Fertile Age

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30302, 30 November 1963, Page 3

Fertile Age

Land of the Two Rivers. By Leonard Cottrell. Brockhampton Press. 127 pp. “Mene. Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," so the moving finger wrote on the wall of Balshazzar’s palace heralding the fall of Babylon at the hands of the Medes and Persians in 539 B.C. Today, the site of tiie Mesopotamian Empire, the world's earliest known civilisation which flourished over 5000 years ago, is nothing, except to the archaeologist. but a flat desolate plain lying between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present day Iraq. in "Land of the Two Rivers.’’ Leonard Cottrell sifts the evidence of recent archaeological excavations in this area and traces the history of the rise of Mesopotamia from its earliest beginnings around 4500 B.C. to the fall of Babylon. This is not merely another “rise and fall" story but also an account of a time "perhaps more fertile in human inventions and discoveries than any period in human history prior to the sixteenth century A.D.” The invention of the wheel, manufacture of linen, building of sailing ships, use of metal, the invention of writing and numerical calculation, organised agriculture as well as the building of the world's first cities are all part of this story. Here too are the beginnings of ordered society as we know it today, maintained by the rule of law introduced by Hammurabi. It is interesting to find that these ancient people faced many of the problems that are still with us today. Good evidence of this is found in the translation of one of the many thousands of tablets that they have left us. “You can have a lord, you can have a king. "But the man to fear is the tax-collector ” And that was written around 3000 B.C. For thq amount of ground covered. “Land of the Two Rivers" is far too short and one feels somewhat cheated at th*> end of the book. Perhaps this is intended by the author since a list of texts for further reading is included as an appendix. Throughout, the book is attractively illustrated with line drawings by Richard Powers.