Among the professions of ancient Babylonia, money-lending held a foremost
place. It was, in fact, one of the most lucrative of professions, and was
followed by all classes of the population, the highest as well the lowest.
Members of the royal family did not disdain to lend money at high rates of
interest, receiving as security for it various kinds of property. It is
true that in such cases the business was managed by an agent; but the
lender of the money, and not the agent, was legally responsible for all
the consequences of his action, and it was to him that all the profits
went.
The money-lender was the banker of antiquity. In a trading community like
that of Babylonia, where actual coin was comparatively scarce, and the
gigantic system of credit which prevails in the modern world had not as
yet come into existence, it was impossible to do without him. The taxes
had to be paid in cash, which was required by the government for the
payment of a standing army, and a large body of officials. The same causes
which have thrown the fellahin of modern Egypt into the hands of Greek
usurers were at work in ancient Babylonia.
In some instances the money-lender founded a business which lasted for a
number of generations and brought a large part of the property of the
country into the possession of the firm. This was notably the case with
the great firm of Egibi, established at Babylon before the time of
Sennacherib, which in the age of the Babylonian empire and Persian
conquest became the Rothschilds of the ancient world. It lent money to the
state as well as to individuals, it undertook agencies for private
persons, and eventually absorbed a good deal of what was properly
attorney’s business. Deeds and other legal documents belonging to others
as well as to members of the firm were lodged for security in its
record-chambers, stored in the great earthenware jars which served as
safes. The larger part of the contract-tablets from which our knowledge of
the social life of later Babylonia is derived has come from the offices of
the firm.
In the early days of Babylonia the interest upon a loan was paid in kind.
But the introduction of a circulating medium goes back to an ancient date,
and it was not long before payment in grain or other crops was replaced by
its equivalent in cash. Already before the days of Amraphel and Abraham,
we find contracts stipulating for the payment of so many silver shekels
per month upon each maneh lent to the borrower. Thus we have one written
in Semitic-Babylonian which reads: “Kis-nunu, the son of Imur-Sin, has
received one maneh and a half of silver from Zikilum, on which he will pay
12 shekels of silver (a month). The capital and interest are to be paid on
the day of the harvest as guaranteed. Dated the year when Immerum dug the
Asukhi canal.” Then follow the names of three witnesses.
The obligation to repay the loan on “the day of the harvest” is a survival
from the time when all payments were in kind, and the creditor had a right
to the first-fruits of the debtor’s property. A contract dated in the
reign of Khammurabi, or Amraphel, similarly stipulates that interest on a
loan made to a certain Arad-ilisu by one of the female devotees of the
Sun-god, should be paid into the treasury of the temple of Samas “on the
day of the harvest.” The interest was reckoned at so much a month, as in
the East to-day; originally it had to be paid at the end of each month,
according to the literal terms of the agreement, but as time went on it
became usual to reserve the payment to the end of six months or a year. It
was only where the debtor was not considered trustworthy or the security
was insufficient that the literal interpretation of the agreement was
insisted on.
The rate of interest, as was natural, tended to be lower with the lapse of
time and the growth of wealth. In the age of the Babylonian empire and the
Persian conquest the normal rate was, however, still as high as 1 shekel a
month upon each maneh, or twenty per cent. But we have a contract dated in
the fifth year of Nebuchadnezzar in which a talent of silver is lent, and
the interest charged upon it is not more than half a shekel per month on
the maneh, or ten per cent. Three years later, in another contract, the
rate of interest is stated to be five-sixths of a shekel, or sixteen and
two-thirds per cent, while in the fifteenth year of Samas-sum-yukin the
interest upon a loan of 16 shekels is only a quarter of a shekel. At this
time Babylonia was suffering from the results of its revolt from Assyria,
which may explain the lowness of the rate of interest. At all events, six
years earlier, Remut, one of the members of the Egibi firm, lent a sum of
money to a man and his wife without charging any interest at all upon it,
and stipulating only that the money should be repaid when the land was
again prosperous.
At times, however, money was lent upon the understanding that interest
would be charged upon it only if it were not repaid by a specified date.
