In Central Mesopotamia, where the Tigris and Euphrates approach most nearly before forming the loop closed by their junction at the southern end, it is still possible to draw a line between the rivers, along which one may count the remains of eight or ten towns, separated from each other by at most two or three miles of cultivated, country. Townships set as thick as those of modern Lancashire once occupied the deserted plains, and, strange to say, the speech of the founders of Mesopotamian civilization was akin to that of the Turks, under whose rule civilization and wealth are banished from their earliest seat.

At the present time, the plain of the two rivers may be described roughly as consisting for one-fourth of its area of marsh, for one-fourth of desert; a quarter is covered by spring floods, and affords summer pasturage to the Bedouins, and the remaining quarter or less, undergoes some kind of cultivation.

At no time could it have been possible to cultivate this region continuously without a system of canals, for storage as well as irrigation, on a scale even more considerable than anything required by the first inhabitants of Egypt. Without irrigation, Western Assyria is a desert for ten months out of the twelve, and, without drainage, the most part of the fertile alluvium lower down remains permanently swampy.