BABYLON AND PERSIA

THE LAST DAYS OF fUDAH. 173a short illness, and though a competent regent wasappointed by the priesthood, the presence of thenew king was urgently required, and affairs at homefor a time took the precedence over foreign wars.It was a new and vast inheritance which Nebuchad¬rezzar was called upon to receive and organize. Forat the division of spoils which followed on the de¬struction of Nineveh, the ancient empire of Asshurhad been pretty equitably divided between the twoprincipal championsthe kings of Media and Baby¬lon. The former, true to the tendency of his peo¬ple, which had always been drawn on in a westeriydirection, retained the long-disputed Zagros region,the land that might be called Assyria proper, downto the alluvial line, and such power or claims as- Assyria possessed over the entire mountain-landof Nairi, from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean,from the highlands of Urartu to those ofMasios and Amanosor, in other words, all thatlay ea.st and north of the Tigris. This, joined tothe Medes' vast dominions in their native Eran,made up the new and, for a short while, powerfulMedian Empire. The Babylonian Empire was formedof ttee rest of Mesopotamia, with Chaldea proper,down to the Gulf, and all'that lay westward of theEuphrates to the sea. This empire, if inferior in ex¬tent to the other, was superior in so far that it wasmore homogeneous, including countries of one race,one culture, and almost one languagethe Semitic.It will be seen that both these empires, in transfer¬ring to themselves the possessions and claims of As¬syria, burdened themselves with its wars, especially