“Their Rules and Notions concerning the Eclipses of the Sun are but weak and mean, which they dare not positively foretel, nor fix a certain time for them. They have likewise Opinions concerning the Earth peculiar to themselves, affirming it to resemble a Boat, and to be hollow, to prove which, and other things relating to the frame of the World, they abound in Arguments; but to give a particular Account of ’em, we conceive would be a thing foreign to our History. But this any Man may justly and truly say, That the Chaldeans far exceed all other Men in the Knowledge of Astrology, and have study’d it most of any other Art or Science: But the number of years during which the Chaldeans say, those of their Profession have given themselves to the study of this natural Philosophy, is incredible; for when Alexander was in Asia, they reckon’d up Four Hundred and Seventy Thousand Years since they first began to observe the Motions of the Stars.”
Let us now supplement this estimate of Babylonian influence with another estimate written in our own day, and quoted by one of the most recent historians of Babylonia and Assyria.[24] The estimate in question is that of Canon Rawlinson in his Great Oriental Monarchies.[25] Of Babylonia he says:
“Hers was apparently the genius which excogitated an alphabet; worked out the simpler problems of arithmetic; invented implements for measuring the lapse of time; conceived the idea of raising enormous structures with the poorest of all materials, clay; discovered the art of polishing, boring, and engraving gems; reproduced with truthfulness the outlines of human and animal forms; attained to high perfection in textile fabrics; studied with success the motions of the heavenly bodies; conceived of grammar as a science; elaborated a system of law; saw the value of an exact chronology–in almost every branch of science made a beginning, thus rendering it comparatively easy for other nations to proceed with the superstructure…. It was from the East, not from Egypt, that Greece derived her architecture, her sculpture, her science, her philosophy, her mathematical knowledge–in a word, her intellectual life. And Babylon was the source to which the entire stream of Eastern
civilization may be traced. It is scarcely too much to say that, but for Babylon, real civilization might not yet have dawned upon the earth.”
Considering that a period of almost two thousand years separates the times of writing of these two estimates, the estimates themselves are singularly in unison. They show that the greatest of Oriental nations has not suffered in reputation at the hands of posterity. It is indeed almost impossible to contemplate the monuments of Babylonian and Assyrian civilization that are now preserved in the European and American museums without becoming enthusiastic. That certainly was a wonderful civilization which has left us the tablets on which are inscribed the laws of a Khamurabi on the one hand, and the art treasures of the palace of an Asshurbanipal on the other. Yet a candid consideration of the scientific attainments of the Babylonians and Assyrians can scarcely arouse us to a like enthusiasm. In considering the subject we have seen that, so far as pure science is concerned, the efforts of the Babylonians and Assyrians chiefly centred about the subjects of astrology and magic. With the records of their ghost-haunted science fresh in mind, one might be forgiven for a momentary desire to take issue with Canon Rawlinson’s words. We are assured that the scientific attainments of Europe are almost solely to be credited to Babylonia and not to Egypt, but we should not forget that Plato, the greatest of the Greek thinkers, went to Egypt and not to Babylonia to pursue his studies when he wished to penetrate the secrets of Oriental science and philosophy. Clearly, then, classical Greece did not consider Babylonia as having a monopoly of scientific knowledge, and we of to-day, when we attempt to weigh the new evidence that has come to us in recent generations with the Babylonian records themselves, find that some, at least, of the heritages for which Babylonia has been praised are of more than doubtful value.
Babylonia, for example, gave us our seven-day week and our system of computing by twelves. But surely the world could have got on as well without that magic number seven; and after some hundreds of generations we are coming to feel that the decimal system of the Egyptians has advantages over the duodecimal system of the Babylonians. Again, the Babylonians did not invent the alphabet; they did not even accept it when all the rest of the world had recognized its value. In grammar and arithmetic, as with astronomy, they seemed not to have advanced greatly, if at all, upon the Egyptians. One field in which they stand out in startling pre- eminence is the field of astrology; but this, in the estimate of modern thought, is the very negation of science.