Asiatic world through which he wandered was Babylonian in civilisation
and government, and the Babylonian exile was the final turning-point in
the religious history of Judah. The Semitic Babylonians were allied in
race and language to the Hebrews; they had common ideas and common
points of view. Though Egyptian influence is markedly absent from the
Mosaic Code, we find in it old Semitic institutions and beliefs which
equally characterised Babylonia.

But the Semites were not the first occupants of Babylonia. The
civilisation of the country had been founded by a race which spoke an
agglutinative language, like that of the modern Finns or Turks, and
which scholars have now agreed to call Sumerian. The Sumerians had been
the builders of the cities, the reclaimers of the marshy plain, the
inventors of the picture-writing which developed into the cuneiform or
wedge-shaped characters, and the pioneers of a culture which profoundly
affected the whole of western Asia. The Semites entered upon the
inheritance, adopting, modifying, and improving upon it. The Babylonian
civilisation, with which we are best acquainted, was the result of this
amalgamation of Sumerian and Semitic elements.

Out of this mixture of Sumerians and Semites there arose a mixed people,
a mixed language, and a mixed religion. The language and race of
Babylonia were thus like those of England, probably also like those of
Egypt. Mixed races are invariably the best; it is the more pure-blooded
peoples who fall behind in the struggle for existence.

Recent excavations have thrown light on the early beginnings of
Babylonia. The country itself was an alluvial plain, formed by the silt
deposited each year by the Tigris and Euphrates. The land grows at the
rate of about ninety feet a year, or less than two miles in a century;