The conception of the state in Babylonia was intensely theocratic. The
kings had been preceded by high-priests, and up to the last they performed
priestly functions, and represented the religious as well as the civil
power. At Babylon the real sovereign was Bel Merodach, the true “lord” of
the city, and it was only when the King had been adopted by the god as his
son that he possessed any right to rule. Before he had “taken the hands”
of Bel, and thereby become the adopted son of the deity, he had no
legitimate title to the throne. He was, in fact, the vicegerent and
representative of Bel upon earth; it was Bel who gave him his authority
and watched over him as a father over a son.
The Babylonian sovereign was thus quite as much a pontiff as he was a
king. The fact was acknowledged in the titles he bore, as well as in the
ceremony which legitimized his accession to the throne. Two views
prevailed, however, as to his relation to the god. According to one of
these, sonship conferred upon him actual divinity; he was not merely the
representative of a god, but a god himself. This was the view which
prevailed in the earlier days of Semitic supremacy. Sargon of Akkad and
his son Naram-Sin are entitled “gods;” temples and priests were dedicated
to them during their lifetime, and festivals were observed in their honor.
Their successors claimed and received the same attributes of divinity.
Under the third dynasty of Ur even the local prince, Gudea, the
high-priest of Tello, was similarly deified. It was not until Babylonia
had been conquered by the foreign Kassite dynasty from the mountains of
Elam that a new conception of the King was introduced. He ceased to be a
god himself, and became, instead, the delegate and representative of the
god of whom he was the adopted son. His relation to the god was that of a
son during the lifetime of his father, who can act for his father, but
cannot actually take the father’s place so long as the latter is alive.
Some of the earlier Chaldean monarchs call themselves sons of the
goddesses who were worshipped in the cities over which they held sway.
They thus claimed to be of divine descent, not by adoption, but by actual
birth. The divinity that was in them was inherited; it was not merely
communicated by a later and artificial process. The “divine right,” by
grace of which they ruled, was the right of divine birth.
At the outset, therefore, the Babylonian King was a pontiff because he was
also a god. In him the deities of heaven were incarnated on earth. He
shared their essence and their secrets; he knew how their favor could be
gained or their enmity averted, and so mediated between god and man. This
deification of the King, however, cannot be traced beyond the period when
Semitic rule was firmly established in Chaldea. It is true that Sumerian
princes, like Gudea of Lagas, were also deified; but this was long after
the rise of Semitic supremacy, and the age of Sargon of Akkad, and when
Sumerian culture was deeply interpenetrated by Semitic ideas. So far as we
know at present the apotheosis of the King was of Semitic origin.
It is paralleled by the apotheosis of the King in ancient Egypt. There,
too, the Pharaoh was regarded as an incarnation of divinity, to whom
shrines were erected, priests ordained, and sacrifices offered. In early
times he was, moreover, declared to be the son of the goddess of the city
in which he dwelt; it was not till the rise of the fifth historical
dynasty that he became the “Son of the Sun-god” of Heliopolis, rather than
Horus, the Sun-god, himself. This curious parallelism is one of many facts
which point to intercourse between Babylonia and Egypt in the prehistoric
age; whether the deification of the King originated first on the banks of
the Euphrates or of the Nile must be left to the future to decide.
Naram-Sin is addressed as “the god of Agadê,” or Akkad, the capital of his
dynasty, and long lists have been found of the offerings that were made,
month by month, to the deified Dungi, King of Ur, and his vassal, Gudea of
Lagas. Here, for example, are Dr. Scheil’s translations of some of them:
“I. Half a measure of good beer and 5 _gin_ of sesame oil on the new moon,
the 15th day, for the god Dungi; half a measure of good beer and half a
measure of herbs for Gudea the High-priest, during the month Tammuz. II.
Half a measure of the king’s good beer, half a measure of herbs, on the
new moon, the 15th day, for Gudea the High-priest. One measure of good
wort beer, 5 _qas_ of ground flour, 3 _qas_ of cones (?), for the planet
Mercury: during the month of the festival of the god Dungi. III.… Half a
measure of good beer, half a measure of herbs, on the new moon, the 15th
day, for the god Gudea the High-priest: during the month Elul, the first
year of Gimil-Sin, king [of Ur].”
The conception of the King as a visible god upon earth was unable to
survive the conquest of Babylonia by the half-civilized mountaineers of
Elam and the substitution of foreigners for the Semitic or Semitized
Sumerian rulers of the country. As the doctrine of the divine right of
kings passed away in England with the rise of the Hanoverian dynasty, so,
too, in Babylonia the deified King disappeared with the Kassite conquest.
