*Babylonians And Assyrians*
Life And Customs
By The
Rev. A. H. Sayce
Professor of Assyriology at Oxford
London
John C. Nimmo
14 King William Street, Strand
MDCCCC
CONTENTS
Editor’s Preface
Chapter I. Babylonia And Its Inhabitants
Chapter II. The Family
Chapter III. Education And Death
Chapter IV. Slavery And The Free Laborer
Chapter V. Manners And Customs
Chapter VI. Trades, Houses, And Land; Wages And Prices
Chapter VII. The Money-Lender And Banker
Chapter VIII. The Government And The Army
Chapter IX. The Law
Chapter X. Letter-Writing
Chapter XI. Religion
Appendix: Weights And Measures
Index
Footnotes
SERIES ADVERTISEMENT.
Series of Handbooks in Semitics
Edited By
James Alexander Craig
Professor of Semitic Languages and Literatures and Hellenistic Greek,
University of Michigan
Recent scientific research has stimulated an increasing interest in the
study of the Babylonians, Assyrians, and allied Semitic races of ancient
history among scholars, students, and the serious reading public
generally. It has provided us with a picture of a hitherto unknown
civilization, and a history of one of the great branches of the human
family. The object of the present Series is to state its results in
popularly scientific form. Each work is complete in itself, and the
Series, taken as a whole, neglects no phase of the general subject. Each
contributor is a specialist in the subject assigned him, and has been
chosen from the body of eminent Semitic scholars both in Europe and
America.
The Series will be composed of the following volumes:—
I. *Hebrews. History and Government.* By Professor J. F. McCurdy,
University of Toronto, Canada.
II. *Hebrews. Ethics and Religion.* By Professor Archibald Duff, Airedale
College, Bradford.
III. *The Sumerians. Language, History, and Religion.* By Professor Fritz
Hommel, University of Munich, Germany.
IV. *Babylonians and Assyrians. History to the Fall of Babylon.* By
Professor Fritz Hommel, University of Munich, Germany.
V. *Babylonians and Assyrians. Religion.* By Professor J. A. Craig,
University of Michigan.
VI. *Babylonians and Assyrians. Life and Customs.* (With special reference
to the Contract Tablets and Letters.) By Professor A. H. Sayce, University
of Oxford. _Now Ready._
VII. *Babylonians and Assyrians. Excavations and Account of Decipherment
of Inscriptions.* By Professor A. V. Hilprecht, University of
Pennsylvania.
VIII. *Arabia. Discoveries in, and History and Religion until Mohammed.*
By Dr. Eduard Glazer, University of Munich, Germany.
IX. *Development of Islamic Theology, Jurisprudence, and Theory of the
State.* By Professor D. B. MacDonald, Hartford Theological Seminary.
In addition to the above the following volumes are to be included in the
Series, and others may be added from time to time:—
X. *Phœnicia. History and Government, including Colonies, Trade, and
Religion.*
XI. *Palestine and Syria. Important Discoveries in Recent Years.*
XII. *Arabic Literature and Science Since Mohammed.*
XIII. *The Influence of Semitic Art and Mythology on Western Nations.*
EDITOR’S PREFACE
Semitic studies, both linguistically and archæologically, have advanced by
rapid strides during the last two decades. Fresh light has fallen upon the
literary, scientific, theological, mercantile, and other achievements of
this great branch of the human family. What these peoples thought and
achieved has a very direct bearing upon some of the problems that lie
nearest to the hearts of a large portion of the intelligent peoples of
Christendom to-day. Classical studies no longer enjoy a monopoly of
attention in the curricula of our colleges and universities. It is, in
fact, more and more plainly perceived by scholars that among the early
peoples who have contributed to the ideas inwrought into our present
civilization there is none to whom we owe a greater debt than we do to the
Semitic family. Apart from the genetic relation which the thought of these
peoples bears to the Christianity of the past and present, a study of
their achievements in general has become a matter of general human
interest. It is here that we find the earliest beginnings of civilization
historically known to us—here that early religious ideas, social customs
and manners, political organizations, the beginnings of art and
architecture, the rise and growth of mythological ideas that have endured
and spread to western nations, can be seen in their earliest stages, and
here alone the information is supplied which enables us to follow them
most successfully in their development.
