Babylonians and Assyrians

Babylonia, as we have seen, was essentially an industrial country. In spite of its agricultural basis and the vast army of slaves with which it was filled, it was essentially a...

As in other countries, so too in Babylonia, the official and the popular religion were not in all respects the same. In the popular faith older superstitions and beliefs still l...

Two principles struggled for recognition in Babylonian family life. One was the patriarchal, the other the matriarchal. Perhaps they were due to a duality of race; perhaps they...

The conception of the state in Babylonia was intensely theocratic. The kings had been preceded by high-priests, and up to the last they performed priestly functions, and represe...

We are apt to look upon letter-writing as a modern invention, some of us, perhaps, as a modern plague. But as a matter of fact it is an invention almost as old as civilization i...

One of the lesson-books used in the Babylonian nursery contains the beginning of a story, written in Sumerian and translated into Semitic, which describes the adventures of a fo...

Slavery was part of the foundation upon which Babylonian society rested. But between slavery as it existed in the ancient oriental world and slavery in the Roman or modern world...

Among the professions of ancient Babylonia, money-lending held a foremost place. It was, in fact, one of the most lucrative of professions, and was followed by all classes of th...

Babylonia was a land of bricks. Stone was not found nearer than the mountains of Elam on the one side or the desert plains of Northern Arabia on the other. Clay, on the contrary...

Babylonian law was of early growth. Among the oldest records of the country are legal cases, abstracts of which have been transcribed for future use. The first law-book, in fact...

Babylonia was the gathering-place of the nations. Berossus, the Chaldean historian, tells us that after the creation it was peopled by a mixture of races, and we read in the boo...

Recent scientific research has stimulated an increasing interest in the study of the Babylonians, Assyrians, and allied Semitic races of ancient history among scholars, students...