The ancient kingdom of Babylonia was bounded on the east by Elam or
Susiana; on the south by the Persian Gulf; on the west by the deserts of
Arabia; and on the north by Assyria. It was watered by two streams, the
Tigris and the Euphrates, and it was intersected by a number of canals,
branching out from these great rivers, and dug in order to save the
country from the effects of the annual inundations.
From the head waters of the Tigris and Euphrates to the Persian Gulf is
a distance of about eight hundred miles. The land included between the
two rivers divides itself naturally into two parts.
The northern one of these, Assyria, is a great plain of limestone and
selenite, in area almost equal to England. The northern and western
portions of this plain are broken by mountains and are of a fertile
character, as is also that part of Assyria which lies east of the
Tigris.
The southern of the two principal parts, Babylonia, is of alluvial
character, and in ancient times was about equal in area to the combined
territory of Holland and Belgium or to the southern half of Louisiana,
the latter a region to which it has been likened in character. On the
east of the Tigris, the Babylonian plain stretches away for a distance
of some thirty to fifty miles, to the mountains of Elam. On the west it
merges into the Arabian desert, twenty or thirty miles from the
Euphrates, where the low hills check the overflow of the river.