Thus in the ninth year of Samas-sum-yukin half a maneh was lent by Suma to
Tukubenu on the fourth of Marchesvan, or October, upon which no interest
was to be paid up to the end of the following Tisri, or September, which
corresponded with “the day of the harvest” of the older contracts; but
after that, if the money were still unpaid, interest at the rate of half a
shekel a month, or ten per cent., would be charged. At other times the
interest was paid by the year, as with us, and not by the month; in this
case it was at a lower rate than the normal twenty per cent. In the
fourteenth year of Nabopolassar, for example, a maneh of silver was lent
at the rate of 7 shekels on each maneh per annum—that is to say, at eleven
and two-thirds per cent.—and under Nebuchadnezzar money was borrowed at
annual interest of 8 shekels for each maneh, or thirteen and one-third per
cent.
Full security was taken for a loan, and the contract relating to it was
attested by a number of witnesses. Thus the following contract was drawn
up in the third year of Nabonidos, a loan of a maneh of silver having been
made by one of the members of the Egibi firm to a man and his wife: “One
maneh of silver, the property of Nadin-Merodach, the son of Iqisa-bel, the
son of Nur-sin, has been received by Nebo-baladan, the son of Nadin-sumi,
and Bau-ed-herat, the daughter of Samas-ebus. In the month Tisri
(September) they shall repay the money and the interest upon it. Their
upper field, which adjoins that of Sum-yukin, the son of Sa-Nebo-sû, as
well as the lower field, which forms the boundary of the house of the
Seer, and is planted with palm-trees and grass, is the security of
Nadin-Merodach, to which (in case of insolvency) he shall have the first
claim. No other creditor shall take possession of it until Nadin-Merodach
has received in full the capital and interest. In the month Tisri the
dates which are then ripe upon the palms shall be valued, and according to
the current price of them at the time in the town of Sakhrin,
Nadin-Merodach shall accept them instead of interest at the rate of
thirty-six _qas_ (fifty quarts) the shekel (3s.). The money is intended to
pay the tax for providing the soldiers of the king of Babylon with arms.
Witnessed by Nebo-bel-sunu, the son of Bau-akhi, the son of Dahik;
Nebo-dîni-ebus, the son of Kinenunâ; Nebo-zira-usabsi, the son, Samas-ibni
Bazuzu, the son of Samas-ibni; Merodach-erba, the son of Nadin; and the
scribe Bel-iddin, the son of Bel-yupakhkhir, the son of Dabibu. Dated at
Sakhrinni, the 28th day of Iyyar (April), the third year of Nabonidos,
King of Babylon.”
In Assyria the rate of interest was a good deal higher than it was in
Babylonia. It is true that in a contract dated 667 B.C., one of the
parties to which was the son of the secretary of the municipality of
Dur-Sargon, the modern Khorsabad, it is twenty per cent., as in Babylonia,
but this is almost the only case in which it is so. Elsewhere, in deeds
dated 684 B.C., 656, and later, the rate is as much as twenty-five per
cent., while in one instance—a deed dated 711 B.C.—it rises to
thirty-three and a third per cent. Among the witnesses to the
last-mentioned deed are two “smiths,” one of whom is described as a
“coppersmith,” and the other bears the Armenian name of Sihduri or
Sarduris. The money is usually reckoned according to the standard of
Carchemish. That the rate of interest should have been higher in Assyria
than in Babylonia is not surprising. Commerce was less developed there,
and the attention of the population was devoted rather to war and
agriculture than to trade. It seems to have been the conquest of Western
Asia, the subjugation of the Phœnician cities, and above all the
incorporation of Babylonia in the empire, which introduced a commercial
spirit into Nineveh, and made it in the latter days of its existence an
important centre of trade. Indeed, one of the objects of the Assyrian
campaigns in Syria was to divert the trade of the Mediterranean into
Assyrian hands; the fall of Carchemish made Assyria mistress of the
caravan-road which led across the Euphrates, and of the commerce which had
flowed from Asia Minor, while the ruin of Tyre and Sidon meant prosperity
to the merchants of Nineveh. Nevertheless, the native population of
Assyria was slow to avail itself of the commercial advantages which had
fallen to it, and a large part of its trading classes were Arameans or
other foreigners who had settled in the country. So large, indeed, was the
share in Assyrian trade which the Arameans absorbed that Aramaic became
the _lingua panca_, the common medium of intercommunication, in the
commercial world of the second Assyrian empire, and, as has been already
stated, many of the Assyrian contract-tablets are provided with Aramaic
dockets, which give a brief abstract of their contents.
