Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - V. To Erivan. The physical features of Armenia
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126 ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
could not write and keep records ; for we are apt to estimate
civili2ation by book-learning. But it may very well be that
just because they did not spend all the time that we do on
books, they were our superiors in other ways. Certainly the
men of our day could not build pyramids with the limited
means that the ancient Egyptians had at their disposal ; and
artificial irrigation was evidently an old and highly developed
art which must have flourished in the regions near the
Euphrates and the Tigris, and have fallen into decay later,
when these countries were laid waste by the devastating
barbarian hordes.
Without a doubt the Arax plain was cultivated by the help
of artificial irrigation, even in the Stone Age, thousands of
years b.c. At Sardarabad, where the country lying to the
west is now an utter desert, an ancient cuneiform inscription
of much later date has been found in which a ruler states
that he has built " this canal," and invokes the direst penalties
of the gods upon anyone who may destroy it. The country
was subsequently laid waste, however, by fierce warrior
hosts, and the canal was destroyed and disappeared.
On the whole these regions open one’s eyes to the radical
changes that war may make in the character of wide areas of
country, especially when it is carried on in the brutal fashion
that was usual in this part of the world. Hordes of Mongo
lians and Turks and others, whose civilization was utterly
sterile, would fall upon towns and villages, put the inhabitants
to the sword, set fire to the houses, and decamp with the
spoil, the cattle, and the women. The towns and villages
were left in ruins, and the survivors of these massacres could
not organize a community strong enough to rebuild and
repair the canals and the irrigating system generally, especially
as they were constantly ground down by the persecutions and
exactions of the conquerors, who never did any work them
selves. Besides this, their existence was embittered by the
marauding incursions of the nomad tribes in the mountains,
whose attacks they were too weak to resist. Ultimately the
regions thus harried would be deserted altogether, and the
land lapse into a wilderness. Clearly that has been the fate
of many stretches of country in this part of the world. War,
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