Day 27 精读笔记 - 中东政治历史 总结

Palestine is a centre of ancient Oriental history. Its occupation by Babylonians or Egyptians marks the shining of the balance of power between Asia and Africa. 

It is the mother-land of the religion of mankind. We derive from Israel and Canaan the principles of our religion. 

A mixed races always superior to one of purer descent. It possesses more enterprise and energy, more originality of thought and purpose. 

The heyday of Babylonian art lay in the epoch of Sargon and his son Naram-Sin. It was then that the Babylonian empire was established throughout western Asia as far as the Mediterranean, that a postal service was organized along the highroads which led from one city of the empire to another, and that Babylonian art reached its climax. It was then, too, that the Babylonian system of writing practically took its final form.

The long and permanent influence of Babylonian culture from the banks of the Euphrates to the shores of the Mediterranean, and is intelligible only in the light of the further fact that the empire of Sargon of Akkad had been found more than two thousand years before. The tablets further prove the existence throughout the Oriental world of schools and libraries where the Babylonian language and characters could be taught and learned and its voluminous literature stored and studied.