Ezekiel tells us how in the latter days of the Jewish kingdom the palace walls of Babylonia were adorned with ‘images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity⁠[1].’ He had already described the Assyrians as ‘clothed in blue,’ ‘clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding upon horses.’ They thus differed from the Chaldeans, while the Chaldeans again are distinguished from the Babylonians, who, however, inhabited the same country as themselves and were clothed with the same apparel.

The discoveries that have been made of recent years in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates explain and illustrate the prophet’s words. Chaldea or Babylonia—for the two names are used synonymously—was the alluvial plain shut in between the two great rivers of Western Asia, and extended southwards from a point where they almost touched one another to the marshes at the head of the Persian Gulf, where they flowed into the sea. Northwards came the land of Assyria. It was originally the district which surrounded the ancient capital of Asshur, alluded to in the second chapter of Genesis⁠[2], built on the western bank of the Tigris. Still further to the north were the later capitals, Calah and Nineveh, between which stood Resen or Res-eni, ‘the head of the fountain⁠[3].’ The country of Assyria differed essentially from the country of Babylonia, and this difference exercised an influence upon the character of the populations which dwelt in them. Assyria was a land of limestone hills and thick forests, and was watered by the Tigris and its affluents, which cut their way through channels of rock. Babylonia, on the other hand, was flat and marshy; its soil was rich and fertile, but the rivers and streams that intersected it could be prevented from flooding the country only by means of a carefully organized system of canals. The silt which was carried down to the sea was continually adding to the land, and causing the shores of the Persian Gulf to advance southwards; cities which stood on the sea-coast in the early days of Babylonian history are now left far inland.

The district adjoining the sea, however, was distinguished from the rest of Babylonia by the great salt-marshes which covered it. It was accordingly known as the land of Marratu, or ‘the salt-marshes,’ a name which appears in the Old Testament under the form of Merathaim⁠[4]. In its midst rose the ancestral city of Merodach-baladan, whose ambassadors were shown by Hezekiah all the treasures of the Jewish monarchy.

Merodach-baladan was a Chaldean. The Chaldeans, or Kaldâ, as they are called on the monuments, were a tribe which inhabited the salt-marshes, and we first hear of them in the ninth century before our era. Whether they belonged to the same Semitic race as the inhabitants of Babylon we do not know. But under Merodach-baladan they became famous in the Eastern world. Merodach-baladan made himself King of all Babylonia, and the Chaldeans became so integral and important an element in the population as henceforth to give it their name. From this time forward ‘Babylonian’ and ‘Chaldean’ became interchangeable terms.

The Babylonian race was by no means pure. The original inhabitants of the country had been the Accadians, or Sumerians, who spoke an agglutinative language like that of the modern Finns or Turks, and had been the authors of the cuneiform system of writing and of the culture of early Babylonia. They occupied both Accad, the northern division of Babylonia, and Sumer, or Shinar, its southern division. In Accad, however, they were subjected at an early epoch to the domination of Semitic tribes, whose first home had been in Arabia; in Sumer they held their ground for a longer period, and it is probable that the Semite did not succeed in superseding them in this part of the country until a comparatively recent time. The Semites of Babylonia were closely allied both in race and language to the Hebrews. It was from Ur of the Chaldees, now represented by the mounds of Mugheir, that Abraham had migrated, and the other cities of Babylonia must have been largely occupied by traders and settlers of the Semitic race.

Shortly after the age of Abraham the population of Babylonia became still further mixed, in consequence of the successful invasion of the country by certain tribes of Elam. The Kassi, as they are termed on the monuments, settled in numbers in the Babylonian plain, and established a dynasty of kings who ruled for several centuries. Accadian, Semite, and Kassite intermarried and mingled together, forming a hybrid population, which subsequently admitted into its midst the Chaldean tribes of the south. The people of Babylonia thus became what the English are to-day; one of the most mixed of populations, tracing their descent from races of various origin.

Of far purer blood were the Assyrians in the north. Out of the land of Sumer, or Shinar, we are told, Asshur went forth to found the Assyrian kingdom⁠[5]. It was a colony sent out by the Semitic part of the Babylonian population, and up to the last the Assyrians continued to represent both in appearance and character the pure Semitic type. The faces depicted on some of their monuments remind us of the Jewish faces we may meet with to-day in the more squalid streets of the great European cities.