But he continued to be supreme pontiff to the adopted son of the god of
Babylon. Babylon had become the capital of the kingdom, and Merodach, its
patron-deity, was, accordingly, supreme over the other gods of Chaldea. He
alone could confer the royal powers that the god of every city which was
the centre of a principality had once been qualified to grant. By “taking
his hands” the King became his adopted son, and so received a legitimate
right to the throne.
It was the throne not only of Babylonia, but of the Babylonian empire as
well. It was never forgotten that Babylonia had once been the mistress of
Western Asia, and it was, accordingly, the sceptre of Western Asia that
was conferred by Bel Merodach upon his adopted sons. Like the Holy Roman
Empire in the Middle Ages, Babylonian sovereignty brought with it a legal,
though shadowy, right to rule over the civilized kingdoms of the world. It
was this which made the Assyrian conquerors of the second Assyrian empire
so anxious to secure possession of Babylon and there “take the hands of
Bel.” Tiglath-pileser III., Shalmaneser IV., and Sargon were all alike
usurpers, who governed by right of the sword. It was only when they had
made themselves masters of Babylon and been recognized by Bel and his
priesthood that their title to govern became legitimate and unchallenged.
Cyrus and Cambyses continued the tradition of the native kings. They, too,
claimed to be the successors of those who had ruled over Western Asia, and
Bel, of his own free choice, it was alleged, had rejected the unworthy
Nabonidos and put Cyrus in his place. Cyrus ruled, not by right of
conquest, but because he had been called to the crown by the god of
Babylon. It was not until the Zoroastrean Darius and Xerxes had taken
Babylon by storm and destroyed the temple of Bel that the old tradition
was finally thrust aside. The new rulers of Persia had no belief in the
god of Babylon; his priesthood was hostile to them, and Babylon was
deposed from the position it had so long occupied as the capital of the
world.
In Assyria, in contrast to Babylonia, the government rested on a military
basis. It is true that the kings of Assyria had once been the high-priests
of the city of Assur, and that they carried with them some part of their
priestly functions when they were invested with royal power. But it is no
less true that they were never looked upon as incarnations of the deity or
even as his representative upon earth. The rise of the Assyrian kingdom
seems to have been due to a military revolt; at any rate, its history is
that of a succession of rebellious generals, some of whom succeeded in
founding dynasties, while others failed to hand down their power to their
posterity. There was no religious ceremony at their coronation like that
of “taking the hands of Bel.” When Esar-haddon was made King he was simply
acclaimed sovereign by the army. It was the army and not the priesthood to
whom he owed his title to reign.
The conception of the supreme god himself differed in Assyria and
Babylonia. In Babylonia, Bel-Merodach was “lord” of the city; in Assyria,
Assur was the deified city itself. In the one case, therefore, the King
was appointed vicegerent of the god over the city which he governed and
preserved; in the other case the god represented the state, and, in so far
as the King was a servant of the god, he was a servant also of the state.
In both countries there was an aristocracy of birth based originally on
the possession of land. But in Babylonia it tended at an early period to
be absorbed by the mercantile and priestly classes, and in later days it
is difficult to find traces even of its existence. The nobles of the age
of Nebuchadnezzar were either wealthy trading families or officers of the
Crown. The temples, and the priests who lived upon their revenues, had
swallowed up a considerable part of the landed and other property of the
country, which had thus become what in modern Turkey would be called
_wakf_. In Assyria many of the great princes of the realm still belonged
to the old feudal aristocracy, but here again the tendency was to replace
them by a bureaucracy which owed its position and authority to the direct
favor of the King. Under Tiglath-pileser III. this tendency became part of
the policy of the government; the older aristocracy disappeared, and
instead of it we find military officers and civil officials, all of whom
were appointed by the Crown.
While, accordingly, Babylonia became an industrial and priestly state,
Assyria developed into a great military and bureaucratic organization. It
taught the world how to organize and administer an empire. Tiglath-pileser
III. inaugurated a course of policy which his successors did their best to
carry out. He aimed at reviving the ancient empire of Sargon of Akkad, of
uniting the civilized world of Western Asia under one head, but upon new
principles and in a more permanent way. The campaigns which his
predecessors had carried on for the sake of booty and military fame were
now conducted with a set purpose and method. The raid was replaced by a
carefully planned scheme of conquest. The vanquished territories were
organized into provinces under governors appointed by the Assyrian King
and responsible to him alone. By the side of the civil governor was a
military commander, who kept watch upon the other’s actions, while under
them was a large army of administrators. Assyrian colonies were planted in
the newly acquired districts, where they served as a garrison, and the
native inhabitants were transported to other parts of the Assyrian empire.
