One of the lesson-books used in the Babylonian nursery contains the
beginning of a story, written in Sumerian and translated into Semitic,
which describes the adventures of a foundling who was picked up in the
streets and adopted by the King. We are told that he was taken “from the
mouth of the dogs and ravens,” and was then brought to the _asip_ or
“prophet,” who marked the soles of his feet with his seal. What the
precise object of this procedure was it is difficult to say, but the
custom is alluded to in the Old Testament (Job xiii. 27). Certain tribes
in the south of China still brand the soles of a boy’s feet, for the
purpose, it is said, of testing his strength and hardihood.
After the operation was performed the boy was handed over to a “nurse,” to
whom his “bread, food, shirt, and (other) clothing were assured for three
years.” At the same time, we may assume, he received a name. This giving
of a name was an important event in the child’s life. Like other nations
of antiquity the Babylonians conformed the name with the person who bore
it; it not only represented him, but in a sense was actually himself.
Magical properties were ascribed to the name, and it thus became of
importance to know what names were good or bad, lucky or unlucky. An
unlucky name brought evil fortune to its possessor, a lucky name secured
his success in life. A change of name influenced a man’s career; and the
same superstitious belief which caused the Cape of Storms to become the
Cape of Good Hope not unfrequently occasioned a person’s name to be
altered among the nations of the ancient East.
The gods themselves were affected by the names they bore. A knowledge of
the secret and ineffable name of a deity was the key to a knowledge of his
inner essence and attributes, and conferred a power over him upon the
fortunate possessor of it. The patron god of the dynasty to which
Khammurabi belonged was spoken of as “the Name,” Sumu or Samu, the Shem of
the Old Testament; his real title was too sacred to be uttered in speech.
The name of a thing was the thing itself, and so too the name of a god or
person was the actual god or person to whom it was attached.
A large proportion of Babylonian names includes the name of some divinity.
In spite of their length and unwieldiness they tended to increase in
number as time went on. In ordinary life, however, they were frequently
shortened. In the contract given in the last chapter, the slave
Rimanni-Bel is said to have been usually called Rimut, the one name
signifying “Love me, O Bel,” the other “Love.” In other instances we find
Samas-musezib contracted into Samsiya and Suzub, Kabti-ilâni-Merodach into
Kabtiya, Nebo-tabni-uzur into Tabniya. The Belesys of Greek writers is the
Babylonian Balasu, which is a shortened form of Merodach-balasu-iqbi, and
Baladan, which is given in the Old Testament as the name of the father of
Merodach-baladan, has lost the name of the god with which it must
originally have begun.
Sometimes a change in the form of the name was due to its being of foreign
origin and consequently mispronounced by the Babylonians, who assimilated
it to words in their own language. Thus Sargon of Akkad was properly
called Sargani, “The Strong One,” or, more fully, Sargani-sar-ali,
“Sargani, the King of the City,” but his Sumerian subjects turned this
into Sar-gina or Sargon, “The Established King.” The grandson of
Khammurabi bore the Canaanitish name of Abesukh, the Abishua of the
Israelites, “The Father of Welfare,” but it was transformed by the
Babylonians into Ebisum, which in their own dialect meant “The Actor.”
Eri-Aku or Arioch was an Elamite name signifying “The Servant of the
Moon-god;” the Babylonians changed it into Rim-Sin and perhaps even
Rim-Anu, “Love, O Moon-god,” “Love, O Sky-god.”
At other times the name was changed for political or superstitious
reasons. When the successful general Pul usurped the throne of Assyria he
adopted the name of one of the most famous of the kings of the older
dynasty, Tiglath-pileser. His successor, another usurper, called Ululâ,
similarly adopted the name of Shalmaneser, another famous king of the
earlier dynasty. It is probable that Sargon, who was also a usurper,
derived his name from Sargon of Akkad, and that his own name was
originally something else. Sennacherib tells us that Esar-haddon had a
second name, or surname, by which he was known to his neighbors. In this
respect he was like Solomon of Israel, who was also called Jedidiah.
