[Sidenote: _Reasons why Babylonia developed an early civilization_]

Civilization and religion in antiquity developed, as a rule, side by
side. The two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, commanding
the trade of the north and the south; proximity to the desert with its
caravans of traders going back and forth from the Euphrates to the Nile;
the rich alluvial soil, which supported a dense population when properly
drained and cultivated; and the necessity of developing in a higher
degree the arts of defence in order to maintain the much contested
territory,--these were a few of the many conditions that made ancient
Babylonia one of the two earliest if not the oldest centre of human
civilization. The commercial habits and the abundance of the plastic
clay, which could easily be moulded into tablets for the use of the
scribe, also fostered the early development of the literary art. The
durability of the clay tablets and the enveloping and protecting
qualities of the ruined mounds of ancient Babylonia have preserved in
a marvellous way its early literature. The result is that we can now
study, on the basis of contemporary documents, this early and yet
advanced chapter in that divine revelation, the later culmination of
which is recorded in the Bible.

[Sidenote: _Progress during the period of city states_]

It begins as far back of Moses as he is removed from us in point of
time. Its political background at first is the little city states of
Babylonia, each with its independent organization and its local schools
of artists, whose products in many respects surpass anything that comes
from the hands of later Semitic craftsmen. Each city had its temple, at
which the patron god of the local tribe and district was worshipped. In