Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/119

 Western Asia: Babylonia, Assyria, and Chaldea 83 another, the scanty wreckage of the ages. To them we owe the recovery of the Festival Street and the Ishtar Gate (Fig. 47), but the Ishtar Gate is prac- tically the only build- ing in all Babylonia of which any impressive remains survive. Else- where the broken frag- ments of dingy sun-baked brick walls suggest little of the brilliant life which once ebbed and flowed through these streets and public places. ■ The Chaldeans seem to have absorbed the civilization of Babylonia in much the same way as other earlier Semitic invaders of this ancient plain. Commerce and business flourished, the arts and industries were highly developed, re- ligion and literature were cultivated and their records were put into wedge-writing on clay tablets as of old. Science made notable Fig. 48. Glass of the Sixth Century B.C. FOUND IN Chaldean Babylon The art of glazing and glassmaking, so extensively used in adorning Assyrian and Chaldean buildings, was not native to Asia, but arose far earlier on the Nile (see p. 36, and cut, p. 16). Thus, for example, the glass bottle shown here is of a shape and pattern borrowed by the Babylonians from Egypt. At this time exactly the same pattern of bottle was being used also in north Italy, which likewise received it from Egypt progress in one impor- tant branch — astronomy. Still with the practical purpose of reading the future rather than of furthering science, the Baby- lonians continued the ancient art of discovering the future in