II. Their Condition and Occupations. It is probable that these mounds were not far from each other and that the adjacent fields were cultivated by the Jewish colonists. Thus they were enabled, under even more favorable conditions than in Judah, to continue in their old occupations and to build houses and rear families as Jeremiah had advised (Jer. 29; Section LXXXVII:35). In Babylonia, as at Elephantine, so long as they paid the imperial tax and refrained from open violence they were probably allowed to rule themselves in accordance with their own laws. The elders of the different families directed the affairs of the community and acted as judges, except in the case of capital offences which were punished in the name of Nebuchadrezzar (Jer. 29 22). Thus for a long time the exiles constituted a little Judah within the heart of the Babylonian empire, maintaining their racial integrity even more completely than the Jews resident in Egypt. Babylonia was the scene of an intense commercial activity. The opportunities and allurements of the far-reaching traffic which passed up and down the great rivers and across the neighboring deserts were eventually too strong for the Jews to resist. Hence in Babylonia, as in Egypt, they gradually abandoned their inherited agricultural habits and were transformed into a nation of traders. In the recently discovered records of the transactions of the famous Babylonian banking house which flourished during the earlier part of the Persian period, under the direction of succeeding generations of the Murashu family, are found many familiar Jewish names. These indicate that within a century after the fall of Jerusalem many sons of the exiles had already won a prominent place in the commercial life of that great metropolis.