MESOPOTAMIA THE EARLIEST CIVILIZATION KNOWN—FAINT TRACES
OF CHILD-SACRIFICE—LAWS FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN—CENSUS
FIGURES IN STONES—CODE OF HAMMURABI—THE STORY OF SARGON.
Our great grandfathers who accepted the chronology of the good Bishop
Usher, by which the creation of the world was placed neatly and exactly
at 4004 years before Christ, would never have dreamed of such periods
of time as those the ethnologist, in his search for the natural history
of man, compasses today in the annals of a single family, like the
so-called, and at present discredited, Aryan. Nor yet would it have
seemed possible to our grandfathers, that modern archæology would have
made it possible for our savants and scientists to be today correcting
the mistakes of Herodotus, and showing by their decipherings of
new-found inscriptions and monuments, that before the earliest Greeks,
the Egyptians, and even the Semitic peoples who inhabited Babylon and
Assyria, there was another people,—a people whose origin it is not
possible to place even now,—the Sumerians and Akkadians, who in the
fourth millennial period B. C. were already a cultured and civilized
people.
Recent excavations have changed the entire historical attack. Instead
of beginning with the Homeric Age as an age of legend, “civilization
may now be traced beyond the Mycenæan epoch, through the different
stages of Ægean culture back into the Neolithic Age.”[121] In Egypt we
can now go back before the pyramid builders to the earliest dynastic
kings, even to Neolithic Egyptians of whom there are no written
records. Back of the known civilization of Assyria and Babylon, there
has been discovered an even older civilization.
“On the northern and eastern confines of the Babylonian culture-system,
new nations pass within our ken; Vannic men of Armenia, ruled by
powerful kings; Kassites of the Zagros, whose language seems to contain
elements which if really Aryan are probably the oldest known monuments
of Indo-European speech (c. 1600 B. C.); strange tongued Elamites, also,
akin neither to Iranian nor Semite. Nor does it seem to us remarkable
that we should read the trilingual proclamations of Darius Hystaspis to
his peoples in their original tongues, although an eighteenth century
philosopher would have regarded the prospect of our ever being able to
do so as the wildest of chimeras!”[122]
Recent excavations have established the fact that the earliest known
civilization was in what afterwards came to be known as Mesopotamia,
between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and that groups of people living
in cities and calling themselves, in the lower section of the country,
the Sumerians, and in the upper section, the Akkadians, dwelt in
civilized state until they were conquered by the Semitic peoples. The
Semites in their conquest of the Greeks, as we now know, took from the
conquered the culture of the race that was physically weaker, as indeed
the Gauls did from the Romans.
In government, law, literature, and art the Sumerians were the
superior people, and though the Semites improved on their models, the
impulse, says King, came from the Sumerians.[123] It is now known that
Hammurabi’s Code of Laws, which influenced in so marked a degree the
Mosaic legislation, was of Sumerian origin, and the later religions and
mythological literature from which the Hebrews borrowed so freely, was
also of Sumerian origin.
Even with the excavations that are now going on and the discoveries
that are being made almost daily, our evidence is still too scanty and
imperfect, the gaps in it are too numerous,[124] as Professor Sayce
says, apropos of the Babylonian religion, to make it possible for us to
discuss with any definiteness the attitude of these first civilized
peoples toward children. Years will pass before the tablets already in
the museums will have been deciphered, to say nothing of those that are
being dug out now. A library of 30,000 tablets was discovered by M. de
Srazec at Telloh in Northern Babylonia, at Nippur in the great temple
of Bel, and five times as many were discovered later by the American
excavators. Once the British Museum was the sole repository of these
treasures, containing everything from business contracts to prayers to
the gods, but now they are in the Louvre, the Berlin Museum, the Museum
of Constantinople, the University of Pennsylvania, and even in private
collections.
From these Semitic conquerors of the Sumerians, however, there came the
first civilization and the first humanization, for in this rich valley
with its abundance of water and its rich soil, the Nomads became an
agricultural people; there was plenty for all, and the germ of human
tolerance that the world was to show later toward the child, was there
in that long ago pre-Semitic civilization of Babylonia.