In this way an attempt was made to break the old ties of patriotism and
local feeling, and to substitute for them fidelity to the Assyrian
government and the god Assur, in whose name its conquests were made.
The taxes of the empire were carefully regulated. A cadastral survey was
an institution which had long been in existence; it had been borrowed from
Babylonia, where, as we have seen, it was already known at a very early
epoch. The amount to be paid into the treasury by each town and province
was fixed, and the governor was called upon to transmit it each year to
Nineveh. Thus in the time of Sennacherib the annual tribute of Carchemish
was 100 talents, that of Arpad 30, and that of Megiddo 15, while, at home,
Nineveh was assessed at 30 talents, and the district of Assur at 20, which
were expended on the maintenance of the fleet, the whole amount of revenue
raised from Assyria being 274 talents. Besides this direct taxation, there
was also indirect taxation, as well as municipal rates. Thus a tax was
laid upon the brick-fields, which in Babylonia were economically of
considerable importance, and there was an _octroi_ duty upon all goods,
cattle, and country produce which entered a town. Similar tolls were
exacted from the ships which moored at the quays, as well as from those
who made use of the pontoon-bridges which spanned the Euphrates or passed
under them in boats.
Long lists of officials have been preserved. Certain of the governors or
satraps were allowed to share with the King the privilege of giving a name
to the year. It was an ingenious system of reckoning time which had been
in use in Assyria from an early period and was introduced into Cappadocia
by Assyrian colonists. From Asia Minor it probably spread to Greece; at
all events, the eponymous archons at Athens, after whom the several years
were named, corresponded exactly with the Assyrian _limmi_ or eponyms.
Each year in succession received its name from the eponym or officer who
held office during the course of it, and as lists of these officers were
carefully handed down it was easy to determine the date of an event which
had taken place in the year of office of a given eponym. The system was of
Assyrian invention and never prevailed in Babylonia. There time was dated
by the chief occurrences of a king’s reign, and at the end of the reign a
list of them was drawn up beginning with his accession to the throne and
ending with his death and the name of his successor. These lists went back
to an early period of Babylonian history and provided the future historian
with an accurate chronology.
Immediately attached to the person of the Assyrian monarch was the
Rab-saki, “the chief of the princes,” or vizier. He is called the
Rab-shakeh in the Old Testament, by the side of whom stood the Rab-saris,
the Assyrian Rab-sa-risi, or “chief of the heads” of departments. They
were both civil officers. The army was under the command of the Tartannu,
or “Commander-in-Chief,” the Biblical Tartan, who, in the absence of the
King, led the troops to battle and conducted a campaign. When Shalmaneser
II., for example, became too old to take the field himself, his armies
were led by the Tartan Daian-Assur, and under the second Assyrian empire
the Tartan appears frequently, sometimes in command of a portion of the
forces, while the King is employing the rest elsewhere, sometimes in place
of the King, who prefers to remain at home. In earlier days there had been
two Tartans, one of whom stood on the right hand side of the King and the
other on his left. In order of precedence both of them were regarded as of
higher rank than the Rab-shakeh.
The army was divided into companies of a thousand, a hundred, fifty, and
ten, and we hear of captains of fifty and captains of ten. Under
Tiglath-pileser III. and his successors it became an irresistible engine
of attack. No pains were spared to make it as effective as possible; its
discipline was raised to the highest pitch of perfection, and its arms and
accoutrements constantly underwent improvements. As long as a supply of
men lasted, no enemy could stand against it, and the great military empire
of Nineveh was safe.
It contained cavalry as well as foot-soldiers. The cavalry had grown out
of a corps of chariot-drivers, which was retained, though shrunken in size
and importance, long after the more serviceable horsemen had taken its
place. The chariot held a driver and a warrior. When the latter was the
King he was accompanied by one or two armed attendants. They all rode
standing and carried bows and spears. The chariot itself ran upon two
wheels, a pair of horses being harnessed to its pole. Another horse was
often attached to it in case of accidents.
