other Art or Science: But the number of years during which the
Chaldeans say, those of their Profession have given themselves to
the study of this natural Philosophy, is incredible; for when
Alexander was in Asia, they reckon'd up Four Hundred and Seventy
Thousand Years since they first began to observe the Motions of
the Stars."


Let us now supplement this estimate of Babylonian influence with
another estimate written in our own day, and quoted by one of the
most recent historians of Babylonia and Assyria.[24] The estimate
in question is that of Canon Rawlinson in his Great Oriental
Monarchies.[25] Of Babylonia he says:

"Hers was apparently the genius which excogitated an alphabet;
worked out the simpler problems of arithmetic; invented
implements for measuring the lapse of time; conceived the idea of
raising enormous structures with the poorest of all materials,
clay; discovered the art of polishing, boring, and engraving
gems; reproduced with truthfulness the outlines of human and
animal forms; attained to high perfection in textile fabrics;
studied with success the motions of the heavenly bodies;
conceived of grammar as a science; elaborated a system of law;
saw the value of an exact chronology--in almost every branch of
science made a beginning, thus rendering it comparatively easy
for other nations to proceed with the superstructure.... It was
from the East, not from Egypt, that Greece derived her
architecture, her sculpture, her science, her philosophy, her
mathematical knowledge--in a word, her intellectual life. And
Babylon was the source to which the entire stream of Eastern