The object of this series is to present, in brief and compact form, a
knowledge of the more important facts in the history of this family in a
way that will be serviceable to students in colleges, universities, and
theological seminaries, to the clergy, and to intelligent lay readers.
It has been the good fortune of the Editor and Publishers to secure the
interest and co-operation of scholars who are fitted by their special
knowledge of the subjects entrusted to them. Works written on Semitic
subjects by those whose knowledge is gained from other than the original
sources are sure to be defective in many ways. It is only the specialist
whose knowledge enables him to take a comprehensive view of the entire
field in which he labors who is able to gain the perspective necessary for
the production of a general work which will set forth prominently, and in
their proper relations, the salient and most interesting facts.
Each contributor to the Series presents his contribution subject to no
change by the Editor. In cases where it may be deemed of sufficient
importance to notice a divergent view this will be done in a foot-note.
The authors, however, will aim to make their several contributions
consistent with the latest discoveries.
James Alexander Craig.
University of Michigan,
_September, 1899._
CHAPTER I. BABYLONIA AND ITS INHABITANTS
Babylonia was the gathering-place of the nations. Berossus, the Chaldean
historian, tells us that after the creation it was peopled by a mixture of
races, and we read in the book of Genesis that Babel, or Babylon, was the
first home of the manifold languages of mankind. The country for the most
part had been won from the sea; it was the gift of the two great rivers,
Euphrates and Tigris, which once flowed separately into the Persian Gulf.
Its first settlers must have established themselves on the desert plateau
which fringes the Babylonian plain rather than in the plain itself.
The plain is formed of the silt deposited each year by the rivers that
flow through it. It is, in fact, as much a delta as Northern Egypt, and is
correspondingly fertile. Materials exist for determining approximately the
rate at which this delta has been formed. The waters of the Persian Gulf
are continually receding from the shore, and Ainsworth(1) calculates that
about ninety feet of land are added annually to the coast-line. But the
rate of deposit seems to have been somewhat more rapid in the past. At all
events, Mohammerah, which in 1835 was forty-seven miles distant from the
Gulf, stands on the site of Spasinus Charax, which, in the time of
Alexander the Great, was not quite a mile from the sea. In 2,160 years,
therefore, no less than forty-six miles of land have been formed at the
head of the Persian Gulf, or nearly one hundred and fifteen feet each
year.
The deposit of soil, however, may not have been so rapid in the
flourishing days of Babylonian history, when the canals were carefully
attended to and the irrigation of the country kept under control. It is
safer, therefore, to assume for the period preceding the rise of the
Macedonian Empire a rate of deposit of not more than one hundred feet each
year. The seaport of primitive Chaldea was Eridu, not far from Ur, and as
the mounds of Abu-Shahrein or Nowâwis, which now mark its site, are nearly
one hundred and thirty miles from the present line of coast, we must go
back as far as 6500 B.C. for the foundation of the town. “Ur of the
Chaldees,” as it is called in the Book of Genesis, was some thirty miles
to the north, and on the same side of the Euphrates; the ruins of its
great temple of the Moon-god are now known by the name of Muqayyar or
Mugheir. It must have been founded on the sandy plateau of the Arabian
desert at a time when the plain enclosed between the Tigris and the
Euphrates was still too marshy for human habitation. As the Moon-god of Ur
was held to be the son of El-lil of Nippur, Dr. Peters is doubtless right
in believing that Ur was a colony of the latter city. Nippur is the modern
Niffer or Nuffar in the north of Babylonia, and recent excavations have
shown that its temple was the chief sanctuary and religious centre of the
civilized eastern world in the earliest epoch to which our records reach.