It is doubtful whether circumcision was practised in Babylonia. There is
no reference to it in the inscriptions, nor is it mentioned by classical
writers as among Babylonian customs. In fact, the words of the Greek
historian Herodotus seem to exclude the practice, as the Babylonians are
not one of the nations of Western Asia who are said by him to have learnt
the rite from the Egyptians. Moreover, Abraham and his family were not
circumcised until long after he had left Babylonia and had established
himself in Canaan. Africa, rather than Asia, seems to have been the
original home of the rite.
If the boy were the son of well-to-do parents he was sent to school at an
early age. One of the texts which, in Sumerian days, was written as a
head-line in his copy-book declared that “He who would excel in the school
of the scribes must rise like the dawn.” Girls also shared in the
education given to their brothers. Among the Babylonian letters that have
been preserved are some from ladies, and the very fact that women could
transact business on their own account implies that they could read and
write. Thus the following letter, written from Babylon by a lover to his
mistress at Sippara, assumes that she could read it and return an answer:
“To the lady Kasbeya thus says Gimil-Merodach: May the Sun-god and
Merodach, for my sake, grant thee everlasting life! I am writing to
enquire after your health; please send me news of it. I am living at
Babylon, but have not seen you, which troubles me greatly. Send me news of
your arrival, so that I may be happy. Come in the month Marchesvan. May
you live forever, for my sake!” The Tel-el-Amarna collection actually
contains letters from a lady to the Egyptian Pharaoh. One of them is as
follows: “To the king my lord, my gods, my sun-god, thus says Nin, thy
handmaid: At the feet of the king my lord, my gods, my sun-god, seven
times seven I prostrate myself. The king my lord knows that there is war
in the land, and that all the country of the king my lord has revolted to
the Bedâwin. But the king my lord has knowledge of his country, and the
king my lord knows that the Bedâwin have sent to the city of Ajalon and to
the city of Zorah, and have made mischief (and have intrigued with) the
two sons of Malchiel; and let the king my lord take knowledge of this
fact.”
The oracles delivered to Esar-haddon by the prophetesses of Arbela are in
writing, and we have no grounds for thinking that they were written down
by an uninspired pen. Indeed, the “bit riduti,” or “place of education,”
where Assur-bani-pal tells us he had been brought up, was the woman’s part
of the palace. The instructors, however, were men, and part of the boy’s
education, we are informed, consisted in his being taught to shoot with
the bow and to practise other bodily exercises. But the larger part of his
time was given to learning how to read and write. The acquisition of the
cuneiform system of writing was a task of labor and difficulty which
demanded years of patient application. A vast number of characters had to
be learned by heart. They were conventional signs, often differing but
slightly from one another, with nothing about them that could assist the
memory; moreover, their forms varied in different styles of writing, as
much as Latin, Gothic, and cursive forms of type differ among ourselves,
and all these the pupil was expected to know. Every character had more
than one phonetic value; many of them, indeed, had several, while they
could also be used ideographically to express objects and ideas. But this
was not all. A knowledge of the cuneiform syllabary necessitated also a
knowledge of the language of the Sumerians, who had been its inventors,
and it frequently happened that a group of characters which had expressed
a Sumerian word was retained in the later script with the pronunciation of
the corresponding Semitic word attached to them, though the latter had
nothing to do with the phonetic values of the several signs, whether
pronounced singly or as a whole.
The children, however, must have been well taught. This is clear from the
remarkably good spelling which we find in the private letters; it is
seldom that words are misspelt. The language may be conversational, or
even dialectic, but the words are written correctly. The school-books that
have survived bear testimony to the attention that had been given to
improving the educational system. Every means was adopted for lessening
the labor of the student and imprinting the lesson upon his mind. The
cuneiform characters had been classified and named; they had also been
arranged according to the number and position of the separate wedges of
which they consisted. Dictionaries had been compiled of Sumerian words and
expressions, as well as lists of Semitic synonyms. Even grammars had been
drawn up, in which the grammatical forms of the old language of Sumer were
interpreted in Semitic Babylonian. There were reading-books filled with
extracts from the standard literature of the country. Most of this was in
Sumerian; but the Sumerian text was provided with a Semitic translation,
sometimes interlinear, sometimes in a parallel column. Commentaries,
moreover, had been written upon the works of ancient authors, in which
difficult or obsolete terms were explained. The pupils were trained to
write exercises, either from a copy placed before them or from memory.
