size of the Delta, and Akkad as large as Middle Egypt. The principalities of Eridu, Lagash, Ur, Erech, and others, were as far apart as those of the Delta—Bubastis, Benha, Sais, or Sebennytos. Indeed, it seems as if this were a natural unit-size of early dominions in a fertile plain.
The Nile and the Euphrates