Eridu, Ur, and Nippur seem to have been the three chief cities of primeval
Babylonia. As we shall see in a future chapter, Eridu and Nippur were the
centres from which the early culture and religion of the country were
diffused. But there was an essential difference between them. Ea, the god
of Eridu, was a god of light and beneficence, who employed his divine
wisdom in healing the sick and restoring the dead to life. He had given
man all the elements of civilization; rising each morning out of his
palace under the waters of the deep, he taught them the arts and sciences,
the industries and manners, of civilized life. El-lil of Nippur, on the
contrary, was the lord of the underworld; magical spells and incantations
were his gifts to mankind, and his kingdom was over the dead rather than
the living. The culture which emanated from Eridu and Nippur was thus of a
wholly different kind. Is it possible that the settlers in the two cities
were of a different race?
Of this there is no proof. Such evidence as we have tells against it. And
the contrast in the character of the cultures of Eridu and Nippur can be
explained in another way. Eridu was a seaport; its population was in
contact with other races, and its ships traded with the coasts of Arabia.
The myth which told how Ea or Oannes had brought the elements of
civilization to his people expressly stated that he came from the waters
of the Persian Gulf. The culture of Eridu may thus have been due to
foreign intercourse; Eridu was a city of merchants and sailors, Nippur of
sorcerer-priests.
Eridu and Nippur, however, alike owed their origin to a race which we will
term Sumerian. Its members spoke agglutinative dialects, and the primitive
civilization of Babylonia was their creation. They were the founders of
its great cities and temples, the inventors of the pictorial system of
writing out of which the cuneiform characters subsequently developed, the
instructors in culture of their Semitic neighbors. How deep and
far-reaching was their influence may be gathered from the fact that the
earliest civilization of Western Asia finds its expression in the Sumerian
language and script. To whatever race the writer might belong he clothed
his thoughts in the words and characters of the Sumerian people. The fact
makes it often difficult for us to determine whether the princes of
primitive Chaldea whose inscriptions have come down to us were Semites or
not. Their very names assume Sumerian forms.
It was from the Sumerian that the Semite learnt to live in cities. His own
word for “city” was _âlu_, the Hebrew _’ohel_ “a tent,” which is still
used in the Old Testament in the sense of “home;” the Hebrew _’îr_ is the
Sumerian _eri_. _Ekallu_, the Hebrew _hêkal_, “a palace,” comes from the
Sumerian _ê-gal_ or “great house;” the first palaces seen by the Semitic
nomad must have been those of the Chaldean towns.
But a time came when the Semite had absorbed the culture of his Sumerian
teachers and had established kingdoms of his own in the future Babylonia.
For untold centuries he lived in intermixture with the older population of
the country, and the two races acted and re-acted on each other. A mixed
people was the result, with a mixed language and a mixed form of religion.
The Babylonia of later days was, in fact, a country whose inhabitants and
language were as composite as the inhabitants and language of modern
England. Members of the same family had names derived from different
families of speech, and while the old Sumerian borrowed Semitic words
which it spelt phonetically, the Semitic lexicon was enriched with
loan-words from Sumerian which were treated like Semitic roots.
The Semite improved upon the heritage he had received. Even the system of
writing was enlarged and modified. Its completion and arrangement are due
to Semitic scribes who had been trained in Sumerian literature. It was
probably at the court of Sargon of Akkad that what we may term the final
revision of the syllabary took place. At all events, after his epoch the
cuneiform script underwent but little real change.
Sargon was the founder of the first Semitic empire in Asia. His date was
placed by the native historians as far back as 3800 B.C., and as they had
an abundance of materials at their disposal for settling it, which we do
not possess, we have no reason to dispute it. Moreover, it harmonizes with
the length of time required for bringing about that fusion of Sumerian and
Semitic elements which created the Babylonia we know. The power of Sargon
extended to the Mediterranean, even, it may be, to the island of Cyprus.
His conquests were continued by his son and successor Naram-Sin, who made
his way to the precious copper-mines of the Sinaitic peninsula, the chief
source of the copper that was used so largely in the work of his day. “The
land of the Amorites,” as Syria was called, was already a Babylonian
province, and he could therefore march in safety toward the south through
the desert region which was known as Melukhkha.