These exercises served a double purpose—they taught the pupil how to write
and spell, as well as the subject which the exercise illustrated. A list
of the kings of the dynasty to which Khammurabi belonged has come to us,
for instance, in one of them. In this way history and geography were
impressed upon the student’s memory, together with extracts from the poets
and prose-writers of the past.
The writing material was clay. Papyrus, it is true, was occasionally used,
but it was expensive, while clay literally lay under the feet of everyone.
While the clay was still soft, the cuneiform or “wedge-shaped” characters
were engraved upon it by means of a stylus. They had originally been
pictorial, but when the use of clay was adopted the pictures necessarily
degenerated into groups of wedge-like lines, every curve becoming an angle
formed by the junction of two lines. As time went on, the characters were
more and more simplified, the number of wedges of which they consisted
being reduced and only so many left as served to distinguish one sign from
another. The simplification reached its extreme point in the official
script of Assyria.
At first the clay tablet after being inscribed was allowed to dry in the
sun. But sun-dried clay easily crumbles, and the fashion accordingly grew
up of baking the tablet in a kiln. In Assyria, where the heat of the sun
was not so great as in the southern kingdom of Babylonia, the tablet was
invariably baked, holes being first drilled in it to allow the escape of
the moisture and to prevent it from cracking. Some of the early Babylonian
tablets were of great size, and it is wonderful that they have lasted to
our own days. But the larger the tablet, the more difficult it was to bake
it safely, and consequently the most of the tablets are of small size. As
it was often necessary to compress a long text into this limited space,
the writing became more and more minute, and in many cases a magnifying
glass is needed to read it properly. That such glasses were really used by
the Assyrians is proved by Layard’s discovery of a magnifying lens at
Nineveh. The lens, which is of crystal, has been turned on a lathe, and is
now in the British Museum. But even with the help of lenses, the study of
the cuneiform tablets encouraged short sight, which must have been common
in the Babylonian schools. In the case of Assur-bani-pal this was
counteracted by the out-of-door exercises in which he was trained, and it
is probable that similar exercises were also customary in Babylonia.
A book generally consisted of several tablets, which may consequently be
compared with our chapters. At the end of each tablet was a colophon
stating what was its number in the series to which it belonged, and giving
the first line of the next tablet. The series received its name from the
words with which it began; thus the fourth tablet or chapter of the “Epic
of the Creation” states that it contains “one hundred and forty-six lines
of the fourth tablet (of the work beginning) ‘When on high
unproclaimed,’ ” and adds the first line of the tablet which follows.
Catalogues were made of the standard books to be found in a library,
giving the name of the author and the first line of each; so that it was
easy for the reader or librarian to find both the work he wanted and the
particular chapter in it he wished to consult. The books were arranged on
shelves; M. de Sarzec discovered about 32,000 of them at Tello in Southern
Chaldea still in the order in which they had been put in the age of Gudea
(2700 B.C.).
Literature of every kind was represented. History and chronology,
geography and law, private and public correspondence, despatches from
generals and proclamations of the king, philology and mathematics, natural
science in the shape of lists of bears and birds, insects and stones,
astronomy and astrology, theology and the pseudo-science of omens, all
found a place on the shelves, as well as poems and purely literary works.
Copies of deeds and contracts, of legal decisions, and even inventories of
the property of private individuals, were also stored in the libraries of
Babylonia and Assyria, which were thus libraries and archive-chambers in
one. In Babylonia every great city had its collection of books, and
scribes were kept constantly employed in it, copying and re-editing the
older literature, or providing new works for readers. The re-editing was
done with scrupulous care. Where a character was lost in the original text
by a fracture of the tablet, the copyist stated the fact, and added
whether the loss was recent or not. Where the form of the character was
uncertain, both the signs which it resembled are given. Some idea may be
formed of the honesty and care with which the Babylonian scribes worked
from the fact that the compiler of the Babylonian Chronicle, which
contains a synopsis of later Babylonian history, frankly states that he
does “not know” the date of the battle of Khalulê, which was fought
between the Babylonians and Sennacherib. The materials at his disposal did
not enable him to settle it. It so happens that we are in a more fortunate
position, as we are able to fix it with the help of the annals of the
Assyrian King.
