The Falls City tribune., 1909-12-17
TELLS OF BABYLON
LIFE I'M OLD LAND DESCRIBED BY
MAN OF SCIENCE.
Prof. DeIitzsch Has Delved Deeply In
to Matter, and Graphically Por-
trays the Habits and Gus
toms of Ancient Empire.

Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch. whom the
kaiser, in an access of just enthusi-
asm, once described as knowing
more about Biblical culture than the
Biblical chroniclers themselves has
lust delivered a remarkable lecture
on Old Babylon before the German
Orient society, The records of Baby
ion, said the professor, are of espe-
cial interest now, for the destruction
OF the city seems to have been an ex-
act parallel with the overwhelming
sf Messina. The GODDESS Istar, mother
of all mankind, was much enraged
after Babylon's destruction to find
that Bel, the god of the earth, had
been granted so much power, and the
result was that for a thousand years
there was not another earthquake.
Old Babylon in those days was
smaller in extent than northern Italy.
1t was a fiat, rainless land. intersect-
ed by hundreds of canals; and the Ii
girls and Euphrates, which then issued
INTO the sea, were united by a big ca
nal. Thousands of rowing and sail
MS bpdARf dhu vi NI1hGI OdIOGo
crowded the waterways. Everywhere
was active life and a genuine eul-
ture. The whole country was crowd
ed with small villages. built chiefly of
reeds, but bricks and stone were used
Tor important edifices. From rs cents
10 So annually was the rent of the av-
erage house. Every girl found a hus-
tonJ Coyapo Vrinyov f,o-t. n,J 20,
rife summer heat made life disagree
able, and the country was overrun
with lions and swarmed with myriads
Of flies. while parts were periodically
swept by sandstorms.
The original civilized race of south
and central Babylonia was the Sumo
Ran, a tremendously gifted people,
whose women for beauty rivaled the
statues of ancient Greece. In north
Babylonia the people were Semites.
The later civilization was the result
Of a union of the two. Afterward fol
lowed the C~haldeans, whose king, Ne
Duchadnezzar. lived 1000 years before
Christ. 1t vas the original Sumerians
n invented cuneiform writing. They
were great mathematicians. and had
q seXagesimal system of counting,
with separate signs for l and 10, but
no zero. Prof. Delitzsch said he had
himself found their clay tablets with
multiplication and division tables, and
their methods of calculating cubes
and quadrates. The Sumerians went
clean shaved, whereas the Semites al
ways wore long boards and long hair.
IN the third millennium before
Christ the Babylonians were using
gold and silver as a medium of ex-
change. This was an inevitable de-
Velopment, as trade and industry were
already highly developed, and bust
less was even carried on by COM
panies and corporations. One of the
Oldest institutions of old Babylon was
the banking firm of Egbi & Sons.
Dealing in stocks on margins must
have been a profitless business, as
tie Babylonian rate of interest for
loans was usually 20 per cent.
The Babylonians had no standing
army, but they had a strong militia.
Their ideas on sorcery and witch
craft are largely responsible for the
snperstitions on these subjects of
western countries. 1t is possible, said
tne professor, hat Christianity is al
so indebted to their heather temples
Cor the towers and steeples of it's
churches.