A memorandum signed by “Basia, the son of Rikhi,” furnishes us with the
relative value of gold and silver in the age of Nebuchadnezzar. “Two
shekels and a quarter of gold for twenty-five shekels and three-quarters
of silver, one shekel worn and deficient in weight for seven shekels of
silver, two and a quarter shekels, also worn, for twenty-two and
three-quarters shekels of silver; in all five and a half shekels of gold
for fifty-five and a half shekels of silver.” Gold, therefore, at this
time would have been worth about eleven times more than silver. A few
years later, however, in the eleventh year of Nabonidos, the proportion
had risen and was twelve to one. We learn this from a statement that the
goldsmith Nebo-edhernapisti had received in that year, on the 10th day of
Ab, 1 shekel of gold, in 5-shekel pieces, for 12 shekels of silver. The
coinage, if we may use such a term, was the same in both metals, the
talent being divided into 60 manehs and the maneh into 60 shekels. There
seems also to have been a bronze coinage, at all events in the later age
of Assyria and Babylonia, but the references to it are very scanty, and
silver was the ordinary medium of exchange. One of the contract-tablets,
however, which have come from Assyria and is dated in the year 676 B.C.,
relates to the loan of 2 talents of bronze from the treasury of Istar at
Arbela, which were to be repaid two months afterward. Failing this,
interest was to be charged upon them at the rate of thirty-three and a
third per cent., and it is implied that the payment was to be in bronze.
The talent, maneh, and shekel were originally weights, and had been
adopted by the Semites from their Sumerian predecessors. They form part of
that sexagesimal system of numeration which lay at the root of Babylonian
mathematics and was as old as the invention of writing. So thoroughly was
sixty regarded as the unit of calculation that it was denoted by the same
single wedge or upright line as that which stood for “one.” Wherever the
sexagesimal system of notation prevailed we may see an evidence of the
influence of Babylonian culture.
It was the maneh, however, and not the talent, which was adopted as the
standard. The talent, in fact, was too heavy for such a purpose; it
implied too considerable an amount of precious metal and was too seldom
employed in the daily business of life. The Babylonian, accordingly,
counted up from the maneh to the talent and down to the shekel.
The standard weight of the maneh, which continued in use up to the latest
days of Babylonian history, had been fixed by Dungi, of the dynasty of Ur,
about 2700 B.C. An inscription on a large cone of dark-green stone, now in
the British Museum, tells us that the cone represents “one maneh standard
weight, the property of Merodach-sar-ilani, and a duplicate of the weight
which Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the son of Nabopolassar, king of
Babylon, had made in exact imitation of the standard weight established by
the deified Dungi, an earlier king.” The stone now weighs 978.309 grammes,
which, making the requisite deductions for the wear and tear of time,
would give 980 grammes, or rather more than 2 pounds 2 ounces avoirdupois.
The Babylonian maneh, as fixed by Dungi and Nebuchadnezzar, thus agrees in
weight rather with the Hebrew maneh of gold than with the “royal” maneh,
which was equivalent to 2 pounds 7½ ounces.
It was not, however, the only maneh in use in Babylonia. Besides the
“heavy” or “royal” maneh there was also a “light” maneh, like the Hebrew
silver maneh of 1 pound 11 ounces, while the Assyrian contract-tablets
make mention of “the maneh of Carchemish,” which was introduced into
Assyria after the conquest of the Hittite capital in 717 B.C. Mr. Barclay
V. Head has pointed out that this latter maneh was known in Asia Minor as
far as the shores of the Ægean, and that the “tongues” or bars of silver
found by Dr. Schliemann on the site of Troy are shekels made in accordance
with it.(8)
A similar “tongue” of gold “of fifty shekels weight” is referred to in
Josh. vii. 21, in connection with that “goodly Babylonish garment” which
was carried away by Achan from among the spoils of Jericho. It is probable
that the shekels and manehs of Babylonia were originally cast in the same
tongue-like form. In Egypt they were in the shape of rings and spirals,
but there is no evidence that the use of the latter extended beyond the
valley of the Nile. In Western Asia it was rather bars of metal that were
employed.
At first the value of the bar had to be determined by its being weighed
each time that it changed hands. But it soon came to be stamped with an
official indication of its weight and value. A Cappadocian tablet found
near Kaisariyeh, which is at least as early as the age of the Exodus and
may go back to that of Abraham, speaks of “three shekels of sealed” or
“stamped silver.” In that distant colony of Babylonian civilization,
therefore, an official seal was already put upon some of the money in
circulation. In the time of Nebuchadnezzar the coinage was still more
advanced. There were “single shekel” pieces, pieces of “five shekels” and
the like, all implying that coins were issued representing different
fractions of the maneh. The maneh itself was divided into pieces of
five-sixths, two-thirds, one-third, one-half, one-quarter, and
three-quarters. It is often specified whether a sum of money is to be paid
in single shekel pieces or in 5-shekel pieces, and the word “stamped” is
sometimes added. The invention of a regular coinage is generally ascribed
to the Lydians; but it was more probably due to the Babylonians, from whom
both Lydians and Greeks derived their system of weights as well as the
term _mina_ or maneh.