New texts were eagerly collected. The most precious spoils sent to
Assur-bani-pal after the capture of the revolted Babylonian cities were
tablets containing works which the library of Nineveh did not possess. The
Babylonians and Assyrians made war upon men, not upon books, which were,
moreover, under the protection of the gods. The library was usually within
the walls of a temple; sometimes it was part of the archives of the temple
itself. Hence the copying of a text was often undertaken as a pious work,
which brought down upon the scribe the blessing of heaven and even the
remission of his sins. That the library was open to the public we may
infer from the character of some of the literature contained in it. This
included private letters as well as contracts and legal documents which
could be interesting only to the parties whom they concerned.
The school must have been attached to the library, and was probably an
adjacent building. This will explain the existence of the school-exercises
which have come from the library of Nineveh, as well as the reading-books
and other scholastic literature which were stored within it. At the same
time, when we remember the din of an oriental school, where the pupils
shout their lessons at the top of their voices, it is impossible to
suppose that the scribes and readers would have been within ear-shot. Nor
was it probable that there was only one school in a town of any size. The
practice of herding large numbers of boys or girls together in a single
school-house is European rather than Asiatic.
The school in later times developed into a university. At Borsippa, the
suburb of Babylon, where the library had been established in the temple of
Nebo, we learn from Strabo that a university also existed which had
attained great celebrity. From a fragment of a Babylonian medical work,
now in the British Museum, we may perhaps infer that it was chiefly
celebrated as a school of medicine.
In Assyria education was mainly confined to the upper classes. The trading
classes were perforce obliged to learn how to read and write; so also were
the officials and all those who looked forward to a career in the
diplomatic service. But learning was regarded as peculiarly the profession
of the scribes, who constituted a special class and occupied an important
position in the bureaucracy. They acted as clerks and secretaries in the
various departments of state, and stereotyped a particular form of
cuneiform script, which we may call the chancellor’s hand, and which,
through their influence, was used throughout the country. In Babylonia it
was otherwise. Here a knowledge of writing was far more widely spread, and
one of the results was that varieties of handwriting became as numerous as
they are in the modern world. The absence of a professional class of
scribes prevented any one official hand from becoming universal. We find
even the son of an “irrigator,” one of the poorest and lowest members of
the community, copying a portion of the “Epic of the Creation,” and
depositing it in the library of Borsippa for the good of his soul. Indeed,
the contract tablets show that the slaves themselves could often read and
write. The literary tendencies of Assur-bani-pal doubtless did much toward
the spread of education in Assyria, but the latter years of his life were
troubled by disastrous wars, and the Assyrian empire and kingdom came to
an end soon after his death.
Education, as we have seen, meant a good deal more than merely learning
the cuneiform characters. It meant, in the case of the Semitic Babylonians
and Assyrians, learning the ancient agglutinative language of Sumer as
well. In later times this language ceased to be spoken except in learned
society, and consequently bore the same relation to Semitic Babylonian
that Latin bears to English. In learning Sumerian, therefore, the
Babylonian learned what was equivalent to Latin in the modern world. And
the mode of teaching it was much the same. There were the same paradigms
to be committed to memory, the same lists of words and phrases to be
learned by heart, the same extracts from the authors of the past to be
stored up in the mind. Even the “Hamiltonian” system of learning a dead
language had already been invented. Exercises were set in translation from
Sumerian into Babylonian, and from Babylonian into Sumerian, and the
specimens of the latter which have survived to us show that “dog-Latin”
was not unknown.
But the dead language of Sumer was not all that the educated Babylonian or
Assyrian gentlemen of later times was called upon to know. In the eighth
century before our era Aramaic had become the common medium of trade and
diplomacy. If Sumerian was the Latin of the Babylonian world, Aramaic was
its French. The Aramaic dialects seem to have been the result of a contact
between the Semitic languages of Arabia and Canaan, and the rising
importance of the tribes who spoke them and who occupied Mesopotamia and
Northern Arabia caused them to become the language of trade. Aramaic
merchants were settled on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, and
conveyed the products of Babylonia and Phœnicia from one country to the
other. Many of the commercial firms in Babylonia were of Aramaic origin,
and it was natural that some part at least of their business should have
been carried on in the language of their fathers.