The chariots were of little good when the fighting had to be done in a
mountainous country. In the level parts of Western Asia, where good roads
had existed for untold centuries, they were a powerful arm of offence, but
the Assyrians were constantly called upon to attack the tribes of the
Kurdish and Armenian mountains who harassed their positions, and in such
trackless districts the chariots were an incumbrance and not a help. Trees
had to be cut down and rocks removed in order to make roads along which
they might pass. The Assyrian engineers indeed were skilled in the
construction of roads of the kind, and the inscriptions not infrequently
boast of their success in carrying them through the most inaccessible
regions, but the necessity for making them suitable for the passage of
chariots was a serious drawback, and we hear at times how the wheels of
the cars had to be taken off and the chariots conveyed on the backs of
mules or horses. It was not wonderful, therefore, that the Assyrian kings,
who were practical military men, soon saw the advantage of imitating the
custom of the northern and eastern mountaineers, who used the horse for
riding purposes rather than for drawing a chariot. The chariot continued
to be employed in the Assyrian army, but rather as a luxury than as an
effective instrument of war.
At first the cavalry were little more than mounted horsemen. Their only
weapons were the bow and arrow, and they rode without saddles and with
bare legs. At a later period part of the cavalry was armed with spears,
saddles were introduced, and the groom who had run by the side of the
horse disappeared. At the same time, under Tiglath-pileser III., the
rider’s legs were protected by leathern drawers over which high boots were
drawn, laced in front. This was an importation from the north, and it is
possible that many of the horsemen were brought from the same quarter.
Sennacherib still further improved the dress by adding to it a closely
fitting coat of mail.
The infantry outnumbered the cavalry by about ten to one, and were divided
into heavy-armed and light-armed. Their usual dress, at all events, up to
the foundation of the second Assyrian empire, consisted of a peaked helmet
and a tunic which descended half-way down the thighs, and was fastened
round the waist by a girdle. From the reign of Sargon onward they were
divided into two bodies, one of archers, the other of spearmen, the
archers being partly light-armed and partly heavy-armed. The heavy-armed
were again divided into two classes, one of them wearing sandals and a
coat-of-mail over the tunic, while the other was dressed in a long,
fringed robe reaching to the feet, over which a cuirass was worn. They
also carried a short sword, and had sandals of the same shape as those
used by the other class. Each had an attendant waiting upon him with a
long, rectangular shield of wicker-work, covered with leather. The
light-armed archers were encumbered with but little clothing, consisting
only of a kilt and a fillet round the head. The spearmen, on the contrary,
were protected by a crested helmet and circular shield, though their legs
and face were usually bare.
Changes were introduced by Sennacherib, who abolished the inconveniently
long robe of the second class of heavy-armed archers, and gave them
leather greaves and boots. The first class, on the other hand, are now
generally represented without sandals, and with an embroidered turban with
lappets on the head. Sennacherib also established a corps of slingers, who
were clad in helmet and breastplate, leather drawers, and short boots, as
well as a company of pioneers, armed with double-headed axes, and clothed
with conical helmets, greaves, and boots. These pioneers were especially
needed for engineering the way through the pathless defiles and rugged
ground over which the extension of the empire more and more required the
Assyrian army to make its way.
The heads of the spears and arrows were of metal, usually of bronze, more
rarely of iron. The helmets also were of bronze or iron, a leather cap
being worn underneath them, and the coats-of-mail were formed of bronze
scales sewn to a leather shirt. Many of the shields, moreover, were of
metal, though wicker-work covered with leather seems to have been
preferred. Battering-rams and other engines for attacking a city were
carried on the march.
Baggage wagons were also carried, as well as standards and tents. The
tents of the officers were divided into two partitions, one of which was
used as a dining-room, while the royal tent was accompanied by a kitchen.
Tables, chairs, couches, and various utensils formed part of its
furniture. One of these chairs was a sort of palanquin in the shape of an
arm-chair with a footstool, which was borne on the shoulders of
attendants.
The Assyrian army was originally recruited from the native peasantry, who
returned to their fields at the end of a campaign with the spoil that had
been taken from the enemy. Under the second Assyrian empire, however, it
became a standing army, a part of which was composed of mercenaries, while
another part consisted of troops drafted from the conquered populations.
Certain of the soldiers were selected to serve as the body-guard of the
King; they had a commander of their own and doubtless possessed special
privileges. The army was recruited by conscription, the obligation to
serve in it being part of the burdens which had to be borne by the
peasantry. They could be relieved of it by the special favor of the
government just as they could be relieved of the necessity of paying
taxes.
