But this final evolution came too late. A simpler script had already entered the field, and won its way in lands where clay was scarce and other writing materials more easily procurable. Indeed, it is probable that the presence or absence of clay suitable for writing purposes had quite as much to do with the spread of the cuneiform script as the political events which transformed the map of Western Asia. Canaan still continued to write in cuneiform characters after the empire of Babylonia had been exchanged for that of Egypt, while the use of the script never penetrated far into the limestone regions of the Mediterranean. It was probably the geological formation of Europe more than anything else which saved us to-day from having to learn the latest modification of the cursive writing of the Babylonian plain. But it had been a potent instrument of civilization in its day, perhaps more potent even than the Phœnician alphabet, for its sway lasted for thousands of years. It was at once the symbol and the inspiring spirit of a culture whose roots go back to the very beginnings of human civilization, and to which we still owe part of our own heritage of civilized life. Babylonia was the mother-land of astronomy and irrigation; from thence a knowledge of copper seems to have spread through Western Asia; it was there that the laws and regulations of trade were first formulated, and the earliest legal code, so far as we know, was compiled. Babylonian theology and cosmology left their impress upon beliefs and views of the world which have passed through Judæa to Europe, and the astrology and magic which played so active a part in the mental history of the Middle Ages were Babylonian creations. It is not a little remarkable that an Etruscan model of the liver in bronze (discovered at Piacenza), divided and inscribed for the purposes of haruspicy, finds its counterpart and probably also its prototype in the clay copy of a liver, similarly divided and inscribed, which was found in Babylonia.[155] We are children of our fathers, and amongst our spiritual fathers must be reckoned the Babylonians. CHAPTER VII CANAAN IN THE CENTURY BEFORE THE EXODUS