There is the far away land of ancient Babylonia, with her territory divided into Accad[1] and Sumer or Shinar. These were the northern and southern divisions of the country. According to Prof. Sayce, “the whole of Babylonia was originally inhabited by a non-Semitic race, but the Semites established their power in Accad, or North Babylonia, at an earlier date than they did in Sumer in the south; the non-Semitic dynasties and culture lingered longer therefore in Sumer.”[2] Their land was the home of the palm tree, and from the highlands, where their rivers found their source, down to the shores of the Persian Gulf, it presented a wealth of foliage and blossoms. Fields that were covered with ripening grain awaited the sickle of the reaper, while the fruit trees bent beneath their burdens, and the vines gleamed in the sunlight with clusters of gold and purple. Although we know little of this primitive people, a few of their imperishable records have come down to us, and light is thus thrown upon the literary culture which prevailed from the Euphrates to the Nile long before the Exodus. We have the inscriptions[3] of Dungi, the king of “Ur of the Chaldees,” and also “king of Sumer and Accad.” We have, too, a portion of the clay tablets recounting the glory of Sargon I, who carried his conquests into the land of the Elamites, and even subdued the Hittites in northern Syria. The independent states of Babylonia also were brought under his sway, and he claimed to be “the sovereign of the four regions of the world,” while his Accadian subjects gave him the name of “the king of justice and the deviser of prosperity.” He was the patron of letters, and in the library[4] of this old Semitic king, in the city of Accad, there was written on pages of clay a work on astronomy and astrology in seventy-two books. Long before the poets of India, of Greece or of Persia began to weave their gorgeous web of mythology, the seers of Accad and of Shinar watched beside the great loom of Nature, as she wove out the curtains of the morning and the crimson draperies of the setting sun. They listened to the battle of the elements around their mountain peaks, and dreamt of the storm-king; they heard the musical murmurs of the wind, as it whispered to the closing flowers; they felt the benediction of the night, with its voices of peace, and the divine poem of earth’s beauty found an echo in their hearts. The bloom of Accadian poetry may be placed about four thousand years before our own times, when the primeval teachings of Nature had become the theme of the poet, and been voiced in the measures of song.