The Egibi firm was not the only great banking or trading establishment of
which we know in ancient Babylonia. The American excavators at Niffer have
brought to light the records of another firm, that of Murasu, which,
although established in a provincial town and not in the capital, rose to
a position of great wealth and influence under the Persian kings
Artaxerxes I. (464-424 B.C.) and Darius II. (424-405 B.C.). The tablets
found at Tello also indicate the existence of similarly important trading
firms in the Babylonia of 2700 B.C., though at this period trade was
chiefly confined to home products, cattle and sheep, wool and grain, dates
and bitumen.
The learned professions were well represented. The scribes were a large
and powerful body, and in Assyria, where education was less widely
diffused than in Babylonia, they formed a considerable part of the
governing bureaucracy. In Babylonia they acted as librarians, authors, and
publishers, multiplying copies of older books and adding to them new works
of their own. They served also as clerks and secretaries; they drew up
documents of state as well as legal contracts and deeds. They were
accordingly responsible for the forms of legal procedure, and so to some
extent occupied the place of the barristers and attorneys of to-day. The
Babylonian seems usually, if not always, to have pleaded his own case; but
his statement of it was thrown into shape by the scribe or clerk like the
final decision of the judges themselves. Under Nebuchadnezzar and his
successors such clerks were called “the scribes of the king,” and were
probably paid out of the public revenues. Thus in the second year of
Evil-Merodach it is said of the claimants to an inheritance that “they
shall speak to the scribes of the king and seal the deed,” and the seller
of some land has to take the deed of quittance “to the scribes of the
king,” who “shall supervise and seal it in the city.” Many of the scribes
were priests; and it is not uncommon to find the clerk who draws up a
contract and appears as a witness to be described as “the priest” of some
deity.
The physician is mentioned at a very early date. Thus we hear of
“Ilu-bani, the physician of Gudea,” the High-priest of Lagas (2700 B.C.),
and a treatise on medicine, of which fragments exist in the British
Museum, was compiled long before the days of Abraham. It continued to be
regarded as a standard work on the subject even in the time of the second
Assyrian empire, though its prescriptions are mixed up with charms and
incantations. But an attempt was made in it to classify and describe
various diseases, and to enumerate the remedies that had been proposed for
them. The remedies are often a compound of the most heterogeneous drugs,
some of which are of a very unsavory nature. However, the patient, or his
doctor, is generally given a choice of the remedies he might adopt. Thus
for an attack of spleen he was told either to “slice the seed of a reed
and dates in palm-wine,” or to “mix calves’ milk and bitters in
palm-wine,” or to “drink garlic and bitters in palm-wine.” “For an aching
tooth,” it is laid down, “the plant of human destiny (perhaps the
mandrake) is the remedy; it must be placed upon the tooth. The fruit of
the yellow snakewort is another remedy for an aching tooth; it must be
placed upon the tooth.… The roots of a thorn which does not see the sun
when growing is another remedy for an aching tooth; it must be placed upon
the tooth.” Unfortunately it is still impossible to assign a precise
signification to most of the drugs that are named, or to identify the
various herbs contained in the Babylonian pharmacopœia.
As time passed on, the charms and other superstitious practices which had
at first played so large a part in Babylonian medicine fell into the
background and were abandoned to the more uneducated classes of society.
The conquest of Western Asia by the Egyptian Pharaohs of the eighteenth
dynasty brought Babylonia into contact with Egypt, where the art of
medicine was already far advanced. It is probable that from this time
forward Babylonian medicine also became more strictly scientific. We have
indeed evidence that the medical system and practice of Egypt had been
introduced into Asia. When the great Egyptian treatise on medicine, known
as the Papyrus Ebers, was written in the sixteenth century B.C., one of
the most fashionable oculists of the day was a “Syrian” of Gebal, and as
the study of the disease of the eye was peculiarly Egyptian, we must
assume that his science had been derived from the valley of the Nile. It
must not be supposed, however, that the superstitious beliefs and
practices of the past were altogether abandoned, even by the most
distinguished practitioners, any more than they were by the physicians of
Europe in the early part of the last century. But they were invoked only
when the ordinary remedies had failed, and when no resource seemed left
except the aid of spiritual powers. Otherwise the doctor depended upon his
diagnosis of the disease and the prescriptions which had been accumulated
by the experience of past generations.