Hence it was that, when the Rab-shakeh or Vizier of Sennacherib appeared
before Jerusalem and summoned its inhabitants to submit to the Assyrian
King, he was asked by the ministers of Hezekiah to speak in “Aramæan.” It
was taken for granted that Aramaic was known to an Assyrian official and
diplomatist just as it was to the Jewish officials themselves. The
Rab-shakeh, however, knew the Hebrew language as well, and found it more
to his purpose to use it in addressing the Jews.
Here, then, we have an Assyrian officer who is acquainted not only with
Sumerian, but also with two of the living languages of Western Asia. And
yet he was not a scribe; he did not belong to the professional class of
learned men. Nothing can show more clearly the advanced state of education
even in the military kingdom of Assyria. In Babylonia learning had always
been honored; from the days of Sargon of Akkad onward the sons of the
reigning king did not disdain to be secretaries and librarians.
The linguistic training undergone in the schools gave the Babylonian a
taste for philology. He not only compiled vocabularies of the extinct
Sumerian, which were needed for practical reasons, he also explained the
meaning of the names of the foreign kings who had reigned over Babylonia,
and from time to time noted the signification of words belonging to the
various languages by which he was surrounded. Thus one of the tablets we
possess contains a list of Kassite or Kossean words with their
signification; in other cases we have Mitannian, Elamite, and Canaanite
words quoted, with their meanings attached to them. Nor did the
philological curiosity of the scribe end here. He busied himself with the
etymology of the words in his own language, and just as a couple of
centuries ago our own dictionary-makers endeavored to find derivations for
all English words, whatever their source, in Latin and Greek, so, too, the
Babylonian etymologist believed that the venerable language of Sumer was
the key to the origin of his own. Many of the words in Semitic Babylonian
were indeed derived from it, and accordingly Sumerian etymologies were
found for other words which were purely Semitic. The word _Sabattu_, “the
Sabbath,” for instance, was derived from the Sumerian _Sa_, “heart,” and
_bat_, “to cease,” and so interpreted to mean the day on which “the heart
ceased” from its labors.
History, too, was a favorite subject of study. Like the Hebrews, the
Assyrians were distinguished by a keen historical sense which stands in
curious contrast to the want of it which characterized the Egyptian. The
Babylonians also were distinguished by the same quality, though perhaps to
a less extent than their Assyrian neighbors, whose somewhat pedantic
accuracy led them to state the exact numbers of the slain and captive in
every small skirmish, and the name of every petty prince with whom they
came into contact, and who had invented a system of accurately registering
dates at a very early period. Nevertheless, the Babylonian was also a
historian; the necessities of trade had obliged him to date his deeds and
contracts from the earliest age of his history, and to compile lists of
kings and dynasties for reference in case of a disputed title to property.
The historical honesty to which he had been trained is illustrated by the
author of the Babylonian Chronicle in the passage relating to the battle
of Khalulê, which has been already alluded to. The last king of Babylonia
was himself an antiquarian, and had a passion for excavating and
discovering the records of the monarchs who had built the great temples of
Chaldea.
Law, again, must have been much studied, and so, too, was theology. The
library of Nineveh, however, from which so much of our information has
come, gives us an exaggerated idea of the extent to which the
pseudo-science of omens and portents was cultivated. Its royal patron was
a believer in them, and apparently more interested in the subject than in
any other. Consequently, the number of books relating to it are out of all
proportion to the rest of the literature in the library. But this was an
accident, due to the predilections of Assur-bani-pal himself.
The study of omens and portents was a branch of science and not of
theology, false though the science was. But it was based upon the
scientific principle that every antecedent has a consequent, its fallacy
consisting in a confusion between real causes and mere antecedents.
Certain events had been observed to follow certain phenomena; it was
accordingly assumed that they were the results of the phenomena, and that
were the phenomena to happen again they would be followed by the same
results. Hence all extraordinary or unusual occurrences were carefully
noted, together with whatever had been observed to come after them. A
strange dog, for instance, had been observed to enter a palace and there
lie down on a couch; as no disaster took place subsequently it was
believed that if the occurrence was repeated it would be an omen of good
fortune. On the other hand, the fall of a house had been preceded by the
birth of a child without a mouth; the same result, it was supposed, would
again accompany the same presage of evil. These pseudo-scientific
observations had been commenced at a very early period of Babylonian
history, and were embodied in a great work which was compiled for the
library of Sargon of Akkad.
