Babylonian empire; Canaan was lost to it for ever, and eventually became
a province of Egypt. The high-priests of Assur, now Kaleh Sherghat, near
the confluence of the Tigris and Lower Zab, made themselves independent
and founded the kingdom of Assyria, which soon extended northward into
the angle formed by the Tigris and Upper Zab, where the cities of
Nineveh and Calah afterwards arose. The whole country had previously
been included by the Babylonians in Gutium or Kurdistan.

The population of Assyria seems to have been more purely Semitic than
that of Babylonia. Such at least was the case with the ruling classes.
It was a population of free peasants, of soldiers, and of traders. Its
culture was derived from Babylonia; even its gods, with the exception of
Assur, were of Babylonian origin. We look in vain among the Assyrians
for the peace-loving tendencies of the Babylonians; they were, on the
contrary, the Romans of the East. They were great in war, and in the
time of the Second Assyrian empire great also in law and administration.
But they were not a literary people; education among them was confined
to the scribes and officials, rather than generally spread as in
Babylonia. War and commerce were their two trades.

The Kassite conquerors of Babylonia soon submitted to the influences of
Babylonian civilisation. Like the Hyksos in Egypt, they adopted the
manners and customs, the writing and language, of the conquered people,
sometimes even their names. The army, however, continued to be mainly
composed of Kassite troops, and the native Babylonians began to forget
the art of fighting. The old claims to sovereignty in the west, however,
were never resigned; but the Kassite kings had to content themselves
with intriguing against the Egyptian government in Palestine, either
with disaffected Canaanites, or with the Hittites and Mitannians, while
at the same time they professed to be the firm friends of the Egyptian