national life. The excavations at Babylon have thus thrown some direct light upon the condition of the city during the period at which it first became the capital. It is true that no portion of a royal or sacred building as yet identified antedates the later Assyrian Empire, and that, as the result of extensive reconstruction, the ruins of temples, palaces and city-walls are mainly those of the Neo-Babylonian period. But there was no great break in continuity between that epoch and its predecessors, so that, when due allowance has been made for certain innovations, the buildings of the later period may be treated as typical of Babylonian civilization as a whole. We have seen how the streets of Babylon followed the same lines throughout the whole of her dynastic period, and a similar spirit of conservatism no doubt characterized her architectural development. Temples were rebuilt again and again on the old sites, and even in the Neo-Babylonian period they retained the mud-brick walls and primitive decoration of their remote predecessors. Indeed, the conditions of life in Babylonia precluded any possibility of drastic change. The increased use of burnt brick in the upper structure of the royal palaces rendered possible the brilliant enamelling of the Neo-Babylonian craftsmen. But, even as late as Nabopolassar's reign, the thick mud-brick walls of the king's dwelling must have resembled those of Hammurabi himself: it was mainly in point of size that the earlier palace and city differed from those of later monarchs. And when we examine the successive periods of the country's history, we shall find that tradition exerted an equally powerful influence in retaining unaltered the essential features of the national life. It was under her earliest dynasty that Babylon worked out in detail a social organization that suited her agricultural and commercial activities; and it is a remarkable tribute to its founders that it should have survived the shock of foreign domination and have imposed its mould upon later generations. [Footnote 1: Rogers points out that the rabbi's account of Babylon seems to lack the little touches which betray the record of an eye-witness, and he compares it with the same traveller's descriptions of Mosul and Baghdad. By far the best and fullest account of the early explorers of Babylonia is that given by Rogers in his "History of Babylonia and Assyria," Vol. 1., pp. 84 ff.] [Footnote 2: See Hakluyt, "The Principall navigations voiages and discoveries of the English nation," ed. 1589, p. 232; ed. Goldsmid, Vol. X., "Asia," Pt. III. (1889), p. 63.]