The Babylonian army of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors was modelled on
that of the Assyrians. We can gather from the receipts for the provisions
and accoutrements furnished to it how the army of Tiglath-pileser or
Sennacherib must have been fed and paid. Thus in the first year of
Nabonidos, 75 _qas_ of flour and 63 _qas_ (nearly 100 quarts) of beer were
provided for the troops in the camp near Sippara, and in the second year
of the same King 54 _qas_ of beer were sent on the 29th of Nisan for “the
soldiers who had marched from Babylon.” Similarly in the tenth year of the
same reign we have a receipt for the despatch of 116 _qas_ of food on the
14th of Iyyar for “the troops which had marched [to Sippara] from
Babylon,” as well as for 18 _qas_ of “provisions” provided each day for
the same purpose from the 15th to the 18th of the same month. In the first
year of Nabonidos 3 _gur_ of sesame had been ordered for the archers
during the first two months of the year, and as in his thirteenth year 5
_gur_ of wheat were provided for fifteen soldiers, we may calculate that
rather more than two and one-half bushels were allotted to each man. It
may be added that at the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign we find a
contractor guaranteeing “the excellence of the beer” that had been
furnished for the “army that had entered Babylon,” though it is possible
that here artisans rather than soldiers are meant.
A register of the soldiers was kept, but it would seem that those who were
in charge of it sometimes forgot to strike off the names of those who were
dead or discharged, and pocketed their pay. At any rate, the following
official document has come down to us:—“(The names) of the deserters and
dead soldiers which have been overlooked in the paymaster’s account, the
8th day of Nisan, the eighth year of Cyrus, king of Babylon and of the
world: Samas-akhi-iddin, son of Samas-ana-bitisu, deserted;
Muse-zib-Samas, son of the Usian, _ditto_; Itti-Samas-eneya junior, of the
family of Samas-kin-abli, _ditto_; Itti-Samas-baladhu, son of Samas-erba
_ditto_; Taddannu, son of Rimut, _ditto_; Samas-yuballidh, his brother,
_ditto_; Kalbâ, son of Samas-kin-abli, son of the painter(?), _ditto_; in
all seven deserters. Libludh, son of Samas-edher, dead; Nebo-tuktê-tirri,
_ditto_; Samas-mupakhkhiranni, _ditto_; Samas-akhi-erba, son of
Samas-ana-bitisu, _ditto_; in all four dead. Altogether eleven soldiers
who have deserted or are dead.”
If Babylonia copied Assyria in military arrangements, the converse was the
case as regards a fleet. “The cry of the Chaldeans,” according to the Old
Testament, was “in their ships,” and in the earliest age of Babylonian
history, Eridu, which then stood on the sea-coast, was already a sea-port.
But Assyria was too far distant from the sea for its inhabitants to become
sailors, and the rapid current of the Tigris made even river navigation
difficult. In fact, the rafts on which the heavy monuments were
transported, and which could float only down stream, or the small, round
boats, resembling the _kufas_ that are still in use, were almost the only
means employed for crossing the water. When the Assyrian army had to pass
a river, either pontoons were thrown across it, or the soldiers swam
across the streams with the help of inflated skins. The _kufa_ was made of
rushes daubed with bitumen, and sometimes covered with a skin.
So little accustomed were the Assyrians to navigation that, when
Sennacherib determined to pursue the followers of Merodach-baladan across
the Persian Gulf to the coast of Elam, he was obliged to have recourse to
the Phœnician boat-builders and sailors. Two fleets were built for him by
Phœnician and Syrian workmen, one at Tel-Barsip, near Carchemish, on the
Euphrates, the other at Nineveh on the Tigris; these he manned with
Syrian, Sidonian, and Ionian sailors, and after pouring out a libation to
Ea, the god of the sea, set sail from the mouth of the Euphrates. It was
probably for the support of this fleet that the 20 talents (£10,800)
annually levied on the district of Assur were intended. The Phœnician
ships employed by the Assyrians were biremes, with two tiers of oars.
Of the Babylonian fleet we know but little. It does not seem to have taken
part in the defence of the country at the time of the invasion of Cyrus.
But the sailors who manned it were furnished with food, like the soldiers
of the army, from the royal storehouse or granary. Thus in the sixteenth
year of Nabonidos we have a memorandum to the effect that 210 _qas_ of
dates were sent from the storehouse in the month Tammuz “for the
maintenance of the sailors.” The King also kept a state-barge on the
Euphrates, like the dahabias of Egypt. In the twenty-fourth year of
Darius, for instance, a new barge was made for the monarch, two
contractors undertaking to work upon it from the beginning of Iyyar, or
April, to the end of Tisri, or September, and to use in its construction a
particular kind of wood.
