departs. She rapidly sinks into insignificance, and, long before the Arabs overran Mesopotamia, all traces of Babylon and of the great centres of Babylonia had disappeared.
It will be apparent, from this sketch, that on the whole Babylonia was not a conquering power, but one that promoted civilization and the arts of peace. As a consequence, it is in the south that commerce takes on large proportions; that a noble architecture arises; that a notable litera- ture is produced, and that religious thought at- tains a remarkable degree of development. As already set forth in the article on Assyria (q.v.), the culture of Mesopotamia is distinctly a Baby- lonian product; and while, in the great temples at Babylon, Nippur, Sippar, Erech, Ur, etc., the old incantation rituals continued in force, there grew up by the side of the old ceremonies a view of divine government which, manifesting itself in hymns and prayers that breathe a lofty spirit, approaches close to a monotheistic conception of the universe, such as is found in the writings of the Hebrew prophets. The old local gods in the Babylonian cities do not disappear, but in the course of time they group themselves as a kind of court around the head of the pantheon, Marduk, to whom attributes and powers are assigned that seem to indicate a concentration of the powers of all the gods in his person.
For bibliography, see the article Assyria. Consult also: Winckler, Die politische Entwickelung Babyloniens und Assyriens (Leipzig, 1900), which is a capital sketch of the general course of Babylonian and Assyrian history; ibid., Die Völker Vorderasiens (Leipzig, 1899) ; Belck, Die Keilinschriften in der Tigris-Quellgrotte (Berlin, 1894-1901); Peiser, Skizze der babylonischen Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1896); Radau, Early History of Babylonia (Oxford and New York, 1900); Hilprecht, University of Pennsylvania Expeditions to Babylonia, Bulletins (Philadelphia, 1898-1901); Sayce, Babylonians and Assyrians (New York, 1899); Brinton, Protohistoric Ethnography of Western Asia (Philadelphia, 1895).
BAB'YLO'NIAN ART. The style of art
current in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates,
from the beginning of historic civilization until
the time of the Median Conquest, in about B.C.
500, during a period of 4000 years or more. Its
interest is increasing from the fact that it ap-
pears to represent the earliest artistic effort of
mankind in many branches, antedating the cul-
ture of Egypt by a considerable period. The
Babylonian temperament was, like the Egyptian,
traditional, and the changes in style were few
and conditioned largely by degrees of mastery
over technical processes — over materials and
implements. It was essentially a religious,
priestly art, and its monuments can hardly
be appreciated without a knowledge of Baby-
lonian literature, mythology, manners, and cus-
toms. So far as can be judged from the very
insufficient excavations, the periods of artistic
development were: (1) The pre-Sargonic era of
primitive art, crude, especially in its sculpture,
and with imperfect technical attainments. It ex-
tends to B.C. 3800. (2) The Age of Sargon, the
golden era, distinguished for broad style with
exquisite finish and perfection of technique. It
lasted from B.C. 3800 to 2800. (3) After the in-
terval of Elamite invasion came the Age of
Hammurabbi (B.C. 2200-1700), the silver era,
when Babylon was the centre of Mesopo- tamian civilization, when art was somewhat more stereotyped and careless. (4) The Kassite Age (from c. 1700 to c. 1000) with gradual com- plete decadence under a semi-barbarous dynasty, with loss of all reality and life, and final sub- servience to Assyrian art. (5) The Renaissance, under Nebuchadnezzar, when the ancient style of the best age, that of Sargon, was reproduced as closely as possible (c. 600 to 500 B.C.). The re- searches and excavations that have disclosed what we know of Babylonian art are detailed under article Babylonia. The Louvre Museum is the only one in Europe that contains many of the larger works; other collections being con- fined to terra-cottas and carved boundary-stones (British Museum, Berlin, etc.), and to engraved stones (Louvre, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; British Museum; Le Clercq collection; Metro- politan Museum, New York; etc.). The Museum of Constantinople is beginning, however, to receive a number from the latest excavations of Tel-lo, Babylon, Nippur, etc. The char- acteristic forms of Babylonian art are its brick architecture, with heavy masses of masonry and small vaulted interiors, with its lack of columns or piers or carved details, and its use of color surface decoration of faience, fresco, and hangings: its development of the industrial arts, especially of bronze casting, terracotta figurines, and reliefs and glyptics, or the cutting of hard and precious stones. Hitherto it is from these small objects, many thousands of which have been found, more than from the few pieces of large statuary and reliefs, that the character and continuity of Babylonian sculpture can be judged. (See Glyptic) The artistic in- fluence of Babylonia was widespread and strong. It is tolerably certain to have been exercised in the formation of Egyptian and Elamite art at a very early date. The comparison of the brick- making of the temple-pyramids and the statuary of the two countries are among the indications for Egypt. The few researches for pre-Median Elam prove the same thing for sculpture, but excavations have not yet gone deep enough to show what was the primitive Elamite architec- ture. Then, the Babylonian conquests on the Mediterranean carried Babylonian art to Syria, even to the island of Cyprus, and into Asia Minor among the Hittites. The Phœnicians not only copied it but carried it westward. Con- sidering that Assyrian art, also, was substan- tially a branch of Babylonian, it is clear that Babylonian art was not only supreme throughout Western Asia, but bore directly upon North Africa and the Pelasgians and other Ægean peoples, and therefore upon early Greek art. Its influence survived it in Persia and. through it, in the later Oriental art of Parthians and Mohammedans. Even China and India felt it.
Architecture. Architecture as a fine art was first practiced in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the region we call Babylonia. Here were worked out the earliest forms of re- ligious and civil structures. Everything had to be invented — materials, tools, methods, architec- tural forms, from the merest details to the broadest compositions. It was the same with the other arts utilized to assist in this develop- ment of architecture. The material used was brick, sun-dried and kiln-baked. The obvious reason for this was the absence both of stone