How long the empire of Sargon lasted we do not know. But it spread
Babylonian culture to the distant west and brought it to the very border
of Egypt. It was, too, a culture which had become essentially Semitic; the
Sumerian elements on which it was based had been thoroughly transformed.
What Babylonian civilization was in the latest days of Chaldean history,
that it already was, to all intents and purposes, in the age of Sargon.
The Sumerian and the Semite had become one people.
But the mixture of nationalities in Babylonia was not yet complete.
Colonies of Amorites, from Canaan, settled in it for the purposes of
trade; wandering tribes of Semites, from Northern Arabia, pastured their
cattle on the banks of its rivers, and in the Abrahamic age a line of
kings from Southern Arabia made themselves masters of the country, and
established their capital at Babylon. Their names resembled those of
Southern Arabia on the one hand, of the Hebrews on the other, and the
Babylonian scribes were forced to give translations of them in their own
language.
But all these incomers belonged to the Semitic race, and the languages
they spoke were but varieties of the same family of speech. It is probable
that such was the case with the Kaldâ, who lived in the marshes at the
mouth of the Euphrates, and from whom classical geography has derived the
name of Chaldean. The extension of the name to the whole population of
Babylonia was due to the reign of the Kaldâ prince, Merodach-baladan, at
Babylon. For years he represented Babylonian freedom in its struggle with
Assyria, and his “Chaldean” subjects became an integral part of the
population. Perhaps, too, the theory is right which makes Nebuchadnezzar
of Kaldâ descent. If so, there is a good reason why the inhabitants of
Babylonia should have become “Chaldeans” in the classical age.
Of wholly different origin were the Kassites, mountaineers from the east
of Elam, who conquered Babylonia, and founded a dynasty of kings which
lasted for several centuries. They also gave their name to the population
of the country, and, in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, accordingly, the
natives of Babylonia are known as “Kassi.” Sennacherib found their
kinsfolk in the Elamite mountains, and here they still lived in the age of
the Greek writers. Strabo calls them Kosseans, and it seems probable that
they are the same as the Kissians, after whom the whole of Elam was named.
At any rate the Kassites were neither Sumerians nor Semites; and their
language, of which several words have been preserved, has no known
connections. But they left their mark upon the Babylonian people, and
several family names were borrowed from them.
The Babylonian was thus a compound of Sumerian, Semitic, and Kassite
elements. They all went to form the culture which we term Babylonian, and
which left such enduring traces on Western Asia and the world. Mixed races
are invariably the best, and the Babylonians were no exception to the
rule. We have only to compare them with their neighbors, the more purely
blooded Semitic Assyrians, to assure ourselves of the fact. The culture of
Assyria was but an imitation and reflection of that of Babylonia—there was
nothing original about it. The Assyrian excelled only in the ferocities of
war, not in the arts of peace. Even the gods of Assyria had migrated from
the southern kingdom.
The dual character of Babylonian civilization must never be forgotten. It
serves to explain a good deal that would otherwise be puzzling in the
religious and social life of the people. But the social life was also
influenced and conditioned by the peculiar nature of the country in which
the people lived. It was an alluvial plain, sloping toward the sea, and
inundated by the overflow of the two great rivers which ran through it.
When cultivated it was exceedingly fertile; but cultivation implied a
careful regulation of the overflow, as well as a constant attention to the
embankments which kept out the waters, or to the canals which drained and
watered the soil.
The inhabitants were therefore, necessarily, agriculturists. They were
also irrigators and engineers, compelled to study how best to regulate the
supply of water, to turn the pestiferous marsh into a fruitful field, and
to confine the rivers and canals within their channels. Agriculture and
engineering thus had their natural home in Babylonia, and originated in
the character of the country itself.
The neighborhood of the sea and the two great waterways which flanked the
Babylonian plain further gave an impetus to trade. The one opened the road
to the spice-bearing coasts of Southern Arabia and the more distant shores
of Egypt; the other led to the highlands of Western Asia. From the first
the Babylonians were merchants and sailors as well as agriculturists. The
“cry” of the Chaldeans was “in their ships.” The seaport of Eridu was one
of the earliest of Babylonian cities; and a special form of boat took its
name from the more inland town of Ur. While the population of the country
devoted itself to agriculture, the towns grew wealthy by the help of
trade.
