BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA While the influence of Egypt upon Israel may be described as negative, that of Babylonia was positive.

Abraham was a Babylonian by birth; the 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.