BABYLON AND PERSIA

BABYLON THE GREAT. 247etc., were burdened, also the dues for the use of thepublic roads and the irrigation canals, etc., etc.Thus,. these insignificant-looking little cakes of clayunrol before us a vivid picture of Babylon's nationallife ;we see people of all classes, from the highestcourt-officer to the lowest peasant and slave, crowdthe courts of this treasure-house to transact theirbusiness." At first (in 1878), it was thought that thepalmy days of the firm extended only to the reignof the Persian king, DAREIOS Hystaspis, and thegenealogical table (see p. 245) went no further thanacertain Marduk-NAZIR-PAL, who appears in the.first year of that king, and continues to act until histhirty-fifth year.But Professor Delitzsch informsus (in 1882), that Mr. PI.' Rassam added several hun¬dred tablets to the batch first purchased, and that,among these, there aresome dated from the reignof King Alik-sa-an-dir, i.e., Alexander the Great.This wouldgive these Babylonian Rothschilds aknown and provable duration ofvery nearly fourcenturies.17. If there should ever arise among Assyriologistsa scholar gifted with imaginative power and literarytalent,like Georg Ebers, the pride of Egyptology,such a scholar will find ample material for histori¬cal romances of real value in the materials extractedfrom the jar-safes of the House Egibi.Many anepoch not half so remote in time cannot produceone quarter so much documentary evidence. TheEgibi tablets, with their dry records of transactionsin all branches of social life and mutual relations,present a very complete skeleton, which it would be