The fact, however, points unmistakably to its cause. The reason why the Babylonian language and syllabary were thus in use throughout Western Asia, and why even the Egyptian Government was obliged to employ them in its communications with its Asiatic subjects, can only have been because Babylonian culture was too deeply rooted there to be superseded by any other. Before Egypt appeared upon the scene under the conquerors of the Eighteenth dynasty, Western Asia, as far as the Mediterranean, must have been for centuries under the direct influence and domination of Babylonia. I say domination as well as influence, for in the ancient East military conquest was needed to enforce an alien language and literature, theology and system of law upon another people. And even military conquest was not always sufficient, as witness the Assyrian and Persian conquests of Egypt, or the Roman conquest of Syria. We now have monumental testimony that such domination there actually was. As far back as B.C. 3800, Sargon of Akkad had founded a Semitic empire which had its centre in Babylon, and which stretched across Asia to the shores of the Mediterranean. We learn from his annals that three campaigns were needed to subdue “the land of the Amorites,” as Syria and Palestine were called, and that at last, after three years of warfare, all the coast-lands of “the sea of the setting sun” acknowledged his sway. He set up an image of himself on the Syrian coast in commemoration of his victories, and moulded his conquests “into one” great empire. His son and successor, Naram-Sin, extended his conquests into the Sinaitic peninsula, and a seal-cylinder, on which he is adored as a god, has been found in Cyprus. But Sargon was a patron of literature as well as a conqueror; his court was filled with learned men, and one of the standard works of Babylonian literature is said to have been compiled during his reign. The extension of Babylonian rule, therefore, to Western Asia meant the extension of Babylonian civilization, an integral part of which was its script. [Illustration: VIEW OF THE TEMPLE OF UR IN ITS PRESENT STATE, ACCORDING TO LOFTUS.]