Legends of Babylon and Egypt in Relation to Hebrew Tradition.pdf

eighteen milliards of tons of water. See his work /The Irrigations of Mesopotamia/ (E. and F. N. Spon, 1911),
/Geographical Journal/, Vol. XL, No. 2 (Aug., 1912), pp. 129 ff., and the articles in /The Near East/ cited on p. 97, n. 1,
and p. 98, n. 2. Sir William Willcocks's volume and subsequent papers form the best introduction to the study of
Babylonian Deluge tradition on its material side.
[3] Their works carried out on the Tigris were effective for irrigation; but the Babylonians never succeeded in
controlling its floods as they did those of the Euphrates. A massive earthen dam, the remains of which are still known
as "Nimrod's Dam", was thrown across the Tigris above the point where it entered its delta; this served to turn the river
over hard conglomerate rock and kept it at a high level so that it could irrigate the country on both banks. Above the
dam were the heads of the later Nahrwân Canal, a great stream 400 ft. wide and 17 ft. deep, which supplied the
country east of the river. The Nâr Sharri or "King's Canal", the Nahar Malkha of the Greeks and the Nahr el-Malik of
the Arabs, protected the right bank of the Tigris by its own high artificial banks, which can still be traced for hundreds
of miles; but it took its supply from the Euphrates at Sippar, where the ground is some 25 ft. higher than on the Tigris.
The Tigris usually flooded its left bank; it was the right bank which was protected, and a breach here meant disaster.
Cf. Willcocks, op. cit., and /The Near East/, Sept. 29, 1916 (Vol. XI, No. 282), p. 522.
It was only by constant and unremitting attention that disaster from flood could be averted; and the difficulties of the
problem were and are increased by the fact that the flood-water of the Mesopotamian rivers contains five times as
much sediment as the Nile. In fact, one of the most pressing of the problems the Sumerian and early Babylonian
engineers had to solve was the keeping of the canals free from silt.[1] What the floods, if left unchecked, may do in
Mesopotamia, is well illustrated by the decay of the ancient canal-system, which has been the immediate cause of the
country's present state of sordid desolation. That the decay was gradual was not the fault of the rivers, but was due to
the sound principles on which the old system of control had been evolved through many centuries of labour. At the
time of the Moslem conquest the system had already begun to fail. In the fifth century there had been bad floods; but
worse came in A.D. 629, when both rivers burst their banks and played havoc with the dikes and embankments. It is
related that the Sassanian king Parwiz, the contemporary of Mohammed, crucified in one day forty canal-workers at a
certain breach, and yet was unable to master the flood.[2] All repairs were suspended during the anarchy of the
Moslem invasion. As a consequence the Tigris left its old bed for the Shatt el-Hai at Kût, and pouring its own and its
tributaries' waters into the Euphrates formed the Great Euphrates Swamp, two hundred miles long and fifty broad. But
even then what was left of the old system was sufficient to support the splendour of the Eastern Caliphate.
[1] Cf. /Letters of Hammurabi/, Vol. III, pp. xxxvi ff.; it was the duty of every village or town upon the banks of the
main canals in Babylonia to keep its own section clear of silt, and of course it was also responsible for its own smaller
irrigation-channels. While the invention of the system of basin-irrigation was practically forced on Egypt, the
extraordinary fertility of Babylonia was won in the teeth of nature by the system of perennial irrigation, or irrigation all
the year round. In Babylonia the water was led into small fields of two or three acres, while the Nile valley was
irrigated in great basins each containing some thirty to forty thousand acres. The Babylonian method gives far more
profitable results, and Sir William Willcocks points out that Egypt to-day is gradually abandoning its own system and
adopting that of its ancient rival; see /The Near East/, Sept. 29, 1916, p. 521.
[2] See Le Strange, /The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate/, p. 27.
The second great blow to the system followed the Mongol conquest, when the Nahrwân Canal, to the east of the Tigris,
had its head swept away by flood and the area it had irrigated became desert. Then, in about the fifteenth century, the
Tigris returned to its old course; the Shatt el-Hai shrank, and much of the Great Swamp dried up into the desert it is
to-day.[1] Things became worse during the centuries of Turkish misrule. But the silting up of the Hillah, or main,
branch of the Euphrates about 1865, and the transference of a great part of its stream into the Hindîyah Canal, caused
even the Turks to take action. They constructed the old Hindîyah Barrage in 1890, but it gave way in 1903 and the
state of things was even worse than before; for the Hillah branch then dried entirely.[2]
[1] This illustrates the damage the Tigris itself is capable of inflicting on the country. It may be added that Sir William
Willcocks proposes to control the Tigris floods by an escape into the Tharthâr depression, a great salt pan at the tail of
Wadi Tharthâr, which lies 14 ft. below sea level and is 200 ft. lower than the flood-level of the Tigris some thirty-two
miles away. The escape would leave the Tigris to the S. of Sâmarra, the proposed Beled Barrage being built below it