Babylonia was the seat of a civilization perhaps more hoary than that of Egypt.  The known remains of Babylonian art, however, are at present far fewer than those of Egypt and will probably always be so.  There being practically no stone in the country and wood being very scarce, buildings were constructed entirely of bricks, some of them merely sun-dried, others kiln-baked.  The natural wells of bitumen supplied a tenacious mortar. [Footnote:  Compare Genesis XI 3:  “And they had brick for stone and slime had they for mortar.”] The ruins that have been explored at Tello, Nippur, and elsewhere, belong to city walls, houses, and temples.  The most peculiar and conspicuous feature of the temple was a lofty rectangular tower of several stages, each stage smaller than the one below it.  The arch was known and used in Babylonia from time immemorial.  As for the ornamental details of buildings, we know very little about them except that large use was made of enameled bricks.

The only early Babylonian sculptures of any consequence that we possess are a collection of broken reliefs and a dozen sculptures in the round, found in a group of mounds called Tello and now in the Louvre.  The reliefs are extremely rude.  The statues are much better and are therefore probably of later date, they are commonly assigned by students of Babylonian antiquities to about 3000 B.C.  Fig. 15 reproduces one of them.  The material, as of the other statues found at the same place, is a dark and excessively hard igneous rock (dolerite).  The person represented is one Gudea, the ruler of a small semi-independent principality.  On his lap he has a tablet on which is engraved the plan of a fortress, very interesting to the student of military antiquities.  The forms of the body are surprisingly well given, even the knuckles of the fingers being indicated.  As regards the drapery, it is noteworthy that an attempt has been made to render folds on the right breast and the left arm.  The skirt of the dress is covered with an inscription in cuneiform characters.

Fig. 16 belongs to the same group of sculptures as the seated figure just discussed.  Although this head gives no such impression of lifelikeness as the best Egyptian portraits, it yet shows careful study.  Cheeks, chin, and mouth are well rendered.  The eyelids, though too wide open, are still good; notice the inner corners.  The eyebrows are less successful.  Their general form is that of the half of a figure 8 bisected vertically, and the hairs are indicated by slanting lines arranged in herring-bone fashion.  Altogether, the reader will probably feel more respect than enthusiasm for this early Babylonian art and will have no keen regret that the specimens of it are so few.

The Assyrians were by origin one people with the Chaldeans and were therefore a branch of the great Semitic family.  It is not until the ninth century B.C. that the great period of Assyrian history begins.  Then for two and a half centuries Assyria was the great conquering power of the world.  Near the end of the seventh century it was completely annihilated by a coalition of Babylonia and Media.