While we hear but little about the fleet, cargo and ferry-boats are
frequently mentioned in letters and contracts. Reference has already been
made to the shekel and a quarter paid by the agent of Belshazzar for the
hire of a boat which conveyed three oxen and twenty-four sheep to the
temple of the Sun-god at Sippara, in order that they might be sacrificed
at the festival of the new year. Sixty _qas_ of dates were at the same
time given to the boatmen. In the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, 3 shekels were
paid for the hire of a grain-boat, and in the thirty-sixth year of the
same King 4½ shekels were given for the hire of another boat for the
transport of wool.
Some documents translated by Mr. Pinches throw light on the building and
cost of the ships. One of them is as follows: “A ship of six by the cubit
beam, twenty by the cubit the seat of its waters, which Nebo-baladan, the
son of Labasi, the son of Nur-Papsukal, has sold to Sirikki, the son of
Iddinâ, the son of Egibi, for four manehs, ten shekels of silver, in
one-shekel pieces, which are not standard, and are in the shape of a
bird’s tail (?). Nebo-baladan takes the responsibility for the management
(?) of the ship. Nebo-baladan has received the money, four manehs ten
shekels of white (silver), the price of his ship, from the hands of
Sirikki.” The contract, which was signed by six witnesses, one of whom was
“the King’s captain,” was dated at Babylon in the twenty-sixth year of
Darius. Another contract relates to one of the boats of the pontoon-bridge
which ran across the Euphrates and connected the two parts of Babylon
together: “[Two] manehs ten shekels of white (silver), coined in
one-shekel pieces, not standard, from Musezib, the son of Pisaram, to
Sisku, the son of Iddinâ, the son of Egibi. Musezibtum and Narum, his
female slaves—the wrist of Musezibtum is tattooed with the name of Iddinâ,
the father of Sisku, and the wrist of Narum is tattooed with the name of
Sisku—are the security of Musezib. There is no hire paid for the slaves or
interest on the money. Another possessor shall not have power over them
until Musezib receives the money, two manehs ten shekels of white silver,
in one-shekel pieces. Sisku, the son of Iddinâ, takes the responsibility
for the non-escape of Musezibtum and Narum. The day when Musezibtum and
Narum go elsewhere Sisku shall pay Musezib half a measure of grain a day
by way of hire. The money, which is for a ship for the bridge, has been
given to Sisku.” This contract is also dated in the twenty-sixth year of
Darius.
A letter written in the time of Khammurabi, or Amraphel, throws some light
on the profits that were made by conveying passengers. There were ships
which conveyed foreign merchants to Babylon if they were furnished with
passports allowing them to travel and trade in the dominions of the
Babylonian King. They took their goods and commodities along with them; on
one occasion, we are told, the boat in which some of them travelled had
been used for the conveyance of 10 talents of lead. It must, therefore,
have been of considerable size and draught.
That the army and navy should have been recruited from abroad was in
accordance with that spirit of liberality toward the foreigner which had
distinguished the Babylonians from an early period. It was partly due to
the mixed character of the race, partly to the early foundation of an
empire which embraced the greater portion of Western Asia, partly, and
more especially, to the commercial instincts of the people. We find among
them none of that jealous exclusiveness which characterized most of the
nations of antiquity. They were ready to receive into their midst both the
foreigner and his gods. Among Assyrian and Babylonian officials we meet
with many who bear foreign names, and among the gods whose statues found a
place in the national temples of Assyria were Khaldis of Armenia, and the
divinities of the Bedâwin. The policy of deporting a conquered nation was
dictated by the same readiness to admit the stranger to the rights and
privileges of a home-born native. The restrictions placed upon Babylonian
and Assyrian citizenship seem to have been but slight.
When Abraham was born at Ur of the Chaldees, Babylonia was governed by a
dynasty of South Arabian origin whose names had to be translated into the
Babylonian language. Throughout the country there were colonies of
“Amorites,” from Syria and Canaan, doubtless established there for the
purposes of trade, who enjoyed the same rights as the native Babylonians.
They could hold and bequeath land and other property, could buy and sell
freely, could act as witnesses in a case where natives alone were
concerned, and could claim the full protection of Babylonian law.
One of these colonies, known as “the district of the Amorites,” was just
outside the walls of Sippara. In the reign of Ammi-zadok, the fourth
successor of Khammurabi, a dispute arose about the title to some land
included within it, and the matter was tried before the four royal judges.
The following record of the judgment was drawn up by the clerk of the
court: “Twenty acres by thirteen of land in the district of the Amorites
which was purchased by Ibni-Hadad, the merchant. Arad-Sin, the son of
Edirum, has pleaded as follows before the judges: The building land, along
with the house of my father, he did not buy; Ibku-Anunit and Dhab-Istar,
the sons of Samas-nazir, sold (it) for money to Ibni-Hadad, the merchant.
