certain objects that were deposited under them. A “year” was denoted by the branch of a tree, as in Egypt, and a “name” by a bird placed over the sacred table of offerings. The country was full of snakes and other creeping things, and wild beasts lurked in the jungle. The pictographs were read from left to right, and various expedients were devised for making them express ideas. Thus _mud_, “to beget,” was denoted by the picture of a bird dropping an egg. At other times the pictograph was used to express an idea, the pronunciation of which was the same as that of the object which it represented. The bent knee, for example, was used to express _dug_ or _tuk_, “to have,” since it represented a “knee,” which was called _dug_ in Sumerian. CHAPTER IV THE RELATION OF BABYLONIAN TO EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION In dealing with the question of origins, science is constantly confronted with the problem of unity or polygeneity. Has language one origin or many; are the various races of mankind traceable to one ancestor or to several? Do the older civilizations presuppose the same primeval starting-point, or were there independent centres of culture which grew up unknown to one another in different parts of the world? Under the influences of theology the belief long prevailed that they were all sprung from the same source; of late the tendency has been in an opposite direction. While the biologist has inclined to a belief in the unity of species, the anthropologist has seen reason to maintain the diversity of origin in culture. The two earliest civilizations with which we are acquainted were those of Babylonia and Egypt. To a certain extent the conditions under which they both arose were similar. They grew up alike on the banks of great rivers and in a warm, though not tropical, climate. They rested, moreover, on organized systems of agriculture, which again had been made possible by irrigation engineering. In Babylonia the first settlers had found a plain which was little more than a swamp, over which the swollen streams of the Euphrates and Tigris wandered at will during the annual period of inundation, and which needed engineering works on a large scale before it could be made habitable. The rivers had to be confined within their channels by means of embankments, and canals had to be cut in order to draw off the surplus supply of water and regulate its distribution to the land. While the swamp was thus being made possible for habitation, the population must have lived on the edge of the desert plateau which bordered it, and have there developed a civilization which not only produced the engineers and their science, but also the concentrated authority which enabled the science to be utilized.