Traces there are, however, of an earlier attitude, when the first-born
was sacrificed. Speaking of a Babylonian text, that he believed
established the fact that there were sacrifices of the first-born among
the Sumerians, Professor Sayce said:
“My interpretation of the text has been disputed, but it still appears
to me to be the sole legitimate one. The text is bilingual, in both
Sumerian and Semitic, and therefore probably goes back to Sumerian
times. Literally rendered, it is as follows: ‘Let the _abgal_ proclaim:
the offspring who raises his head among men, the offspring for his life
he must give; the head of his head among men, the offspring for the
head of the man he must give, the neck of the offspring for the neck of
the man he must give, the breast of the offspring for the breast of the
man he must give.’” It is difficult to attach any other meaning to this
than that which makes it refer to the sacrifice of children.[125]
Further corroboration of this belief of Professor Sayce was furnished
by the recently dug up Stele of the Vultures, now in the Louvre. Here
there is a representation of a wicker cage, filled with captives who
are waiting to be put to death by the god Ningirsu, who holds in his
hand the heraldic emblem of the city of Lagash. The Stele of the
Vultures records the triumph of the King of Lagash, the great Eannatum,
over the men of Umma who are undoubtedly the captives and are about to
be sacrificed.[126] These few examples of human sacrifice indicate,
however, that the practice had disappeared at an early date, but, as we
shall see, it did not entirely disappear, or rather reappeared among
the Semites of Palestine at a later period.[127]
[Illustration: A POMEIOC CHIEFTAIN’S WIFE AND CHILD
(FROM THE ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR DRAWING IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM BY JOHN
WHITE, GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA IN 1587)]
[Illustration: ESKIMO MOTHER CARRYING INFANT IN HER HOOD
(FROM ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR DRAWING IN BRITISH MUSEUM BY JOHN WHITE,
GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA, 1587)]
More positive knowledge, however, we have of the Sumerian laws, laws
it should be remembered that tell of a civilization 1000 years before
the Chinese.
That there was a sense of justice in Sumer and Akkad long before the
period of Hammurabi, is evident from the inscriptions found at Tello by
Gerzec. Inscriptions of the year 3500 B. C., according to Cuq, and about
the year 2800, according to Kang, show that Hammurabi was indebted to
the reform king, Urukagina, for many of his laws. Urukagina declared
that the people had rights, and even went so far as to say that if the
king bought the property of a subject, he must pay for it. We have many
tablets telling of the wonderful things that he did, but the one reform
which indicates that he had a regard for the family, and consequently,
there was probably more care for children, is that provision of his
laws which deals with divorce.
In telling of his reforms in these inscriptions, Urukagina records the
fact that under the old régime, if a man put away his wife, he paid the
_patesi_ five shekels of silver and gave one to the grand vizir.
Undoubtedly in the beginning, the object of these fees was to prevent
the nobles, and through them by force of example, the plain people,
from putting away their wives too easily. In other words there was a
desire to hold together the old Sumerian family. In the course of time,
however, this became merely a bribe, for as the economic conditions
improved, the money became not so much a deterrent as a bribe. One of
the things that Urukagina did was to abolish the fees of divorce, and
to attempt to stamp out practices that were growing up.
Tablets of the time of Urukagina and his predecessor, Lugalanda,
translated by M. de Genouillac, give some indication of what the family
condition was, although we still have to guess as to what was the
real attitude toward children. Women were important; they could hold
property and they were protected in their property rights by law. This
in itself might indicate that there were no such primeval practices as
exposing or drowning female children. Among these tablets of Tello,
is a series telling what provision was made for the women who were
attached to the Temple of Bau, the goddess to whom the great ruler
prays, as:
“... The one that grantest life unto the land....
“Thou art the Queen, the mother that founded Lagash.”[128] In these
tablets the name of each woman is followed with the number of infants
belonging to her family, and their sex. In all, two hundred and
twenty-nine infants are enumerated, of which ninety-seven are boys and
one hundred and thirty-two, girls. Five hundred and fifty-two women
are named, but before coming to a conclusion as to the percentage this
shows of children to mothers, it is well, as de Genouillac points
out,[129] to remember that among these five hundred and fifty-two women
there were many young girls. Some idea of the size of the Sumerian
family may be obtained from the fact that the number of infants charged
to a single mother is seldom more than four. Once the number seven
occurs, but this is in connection with the wife of the king, and two of
these children would seem to have been adopted.
“The education of a large number of infants,” concluded de Genouillac,
“was encouraged by the pension for mothers.” Here indeed was
progress!—at a time when there was nothing but barbarism everywhere
else in the world.
It is interesting to note in these same tablets the fact that the wife
of the king or the _patesi_ was of great importance, for all documents
signed by Lugalanda bear the name of his wife, Barnamtarra, and those
under Urukagina have the signature of his wife, Sagsag. It is more
than likely too, that the service mentioned above as being for the
Temple of Bau, was for the goddess’s representative, the Queen Sagsag.
