Both Babylonian and Assyrian were religious, but here again we find differences due to environment. The Babylonian, inheriting the conjuring and magic of the earlier Chaldean, possessed a religion which held him in constant dread of demons. The greatest aid and solace his religion afforded was to assist him in driving away foes which assailed him at every turn. The Assyrian on the contrary, showed the same proud bearing in his religious concerns as in other aspects of life. Asshur was his mighty God, strong in battle and unequaled in courage. Firm in his conviction that Asshur would give him victory, he went forth, like his Hebrew brother, to overcome all others and destroy other gods which offended the true God. In origin and traditions alike, the Assyrian and the Hebrew in early times present many similarities, and the religion of the one is comparable at many points with that of the other. HOUSES. It is supposed that in earliest times the dwellers in the Euphrates valley built their huts of reeds which grew in profusion along the river and the canals. These in time were replaced by huts of sun-dried brick. We have already learned that the low level plains of Babylonia afforded little or no stone for building purposes. Oven-dried brick was the most substantial building material known and this was so costly, on account of the scarcity of fuel, that only the temples, kings' palaces, and homes of the wealthy were made of it. The great majority of houses then, were constructed of clay mud, shaped in bricks and dried in the sun. The more pretentious dwellings of nobles and kings were placed on artificially constructed heights--huge piles of brickwork, in order to raise them above the gnats and the malaria-breeding fogs of the marshes. The huts of the poor were located wherever opportunity offered. While these contained but one or two rooms with small apertures in the clay walls for windows, and had no floor save the ground, the houses of the wealthy were frequently several stories high, the upper floors being reached by outside stairways. The use of the arch was known in Babylonia from 4000 B.C., a perfect keystone example having been found at Nippur by the University of Pennsylvania expedition. Windows were furnished with tapestries to exclude the storms and intense heat of noonday. Flat roofs supplied a place for the women to perform many household duties, or, if these were performed by slaves elsewhere, they sat here to embroider their tapestries and to chat with their friends. Here too, on hot nights, mattresses were thrown down for the hours of sleep. Wherever possible a garden surrounded the house. The pride of the Babylonian, as of the Egyptian, was his carefully tended garden, whether it was a tiny plot of land or a vast overhanging terrace like that of Babylon's queen.