Nature and descent accordingly combined to produce a difference between the inhabitants of Babylonia and of Assyria. The Babylonian was a stout, thick-set man, somewhat short, with straight nose, wide nostrils, and square face. The Assyrian, on the other hand, was tall and muscular, his nose was slightly hooked, his lips were full, his eyes dark and piercing. His head and face showed an abundance of black curly hair. Such a type was in striking contrast to that of the early Accadian figures which have come down to us. Here the face is long and thin, with a straight beard, not altogether unlike that represented on the faces of old men in Chinese art. What the peculiar characteristics of the Chaldean face may have been we have at present no means of deciding.

The Babylonian was essentially an irrigator and cultivator of the ground. The cuneiform texts are full of references to the gardens of Babylonia, and the canals by which they were watered. It was a land which brought forth abundantly all that was entrusted to its bosom. The palm was indigenous in it; so too, according to naturalists, was the wheat. Even in classical days the yield of Babylonian wheat was enormous. Herodotus tells us that it was sometimes as much as three hundredfold to the sower. But the fear of floods and the reclamation of the marsh lands demanded constant care and labour, the result being that the country population of Babylonia was, like the country population of Egypt, an industrious peasantry, wholly devoted to agricultural work, and disinclined for war and military operations. In the towns, where the Semitic element was stronger, a considerable amount of trade and commerce was carried on, and the cities on the sea-coast built ships and sent their merchantmen to distant lands. The Chaldeans, whose cry was in their ships⁠[6], despatched their trading fleets to the southern coasts of Arabia and the quarries of the Sinaitic peninsula, and even, it would appear, to the shores of India.

The character of the Assyrian was altogether different from that of the Babylonian. He was a warrior, a trader, and an administrator. The peaceful pursuits of the agricultural population of Babylonia suited him but little. His two passions were fighting and trading. But his wars, at all events in the later days of the Assyrian Empire, were conducted with a commercial object, and were not the meaningless displays of brute fury and the love of bloodshed which they have usually been imagined to be. It was to destroy the trade of the Phœnician cities and to divert it into Assyrian hands, that the Assyrian kings marched their armies to the west; it was to secure the chief highways of commerce that campaigns were made into the heart of Arabia and Assyrian satraps were appointed in the cities of Syria. The Assyrian was indeed irresistible as a soldier; but the motive that inspired him was as much the interest of the trader as the desire of conquest.

Unlike the Babylonian, he cared but little for education and literature. A knowledge of books was in Assyria confined to a few, more particularly the special class of scribes. A love of study is more likely to be developed among an agricultural than among a military people. Both Assyrians and Babylonians, however, were similar in one respect—they were both intensely religious. But here again we may note a difference between them. The religion of the Babylonians was far more mingled with superstition than was the religion of the Assyrians. While the Babylonian lived in hourly fear of the multitudinous demons which he believed to be ever on the watch to injure him, the Assyrian felt secure in the protection of his gods, above all, of the supreme god Asshur. When the Assyrian kings went forth to war it was with a firm confidence that they were fighting the battles of Asshur, and that Asshur would give them success. It is ‘through trust in Asshur,’ they are perpetually telling us, that they overcome all opposition, and compel the disobedient to acknowledge the power of the great Assyrian deity.

The Assyrians seem to have lived mostly in towns. The country was cultivated by slaves, or by the older population whom the Semitic colonists found there. At all events it was from the population of the towns that the army was recruited and the ranks of the official bureaucracy were supplied. Consequently when the power of the army and of the upper classes was broken no force was left capable of resisting the foe. The continual wars of the Assyrian monarch drained the kingdom of its military class, while the Assyrian colonies which were planted as garrisons in conquered provinces tended still further to diminish the dominant part of the population. When, therefore, evil days fell upon the monarchy, and the country was overrun by Scythian hordes from the north, the Assyrian army was no longer able to withstand them. The troops which had garrisoned the subject provinces of the empire were recalled home, but they did not prove sufficient to defend even Assyria itself. The Assyrian Empire fell because the population which had created and maintained it was exhausted. The Assyrian stock practically became extinct, the Assyrian cities became heaps of ruins, and new races occupied their sites. In this respect Assyria offered a conspicuous contrast to Babylonia. There the population continued unchanged in spite of revolution and foreign conquest. Dynasties and empires might rise and fall; but the people of the country still cultivated their fields or plied their trade and commerce as they had done centuries before. An agricultural population survives, while a military caste which governs by the sword is sure in the course of time to vanish away.