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.