THE PEOPLE.
"The Chaldaeans, that bitter and hasty nation."-- Habak.

1.

6.
The Babylonians, who, under Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, held the second place among the nations of the East, were emphatically a mixed race.

The ancient people from whom they were in the main descended--the Chaldaeans of the First Empire--possessed this character to a considerable extent, since they united Cusbite with Turanian blood, and contained moreover a slight Semitic and probably a slight Arian element.
But the Babylonians of later times--the Chaldaeans of the Hebrew prophets--must have been very much more a mixed race than their earlier namesakes--partly in consequence of the policy of colonization pursued systematically by the later Assyrian kings, partly from the direct influence exerted upon them by conquerors.

Whatever may have been the case with the Arab dynasty, which bore sway in the country from about B.C.1546 till B.C.1300, it is certain that the Assyrians conquered Babylon about B.C.1300, and almost certain that they established an Assyrian family upon the throne of Nimrod, which held for some considerable time the actual sovereignty of the country.