Iddatum and Mazitum, the sons of Ibni-Hadad the merchant, appeared before
the judges; they lifted up (their hands) and swore that it had been put up
for sale; it had been bought by Edirum and Sin-nadni-sû who handed it over
to Samas-nazir and Ibku-Anunit, selling it to them for money. The estate,
consisting of twenty-two acres of land enclosed by thirty other acres, as
well as eleven trees [and] a house, in the district of the Amorites,
bounded at the upper end by the estate of ——, and at the lower end by the
river Bukai (?), is contracted in width, and is of the aforesaid nature.
Judgment has been given for Arad-Sin, the son of Edirum, as follows: At
the entrance to Sippara the property is situated (?), and after being put
up for sale was bought by Samas-nazir and Ibku-Anunit, to whom it was
handed over; power of redemption is allowed (?) to Arad-Sin; the estate is
there, let him take it. Before Uruki-mansum the judge, Sin-ismeani the
judge, Ibku-Anunit the judge, and Ibku-ilisu the judge. The 6th day of the
month Tammuz, the year when Ammi-zadok the king constructed the very great
aqueduct (?) for the mountain and its fountain (?) for the house of Life.”
If we may argue from the names, Arad-Sin, who brought the action, was of
Babylonian descent; and in this case native Babylonians as well as
foreigners could hold land in the district in which the Amorites had
settled. At any rate, in the eyes of the law, the native and the foreign
settler must have been upon an equal footing; they were tried before the
same judges, and the law which applied to the one applied equally to the
other. It is clear, moreover, that the foreigner had as much right as the
native to buy, sell, or bequeath the soil of Babylonia.
Whether or not this right was restricted to particular districts, we do
not know. In Syria, in later days, “streets,” or rows of shops in a city,
could be assigned to the members of another nationality by special treaty,
as we learn from I Kings xx. 34, and at the end of the Egyptian eighteenth
dynasty we hear of a quarter at Memphis being given to a colony of Hittite
merchants, but such special assignments of land may not have been the
custom in ancient Chaldea. The Amorites of Canaan may have been allowed to
settle wherever they liked, and the origin of the title “district of the
Amorites” may have simply been due to the tendency of foreign settlers to
establish themselves in the same locality. The fact that Arad-Sin seems to
have been a Babylonian, and that his action was brought before Babylonian
judges, is in favor of the view that such was the case.
Moreover, as Mr. Pinches has pointed out, Amorites could rise to the
highest offices of state. Not only could they serve as witnesses to a
deed, to which all the other parties were native Babylonians, they could
also hold civil and military appointments. On the one hand we find the son
of Abi-ramu, or Abram, who is described as “the father of the Amorite,”
acting as a witness to a contract dated in the reign of the grandfather of
Khammurabi, or Amraphel; on the other hand, “an Amorite” has the same
title of “servant” of the King as the royal judge Ibku-Anunit, and among
the Assyrians of the second empire, who were slavish imitators of
Babylonian custom and law, we meet with more than one example of a
foreigner in the service of the Assyrian government. Thus, in the reign of
Sargon, thirteen years after the fall of Samaria, the Israelites, Pekah
and Nadabiah, who appear as witnesses to the sale of some slaves, are
described, the one as “the governor of the city,” the other as a
departmental secretary. The founder, again, of one of the leading
commercial families at Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar and his successors is
entitled “the Egyptian,” and the clerk who draws up a contract in the
first year of Cambyses is the grandson of a Jew, Bel-Yahu, “Bel is
Yahveh,” while his father’s name, Ae-nahid, “Ae is exalted,” implies that
the Israelitish Yahveh had been identified with the Babylonian Ae. Hebrew
and Canaanite names appear in legal and commercial documents of the age of
Khammurabi and earlier by the side of names of purely native stamp;
Jacob-el and Joseph-el, for instance, Abdiel and Ishmael, come before us
with all the rights and privileges of Babylonian citizens. The name of
Ishmael, indeed, is already met with on a marble slab from Sippara, which
is as early as about 4,000 B.C. In the time of Sargon of Akkad the
Babylonian “governor” of Syria and Canaan bears the Canaanitish name of
Uru-Malik, or Urimelech, and under the later Assyrian empire, the “tartan”
of Comagene, with the Hittite name of Mar-lara, was an eponym, who gave
his name to the year.
