onid kings added probably
other elements in small proportions, and the result was that among
all the nations inhabiting Western Asia there can have been none so
thoroughly deserving the title of a "mingled people" as the Babylonians
of the later Empire.

In mixtures of this kind it is almost always found that some one element
practically preponderates, and assumes to itself the right of fashioning
and forming the general character of the race. It is not at all
necessary that this formative element should be larger than any other;
on the contrary, it may be and sometimes is extremely small; for it does
not work by its mass, but by its innate force and strong vital energy.
In Babylonia, the element which showed itself to possess this superior
vitality, which practically asserted its pre-eminence and proceeded to
mold the national character, was the Semitic. There is abundant
evidence that by the time of the later Empire the Babylonians had become
thoroughly Semitized; so much so, that ordinary observers scarcely
distinguished them from their purely Semitic neighbors, the Assyrians.
No doubt there were differences which a Hippocrates or an Aristotle
could have detected--differences resulting from mixed descent, as
well as differences arising from climate and physical geography; but,
speaking broadly, it must be said that the Semitic element, introduced
into Babylonia from the north, had so prevailed by the time of the
establishment of the Empire that the race was no longer one sui generis,
but was a mere variety of the well-known and widely spread Semitic type.

We possess but few notices, and fewer assured representations, from
which to form an opinion of the physical characteristics of the
Babylonians. Except upon the cylinders, there are extant only three or
four representations of the human forms by Babylonian artists, and
in the few cases where this form occurs we cannot always feel at all
certain that the intention is to portray a human being. A few Assyrian
bas-reliefs probably represent campaigns in Babylonia; but the Assyrians
vary their human type so little that these sculptures must not be
regarded as conveying to us very exact information. Tho cylinders are
too rudely executed to be of much service, and they seem to preserve
an archaic type which originated with the Proto-Chaldaeans. If we might
trust the figures upon them as at all nearly representing the truth,
we should have to regard the Babylonians as of