Hebrew scriptures, along with many Babylonian chronicles of their own history, make it possible to confidently date the Babylon city-state from 1867 B.C. to the 7th Century A.D. Magyars, on the other hand, were documented by European writers only as they migrated into Western Europe from a region near the Ural Mountains around the 5th Century A.D. Much of what is known about them prior to that migration has been inferred, but there is little certainty about their genealogy or when they became aware of themselves specifically as Magyar.
Babylon is in present-day Iraq, around 80 miles south of Baghdad. It is an alluvial plain along the parallel routes of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers; the city was built to straddle the Euphrates. Both rivers flooded annually, leaving deposits of rich soil. By contrast, Magyars, prior to their Western migration, resided in the Southern Ural Mountains in the area that now encompasses parts of Russia and Kazakhstan. At the time, this region was heavily forested. The Southern Urals were steeply mountainous with many streams and natural lakes.
Babylon was organized around agriculture in the fertile plain between the rivers. Families were stably situated on plots of land and subject to the fortunes and misfortunes of weather. Like the Turks and Mongols, Magyars relied on horses for transport, mounts and some food (meat and milk). Magyars were hunters and fishermen, living in bands that could move easily to follow prey or escape uncomfortable conditions.
Babylon was a city-state, economically stratified and reliant on agricultural goods from the countryside. Tillers in the countryside paid taxes in the form of agricultural tribute, and were subject to the control of Babylonian militia that eventually became a fearsome conquering army that built an empire. Magyars were egalitarian among themselves, though they did capture slaves from summer raids on other peoples. Their eventual assimilation into Western Europe (Hungary) entailed an assimilation into the Feudal economy – also an agricultural tributary economy – of Western Europe.
Distinctions based on gender and class were pronounced in Babylon. Women were considered chattel and the segregation between nobility, warriors and peasants was brutally enforced. It was a system governed by written law. Religious belief was polytheistic, deriving from their ancestors among the Akkadians and Sumerians. Among the Magyars there was a distributive economy within bands, and women exercised considerable agency in the life of the band. To this day, the Hungarian language – a derivative of Magyar – does not have the pronouns “he” and “she.” Early Magyars were pananimists (believing spirits inhabited many things) and ancestor worshippers.