Another tablet, in which are set forth the expenses of the servants who
were apparently more attached to the queen, speaks of thirty infants
to fifty-seven women,[130] and in this and other tablets the frequent
reference to the orphans who were being taken care of, shows that
there was provision for the infant whose immediate protectors had
passed away.
In the Imperial Museum at Constantinople two tablets show that parents
were free to sell their children and that these sales were frequent
matters of legal adjudication four centuries before Hammurabi. Tablet
No. 830, excavated at Tello, is imperfect, but there is enough of it to
show us that in the month of the fête of the goddess Bau, the daughter
of Ab-ba-gi-na was sold by her father, and the sale was confirmed and
properly sworn to and then registered. In Tablet No. 925, we have the
sale of a daughter to a cook, by a widow who was probably in hard
straits. The daughter tries to break the contract and the mother stands
by her, but the cook brings two witnesses who prove that the sale took
place and was a proper one; as a result of this attempted fraud, the
master then inflicts punishment on the slave.[131]
As a further evidence of the humanity of the Sumerians, we have the
fact that, like the Egyptians, they had a god who presided over the
_accouchements_, a god who corresponded in some ways to the Hera of the
Greeks and the Juno of the Latins, but who had other and more kindly
functions, and was there to ameliorate pain and apparently to protect
the young. Among the Greeks and Romans the young were never thought of
except as the property of adults, whose interest always came first.
In fact, among the Babylonians and Egyptians, there was this essential
difference, that the goddess was really a midwife. Among the Sumerians,
she was known as Belitile, and was afterwards identified with Mama, the
goddess of the young; and in two texts translated by P. Dhorme,[132]
the two are referred to as one. Later on the two goddesses were
absorbed by the all-powerful Istar.
It was in December, 1901, that M. J. de Morgan, Director-General of
the expedition sent out by the French Government, while excavating
the acropolis of Susa, found three large fragments of a block of
black diorite among the debris.[133] When fitted together these three
fragments formed a stele eight feet high, on the upper end of the front
side of which was a bas-relief showing the sun-god, Shamash, presenting
the Code of Laws to the king, Hammurabi.
Under this bas-relief was the longest cuneiform Semitic inscription
yet recovered, having sixteen columns of text of which four and a
half formed the prologue. On the reverse of the stele there were
twenty-eight columns, the entire inscription being estimated by Johns
to contain “forty-nine columns four thousand lines, and eight thousand
words.”[134]
Hammurabi, identified by Assyriologists as the Amraphael of Genesis
xiv., 1, was the sixth King of the dynasty of Babylon, reigning over
fifty-five years, about 2250 B. C., and the first king to consolidate
the Semitic empire, making Babylon the capital.[135]
There are two periods in the history of humanity: one when the morals
make the laws, and one when the laws change the morals. The Code of
Hammurabi, the oldest known code in the world, belongs to the second
period.[136]
While it appears from the prologue and epilogue of the Code that
Hammurabi was deeply devoted to religion and was, in addition to being
king, a pious, God-fearing man, one who destroyed his enemies North
and South, the Code is strictly devoted to civil and secular affairs.
Nevertheless, scarcely anything is known of the laws of the time
dealing with crimes, nothing having been discovered to show how murder
or theft was treated.[137]
Hammurabi’s Code is undoubtedly a compilation and, while he enacted
fresh laws, he built for the most part on the foundations of other men.
In the Sumerian days that preceded these Semitic kings, of whom
Hammurabi, Sargon I., and Lugalzaggisi were the greatest, there were
codes of laws on which Hammurabi doubtless built. The attitude taken
toward children in this period is indicated in extracts from the
series called _ana ittisu_, the seven tablets of the series giving the
following seven laws:
“I. If a son has said to his father, ‘You are not my father,’ he may
brand him, lay fetters upon him, and sell him.
“II. If a son has said to his mother, ‘You are not my mother,’ one
shall brand his forehead, drive him out of the city, and make him go
out of the house.
“III. If a father has said to his son, ‘You are not my son,’ he shall
leave house and yard.
“IV. If a mother has said to her son, ‘You are not my son,’ he shall
leave house and property.
“V. If a wife hates her husband and has said, ‘You are not my husband,’
one shall throw her into the river.
“VI. If a husband has said to his wife, ‘You are not my wife,’ he shall
pay half a mina of silver.
