We have no evidence that camels were employed in the time of the
Empire, either by the Babylonians themselves or by their neighbors, the
Susianians; but in Upper Mesopotamia, in Syria, and in Palestine
they had been in use from a very early date. The Amalekitos and the
Midianites found them serviceable in war; and the latter people employed
them also as beasts of burden in their caravan trade. The Syrians of
Upper Mesopotamia rode upon them in their journeys. It appears that
they were also sometimes yoked to chariots, though from their size and
clumsiness they would be but ill fitted for beasts of draught.

Buffaloes were, it is probable, domesticated by the Babylonians at an
early date. The animal seems to have been indigenous in the country, and
it is far better suited for the marshy regions of Lower Babylonia and
Susiana than cattle of the ordinary kind. It is perhaps a buffalo which
is represented on an ancient tablet already referred to, where a lion
is disturbed in the middle of his feast off a prostrate animal by a man
armed with a hatchet. Cows and oxen, however, of the common kind are
occasionally represented on the cylinders [PLATE IX., Fig. 4.], where
they seem sometimes to represent animals about to be offered to the
gods. Goats also appear frequently in this capacity; and they were
probably more common than sheep, at any rate in the more southern
districts. Of Babylonian sheep we have no representations at all on the
monuments; but it is scarcely likely that a country which used wool so
largely was content to be without them. At any rate they abounded in the
provinces, forming the chief wealth of the more northern nations.




CHAPTEE III. THE PEOPLE.