Women during the Ages of Antiquity. [Illustration: A NOBLEMAN AND HIS WIFE IN BABYLON ] WOMEN IN BABYLONIA. As the cultivated nations of Antiquity sprang from inferior tribes, it is only natural that in their social life many of the habits and customs of prehistorical times survived. Nowhere was this fact more evident than in the status of women. Everywhere we find a strange mixture of the rude conceptions of the dim past and promising prospects for a brighter future. In many places women were still regarded as inferior creatures, subjected to the will of men and with no rights whatever over their own persons. We also note that polygamy, barter, rape, slavery and hierarchical prostitution still flourish in all kinds of forms and disguises. But at the same time we are surprised to see that among certain nations the members of the fair sex enjoy already the same respect and almost a similar amount of rights and liberty, as our women possess to-day. Modern archæologists are inclined to recognize those formerly fertile lands between the Persian Gulf and Asia Minor, and watered by the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, as the “Cradle of Civilization,” or the place, where in misty ages, before history began, the so-called Sumerians, a Semitic people, first attempted to form themselves into organized communities. According to the traditions of the Hebrews here was the original home of the human race, the “Garden of Eden,” and here was, as is told in Genesis XI, “that men said one to another: ‘Go to, let us build a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’” This city was called Babylon, and the country =Babylonia=. Wonderful stories and legends are connected with these two names, but still more astounding are the revelations unearthed by the pick and shovel of modern explorers. By their diligent work it has been discovered that the people, living in this region somewhere about 4,000 to 6,000 years B. C. were already a highly organized and civilized race, skilled in various trades and professions, and living in towns of considerable size and importance. The inhabitants of these cities were by no means awkward in the fine arts. Most important of all, they had already evolved a very complete and highly developed system of writing, which in itself must have taken many centuries to reach the stage at which it was found by the explorers.