Their architecture was dependent on the nature of the country. In the
alluvial plain no stone was procurable; clay, on the other hand, was
everywhere. All buildings, accordingly, were constructed of clay bricks,
baked in the sun, and bonded together with cement of the same material;
their roofs were of wood, supported, not unfrequently, by the stems of the
palm. The palm stems, in time, became pillars, and Babylonia was thus the
birthplace of columnar architecture. It was also the birthplace of
decorated walls. It was needful to cover the sun-dried bricks with
plaster, for the sake both of their preservation and of appearance. This
was the origin of the stucco with which the walls were overlaid, and which
came in time to be ornamented with painting. Ezekiel refers to the
figures, portrayed in vermilion, which adorned the walls of the houses of
the rich.
The want of stone and the abundance of clay had another and unique
influence upon Babylonian culture. It led to the invention of the written
clay tablet, which has had such momentous results for the civilization of
the whole Eastern world. The pictures with which Babylonian writing began
were soon discarded for the conventional forms, which could so easily be
impressed by the stylus upon the soft clay. It is probable that the use of
the clay as a writing material was first suggested by the need there was
in matters of business that the contracting parties should record their
names. The absence of stone made every pebble valuable, and pebbles were
accordingly cut into cylindrical forms and engraved with signs. When the
cylinder was rolled over a lump of wet clay, its impress remained forever.
The signs became cuneiform characters, and the Babylonian wrote them upon
clay instead of stone.
The seal-cylinder and the use of clay as a writing material must
consequently be traced to the peculiar character of the country in which
the Babylonian lived. To the same origin must be ascribed his mode of
burial. The tomb was built of bricks; there were no rocky cliffs in which
to excavate it, and the marshy soil made a grave unsanitary. It was
doubtless sanitary reasons alone that caused wood to be heaped about the
tomb after an interment and set on fire so that all within it was
partially consumed. The narrow limits of the Babylonian plain obliged the
cemetery of the dead to adjoin the houses of the living, and cremation,
whether partial or complete, became a necessity.
Even the cosmogony of the Babylonians has been influenced by their
surroundings. The world, it was believed, originated in a watery chaos,
like that in which the first settlers had found the Babylonian plain. The
earth not only rested on the waters, but the waters themselves, dark and
unregulated, were the beginning of all things. This cosmological
conception was carried with the rest of Babylonian culture to the West,
and after passing through Canaan found its way into Greek philosophy. In
the Book of Genesis we read that “darkness was on the face of the deep”
before the creative spirit of God brooded over it, and Thales, the first
of Greek philosophers, taught that water was the principle out of which
all things have come.
The fertility of the Babylonian soil was remarkable. Grain, it was said,
gave a return of two hundred for one, sometimes of three hundred for one.
Herodotus, or the authority he quotes, grows enthusiastic upon the
subject. “The leaf of the wheat and barley,” he says, “is as much as three
inches in width, and the stalks of the millet and sesamum are so tall that
no one who has never been in that country would believe me were I to
mention their height.” In fact, naturalists tell us that Babylonia was the
primitive home of the cultivated cereals, wheat and probably barley, and
that from the banks of the Euphrates they must have been disseminated
throughout the civilized world. Wheat, indeed, has been found growing wild
in our own days in the neighborhood of Hit.
The dissemination of wheat goes back to a remote epoch. Like barley, it is
met with in the tombs of that prehistoric population of Egypt which still
lived in the neolithic age and whose later remains are coeval with the
first Pharaonic epoch. The fact throws light on the antiquity of the
intercourse which existed between the Euphrates and the Nile, and bears
testimony to the influence already exerted on the Western world by the
culture of Babylonia. We have, indeed, no written records which go back to
so distant a past; it belongs, perhaps, to an epoch when the art of
writing had not as yet been invented. But there was already civilization
in Babylonia, and the elements of its future social life were already in
existence. Babylonian culture is immeasurably old.