Another work compiled for the same library, and containing observations
which started from a similarly fallacious theory, was one in seventy-two
books on the pseudo-science of astrology, which was called “The
Illumination of Bel.” But in this case the observations were not wholly
useless. The study of astrology was intermixed with that of astronomy, of
which Babylonia may be considered to be the birthplace. The heavens had
been mapped out and the stars named; the sun’s course along the ecliptic
had been divided into the twelve zodiacal signs, and a fairly accurate
calendar had been constructed. Hundreds of observations had been made of
the eclipses of the sun and moon, and the laws regulating them had been so
far ascertained that, first, eclipses of the moon, and then, but with a
greater element of uncertainty, eclipses of the sun, were able to be
predicted. One of the chapters or books in the “Illumination of Bel” was
devoted to an account of comets, another dealt with conjunctions of the
sun and moon. There were also tables of observations relating to the
synodic revolution of the moon and the synodic periods of the planet
Venus. The year was divided into twelve months of thirty days each, an
intercalary month being inserted from time to time to rectify the
resulting error in the length of the year. The months had been originally
called after the signs of the zodiac, whose names have come down to
ourselves with comparatively little change. But by the side of the lunar
year the Babylonians also used a sidereal year, the star Capella being
taken as a fixed point in the sky, from which the distance of the sun
could be measured at the beginning of the year, the moon being used as a
mere pointer for the purpose. At a later date, however, this mode of
determining time was abandoned, and the new year was made directly
dependent on the vernal equinox. The month was subdivided into weeks of
seven days, each of which was consecrated to a particular deity.
These deities were further identified with the stars. The fact that the
sun and moon, as well as the evening and morning stars, were already
worshipped as divinities doubtless led the way to this system of
astro-theology. But it seems never to have spread beyond the learned
classes and to have remained to the last an artificial system. The mass of
the people worshipped the stars as a whole, but it was only as a whole and
not individually. Their identification with the gods of the state religion
might be taught in the schools and universities, but it had no meaning for
the nation at large.
From the beginning of the Babylonian’s life we now pass to the end. Unlike
the Egyptian he had no desert close at hand in which to bury his dead, no
limestone cliffs, as in Palestine, wherein a tomb might be excavated. It
was necessary that the burial should be in the plain of Babylonia, the
same plain as that in which he lived, and with which the overflow of the
rivers was constantly infiltrating. The consequences were twofold. On the
one hand, the tomb had to be constructed of brick, for stone was not
procurable; on the other hand, sanitary reasons made cremation imperative.
The Babylonian corpse was burned as well as buried, and the brick
sepulchre that was raised above it adjoined the cities of the living.
The corpse was carried to the grave on a bier, accompanied by the
mourners. Among these the wailing women were prominent, who tore their
hair and threw dust upon their heads. The cemetery to which the dead was
carried was a city in itself, to which the Sumerians had given the name of
Ki-makh or “vast place.” It was laid out in streets, the tombs on either
side answering to the houses of a town. Not infrequently gardens were
planted before them, while rivulets of “living water” flowed through the
streets and were at times conducted into the tomb. The water symbolized
the life that the pious Babylonian hoped to enjoy in the world to come. It
relieved the thirst of the spirit in the underground world of Hades, where
an old myth had declared that “dust only was its food,” and it was at the
same time an emblem of those “waters of life” which were believed to
bubble up beneath the throne of the goddess of the dead.
When the corpse reached the cemetery it was laid upon the ground wrapped
in mats of reed and covered with asphalt. It was still dressed in the
clothes and ornaments that had been worn during life. The man had his seal
and his weapons of bronze or stone; the woman her spindle-wheel and
thread; the child his necklace of shells. In earlier times all was then
thickly coated with clay, above which branches of palm, terebinth, and
other trees were placed, and the whole was set on fire. At a more recent
period ovens of brick were constructed in which the corpse was put in its
coffin of clay and reeds, but withdrawn before cremation was complete. The
skeletons of the dead are consequently often found in a fair state of
preservation, as well as the objects which were buried with them.
