 Along the way, Innis comments on many aspects of the ancient Middle Eastern empires, including power struggles between priests and kings, the evolution of military technologies and the development of the Hebrew Bible.Innis begins by observing that unlike in Egypt where calculating the timing of the Nile's flooding was a source of power, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Mesopotamia were used for irrigation.Therefore the ability to measure time precisely was somewhat less critical.