Ernest Babelon Manual of Oriental Antiquities

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Leaving Egypt on one side, it is the Asiatic, or, more strictly, the chaldaeo-assyirian stream that we have undertaken to study exclusively. We see it at its source, almost on the site of that Garden of Eden where Genesis and the Chaldzean legends place the ancestors of man kind; we follow it into Assyria, and observe its progress and transformations. Before long it overflows and passes on all sides beyond the limits of the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates on one side, in Persia, it invades the palaces of Susa and Persepolis; on the other side, among the Hittites, the Aramaean populations of Syria, and the jews, it spreads and divides into many rivulets, until it arrives at the frontier of Egypt and the heart of Asia Minor. Far from losing itself in the waves of the Mediterranean, it reaches all the shores of that great lake, Cyprus.