“VII. If a man has hired a slave and he dies, is lost, has fled, has
been incapacitated, or has fallen sick, he shall measure out 10 _ka_ of
corn _per diem_ as his wages.”[138]
From this it will be observed that if the son repudiates his parent,
real or adoptive, he meets with a swift and heavy punishment. On the
other hand, a father and mother have the power to drive the child
out without any ceremony whatever. That such laws were the result of
the disposition of foundling children is without question. We will
see later that the Roman Empire in its endeavour to save the lives
of children, was continually attempting legislative reforms for the
purpose of giving men and women incentive to protect the helpless
infant that had been deserted by its own parents.
Adoption was an ancient institution, and the rights of the man who
adopted the infant were protected in order that he might be paid for
the trouble and expense of his charge.[139]
The adoption of children in the Code of Hammurabi is the subject of
much minute regulation. In the Code the endeavour to protect the father
who picks up a child, is shown in paragraphs 185, 186, 187 and 188:
“185. If a man take in his name a young child as a son and rear him,
one may not bring claim for that adopted son.
“186. If a man take a young child as a son, and, when he takes him, he
is rebellious toward his father and mother (who have adopted him), that
adopted son shall return to the house of his father.
“187. One may not bring claim for the son of a NER. SE. GA, who is a
palace guard, or the son of a devotee.
“188. If an artisan take a son for adoption and teach him his
handicraft, one may not bring claim for him.”[140]
Coming down to a later period, we may see the influence of other
peoples on the Babylonians in the _Assyrian Doomsday Book_ or _Liber
Censualis_, copied from the cuneiform tablets of the seventh century,
B. C.[141] Sixty-eight families are enumerated in these tablets, and
to these sixty-eight husbands there are allotted ninety-four wives.
Seventy-four sons are mentioned and only twenty-six daughters, a
proportion that is extremely suspicious. That there was no such
slaughter of the females as we find in other countries, is shown
by the fact that in some of the families enumerated there were as
many as three daughters to one son, but the majority of the families
were without female children and had one or two sons, an evenness of
distribution which would lead one to surmise that the people of the
district of Harran, where this census was taken, were regulating the
birthrate themselves.
Of this period too, is the story of Sargon the younger—a legend that is
interesting not alone because of its similarity to that of Moses, but
because it shows that this section of the country had also fallen into
the ways of the rest of the world. Here, at the time of the legend, it
was a common thing for a child to run the risks of exposure and death.
As an indication of the conditions a thousand years later, we may take
the certificate of adoption cited by Dr. Rogers, of the time of King
Kurigalzu who reigned in Babylon from about 1390 B. C. to 1375.
“Ina-Uruk-rishat, daughter of (mu) shallim, had no daughter and
therefore she adopted Etirtu, daughter of Ninib-mushallim, as her
daughter. Seven shekels of gold she gave. She may give her to a
husband, she may appoint her a temple slave, _but_ she may not make
her a servant. If she does make her a servant, Etirtu shall go to her
father’s house. As long as Ina-Uruk-rishat lives, Etirtu shall pay her
reverence. When Ina-Uruk-rishat dies, Etirtu, as her daughter, shall
offer the water libation. If Ina-Uruk-rishat should say, ‘Thou art not
my daughter,’ she shall lose the gold which she has paid. If Etirtu
should say, ‘Thou art not my mother,’ she shall become a servant. There
shall no claim be made. Before Ellil, Ninib, Nusku, and King Kurigalzu
they have made oath together.
“Before Damkum, her uncle on the mother’s side. Before Rabasha-Ninib.
Before Ellil-ibni, son of Ellil-ishu. Before Etel-pi-Azagshug, son of
Amel-Marduk; before Rish-Marduk, son of Ba’il-Nusku; before Arad-Belit,
the scribe, son of Ninib-mushallim. The fifth day of Shebat, the
twenty-first year of Kurigalzu, king of the world.”[142]
From another point of view we may also understand the Babylonian
morality. As a characteristic it is interesting to note “that the
general modesty of the Babylonian art, in the matter of clothes, is
very marked,” says Ward, “we never see any display of Phallism.”[143]
That the influence and importance of the women had much to do with the
character of these people is undoubtedly true.
They were a truly remarkable people of whom we are yet to learn a great
deal. Future excavations may reveal much, but up to now “the abundant
literature of Babylon,” says Dussaud, “does not offer a single example
of human sacrifice and yet one has the right to suppose that it was
common among them.”[144]