The age of Amraphel, indeed, is in certain respects an age of decline.

The heyday of Babylonian art lay nearly two thousand years before it, in the epoch of Sargon and his son Naram-Sin.

It was then that the Babylonian empire was established throughout western Asia as far as the Mediterranean, that a postal service was organised along the highroads which led from one city of the empire to another, and that Babylonian art reached its climax.

It was then, too, that the Babylonian system of writing practically took its final form.
The civilisation of western Asia is, as has been said, immensely old.
That is the net result of modern discovery and research.

As far back as excavation can carry us there is still culture and art.