At the head of the profession stood the court-physician, the Rab-mugi or
Rab-mag as he was called in Babylonia. In Assyria there was more than one
doctor attached to the royal person, but letters have come down to us from
which we learn that the royal physicians were at times permitted to attend
private individuals when they were sick. Thus we have a letter of thanks
to the Assyrian King from one of his subjects full of gratitude to the
King for sending his own doctor to the writer, who had accordingly been
cured of a dangerous disease. “May Istar of Erech,” he says, “and Nana (of
Bit-Anu) grant long life to the king my lord, for he has sent Basa, the
royal physician, to save my life, and he has cured me; may the great gods
of heaven and earth be therefore gracious to the king my lord, and may
they establish the throne of the king my lord in heaven for ever, since I
was dead and the king has restored me to life.” Another letter contains a
petition that one of the royal physicians should be allowed to visit a
lady who was ill. “To the king my lord,” we read, “thy servant,
Saul-miti-yuballidh, sends salutation to the king my lord: may Nebo and
Merodach be gracious to the king my lord for ever and ever. Bau-gamilat,
the handmaid of the king, is constantly ill; she cannot eat a morsel of
food. Let the king send orders that some physician may go and see her.” In
this case, however, it is possible that the lady, who seems to have been
suffering from consumption, belonged to the harîm of the monarch, and it
was consequently needful to obtain the royal permission for a stranger to
visit her, even though he came professionally.
We can hardly reckon among Babylonian professions that of the poet. It is
true that a sort of poet-laureate existed at the court, and that we hear
of a piece of land being given by the King to one of them for some verses
which he had composed in honor of the sovereign. But poetry was not a
separate profession, and the poet must be included in the class of
scribes, or among those educated country gentlemen who possessed estates
of their own. He was, however, fully appreciated in Babylonia. The names
of the chief poets of the country were never forgotten, and the poems they
had written passed through edition after edition down to the later days of
Babylonian history. Sin-liqi-unnini, the author of the “Epic of Gilgames,”
Nis-Sin, the author of the “Adventures of Etana,” and many others, never
passed out of literary remembrance. There was a large reading public, and
the literary language of Babylonia changed but little from century to
century.
It was otherwise with the musicians. They formed a class to themselves,
though whether as a trade or as a profession it is difficult to say. We
must, however, distinguish between the composer and the performer. The
latter was frequently a slave or captive, and occupied but an humble place
in society. He is frequently depicted in the Assyrian bas-reliefs, and in
one instance is represented as wearing a cap of great height and shaped
like a fish. Musical instruments were numerous and various. We find among
them drums and tambourines, trumpets and horns, lyres and guitars, harps
and zithers, pipes and cymbals. Even the speaking-trumpet was employed. In
a sculpture which represents the transport of a colossal bull from the
quarries of Balad to the palace of Sennacherib, an overseer is made to
stand on the body of the bull and issue orders through a trumpet to the
workmen.
Besides single musicians, there were bands of performers, and at times the
music was accompanied by dancing or by clapping the hands. The bands were
under the conduct of leaders, who kept time with a double rod. In one
instance the Assyrian artist has represented three captives playing on a
lyre, an interesting illustration of the complaint of the Jewish exiles in
Babylonia that their conquerors required from them “a song.”
The artist fared no better than the musical performer. The painter of the
figures and scenes on the walls of the chamber, the sculptor of the
bas-reliefs which adorned an Assyrian palace, or of the statues which
stood in the temples of Babylonia, the engraver of the gems and seals,
some of which show such high artistic talent, were all alike skilled
artisans and nothing more. We have already seen what wages they received,
and what consequently must have been the social admiration in which they
were held. Behind the workman, however, stood the original artist, who
conceived and drew the first designs, and to whom the artistic inspiration
was primarily due. Of him we still know nothing. Probably he belonged in
general to the class of priests or scribes, and would have disdained to
receive remuneration for his art. As yet the texts have thrown no light
upon him, and it may be that they never will do so. The Babylonians were a
practical and not an artistic people, and the skilled artisan gave them
all that they demanded in the matter of art.