While the body was being burned offerings were made, partly to the gods,
partly to the dead man himself. They consisted of dates, calves and sheep,
birds and fish, which were consumed along with the corpse. Certain words
were recited at the same time, derived for the most part from the sacred
books of ancient Sumer.
After the ceremony was over a portion of the ashes was collected and
deposited in an urn, if the cremation had been complete. In the later
days, when this was not the case, the half-burnt body was allowed to
remain on the spot where it had been laid, and an aperture was made in the
shell of clay with which it was covered. The aperture was intended to
allow a free passage to the spirit of the dead, so that it might leave its
burial-place to enjoy the food and water that were brought to it. Over the
whole a tomb was built of bricks, similar to that in which the urn was
deposited when the body was completely burned.
The tombs of the rich resembled the houses in which they had lived on
earth and contained many chambers. In these their bodies were cremated and
interred. Sometimes a house was occupied by a single corpse only; at other
times it became a family burial-place, where the bodies were laid in
separate chambers. Sometimes tombstones were set up commemorating the name
and deeds of the deceased; at other times statues representing them were
erected instead.
The tomb had a door, like a house, through which the relatives and friends
of the dead man passed from time to time in order to furnish him with the
food and sustenance needed by his spirit in the world below. Vases were
placed in the sepulchre, filled with dates and grain, wine and oil, while
the rivulet which flowed beside it provided water in abundance. All this
was required in that underworld where popular belief pictured the dead as
flitting like bats in the gloom and darkness, and where the heroes of old
time sat, strengthless and ghostlike, on their shadowy thrones.
The kings were allowed to be burned and buried in the palace in which they
had lived and ruled. We read of one of them that he was interred in “the
palace of Sargon” of Akkad, of another that his burial had taken place in
the palace he himself had erected. A similar privilege was granted to
their subjects only by royal permission.
Want of space caused the tombs of the dead to be built one upon the other,
as generations passed away and the older sepulchres crumbled into dust.
The cemetery thus resembled the city; here, too, one generation built upon
the ruins of its predecessor. The houses and tombs were alike constructed
of sun-dried bricks, which soon disintegrate and form a mound of dust. The
age of a cemetery, like the age of a city, may accordingly be measured by
the number of successive layers of building of which its mound or platform
is composed. In Babylonia they are numerous, for the history of the
country goes back to a remote past. Each city clustered round a temple,
venerable for its antiquity as well as for its sanctity, and the cemetery
which stood near it was consequently under the protection of its god. At
Cutha the necropolis was so vast that Nergal, the god of the town, came to
be known as the “lord of the dead.” But the cemeteries of other towns were
also of enormous size. Western Asia had received its culture and the
elements of its theology from Babylonia, and Babylonia consequently was a
sacred land not only to the Babylonians themselves, but to all those who
shared their civilization. The very soil was holy ground; Assyrians as
well as Babylonians desired that their bodies should rest in it. Here they
were in the charge, as it were, of Bel of Nippur or Merodach of Babylon,
and within sight of the ancient sanctuaries in which those gods were
worshipped. This explains in part the size of the cemeteries; the length
of time during which they were used will explain the rest. As Dr. Peters
says of each:(4) “It is difficult to convey anything like a correct notion
of the piles upon piles of human relics which there utterly astound the
spectator. Excepting only the triangular space between the three principal
ruins, the whole remainder of the platform, the whole space between the
walls, and an unknown extent of desert beyond them, are everywhere filled
with the bones and sepulchres of the dead. There is probably no other site
in the world which can compare with Warka in this respect.”
Babylonia is still a holy land to the people of Western Asia. The old
feeling in regard to it still survives, and the bodies of the dead are
still carried, sometimes for hundreds of miles, to be buried in its sacred
soil. Mohammedan saints have taken the place of the old gods, and a Moslem
chapel represents the temple of the past, but it is still to Babylonia
that the corpse is borne, often covered by costly rugs which find their
way in time to an American or European drawing-room. “The old order
changes, giving place to new,” but the influence of Chaldean culture and
religion is not yet past.