BETWEEN THE RIVERS

H W F Saggs The Greatness that was Babylon 562pp Sidgwick and Jackson £3 3s

This is the latest volume in a tamous series which has already given us cultural surveys of Greece Rome Egypt and India All these volumes in spite of (the slightly .mawkish and old-fashioned form of title The x that was y have become classical handbooks of a kind noteworthy for both their breadth and detail based on original study The .present work by the Reader in Akkadian at the London School of Oriental and African can Study is not an exception Some such work was certainly greatly needed for as the author mentions in his introduction there appears to be no book in English Which gives an up-to-date account of the civilization tion of Babylonia and Assyria as a whole and this he has attempted to provide No small or easy task for the empire of Babylon which finally fell in 550 B to the conquering Medians was already the heir of some 3 years of history where a large part of western civilization had been cradled To be perhaps more exact such a book has to describe the achievements not only of the Semitic population of Northern Iraq (<otlhe Assyrians and Southern Iraq (the Babylonians but also those of their original common masters the Sumerians their teachers in the arts of cuneiform script and literature of the arts of city life of metailikirgy and...