On the whole, it is most probable that the physical type of the later Babylonians was nearly that of their northern neighbors.  A somewhat sparer form, longer and more flowing hair, and features less stern and strong, may perhaps have characterized them.  They were also, it is probable, of a darker complexion than the Assyrians, being to some extent Ethiopians by descent, and inhabiting a region which lies four degrees nearer to the tropics than Assyria.  The Cha’ab Arabs, the present possessors of the more southern parts of Babylonia, are nearly black; and the “black Syrians,” of whom Strabo speaks, seem intended to represent the Babylonians.

Among the moral and mental characteristics of the people, the first place is due to their intellectual ability.  Inheriting a legacy of scientific knowledge, astronomical and arithmetical, from the Proto-Chaldaeans, they seem to have not only maintained but considerably advanced these sciences by their own efforts.  Their “wisdom and learning” are celebrated by the Jewish prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel; the Father of History records their valuable inventions; and an Aristotle was not ashamed to be beholden to them for scientific data.  They were good observers of astronomical phenomena, careful recorders of such observations, and mathematicians of no small repute.  Unfortunately, they mixed with their really scientific studies those occult pursuits which, in ages and countries where the limits of true science are not known, are always apt to seduce students from the right path, having attractions against which few men are proof, so long as it is believed that they can really accomplish the end that they propose to themselves.  The Babylonians were astrologers no less than astronomers; they professed to cast nativities, to expound dreams, and to foretell events by means of the stars; and though there were always a certain number who kept within the legitimate bounds of science, and repudiated the astrological pretensions of their brethren, yet on the whole it must be allowed that their astronomy was fatally tinged with a mystic and unscientific element.

In close connection with the intellectual ability of the Babylonians was the spirit of enterprise which led them to engage in traffic and to adventure themselves upon the ocean in ships.  In a future chapter we shall have to consider the extent and probable direction of this commerce.  It is sufficient to observe in the present place that the same turn of mind which made the Phoenicians anciently the great carriers between the East and West, and which in modern times has rendered the Jews so successful in various branches of trade, seems to have characterized the Semitized Babylonians, whose land was emphatically “a land of traffic,” and their chief city “a city of merchants.”