Mr. Pinches is probably right in seeing the name “Israel” itself in that
of a high-priest who lived in the district of the Amorites outside Sippara
in the reign of Ammi-zadok. His name is written Sar-ilu, and it was by his
order that nine acres of ground “in the district of the Amorites” were
leased for a year from two nuns, who were devotees of the Sun-god, and
their nieces. Six measures of grain on every ten acres were to be paid to
the Sun-god at the gate of Malgia, the women themselves receiving a shekel
of silver as rent, and the field was to be handed back to them at
harvest-time, the end of the agricultural year. That the women in the
Amorite settlements enjoyed the same freedom and powers as the women of
Babylonia is shown by two documents, one dated in the reign of the second
King of the dynasty to which Khammurabi belonged, the other in the reign
of Khammurabi’s great-grandfather. In the first, Kuryatum, the daughter of
an Amorite, receives a field of more than four acres of which she had been
wrongfully deprived; in the second, the same Kuryatum and her brother
Sumu-rah are sued by the three children of an Amorite, one of whom is a
woman, for the recovery of a field, house, slaves, and date-palms. The
case was brought before “the judges of Bit-Samas,” “the Temple of the
(Babylonian) Sun-god,” who rejected the claim.
At a very early period of Babylonian history the Syrian god Hadad, or
Rimmon, had been, as it were, domesticated in Babylonia, where he was
known as Amurru, “the Amorite.” He had come with the Amorite merchants and
settlers, and was naturally their patron-deity. His wife, Asratu, or
Asherah, was called, by the Sumerians, Nin-Marki, “the mistress of the
Amorite land,” and was identified with their own Gubarra. Nin-Marki, or
Asherah, presided over the Syrian settlements, the part of the city where
the foreigners resided being under her protection like the gate which led
to “the district of the Amorites” beyond the walls. The following lawsuit
which came before the courts in the reign of Khammurabi shows that there
were special judges for cases in which Amorites were concerned and that
they sat at “the gate of Nin-Marki.” “Concerning the garden of Sin-magir
which Nahid-Amurri bought for money. Ilu-bani claimed it for the royal
stables, and accordingly they went to the judges, and the judges sent them
to the gate of Nin-Marki and the judges of the gate of Nin-Marki. In the
gate of Nin-Marki Ilu-bani pleaded as follows: I am the son of Sin-magir;
he adopted me as his son, and the seal of the document has never been
broken. He further pleaded that ever since the reign of the deified
Rim-Sin (Arioch) the garden and house had been adjudged to Ilu-bani. Then
came Sin-mubalidh and claimed the garden of Ilu-bani, and they went to the
judges and the judges pronounced that ‘to us and the elders they have been
sent and in the gate of the gods Merodach, Sussa, Nannar, Khusa, and
Nin-Marki, the daughter of Merodach, in the judgment-hall, the disputants
(?) have stood, and the elders before whom Nahid-Amurri first appeared in
the gate of Nin-Marki have heard the declaration of Ilu-bani.’ Accordingly
they adjudged the garden and house to Ilu-bani, forbidding Sin-mubalidh to
return and claim it. Oaths have been taken in the name of the Moon-god,
the Sun-god, Merodach, and Khammurabi, the king. Before Sin-imguranni the
president, Edilka-Sin, Amil-izzitim, Ubarrum, Zanbil-arad-Sin, Ak-hiya,
Kabdu-gumi, Samas-bani, the son of Abia-rak-has, Zanik-pisu, Izkur-Ea the
steward, and Bauila. The seals of the parties are attached. The fourth day
of Tammuz, the year when Khammurabi the king offered up prayer to Tasmit.”
While a portion of the land was thus owned by foreigners, there was a
considerable part of it which belonged to the temples. Another part
consisted of royal domains, the revenue of which went to the privy purse
of the King. The King could make grants of this to his favorites, or as a
reward for services to the state. The Babylonian King Nebo-baladan, for
example, gave one of his officials a field large enough, it was
calculated, to be sown with 3 _gur_ of seed, and Assur-bani-pal of Assyria
made his vizier, Nebo-sar-uzur, the gift of a considerable estate on
account of his loyalty from the time that the King was a boy. All the
vizier’s lands, including the serfs upon them, were declared free from
taxation and every kind of burden, the men upon them were not to be
impressed as soldiers, nor the cattle and flocks to be carried away. It
was also ordered that Nebo-sar-uzur, on his decease, should be buried
where he chose, and not in the common cemetery outside the walls of the
city. Like the monarch, he might have his tomb in the royal palace or in
his own house, and imprecations were called down on the head of anyone who
wished to disturb his final resting-place. The deed of gift and privilege
was sealed, we are told, with the King’s own “signet-ring.”
A grant of immunity from taxation and other burdens could be made to the
inhabitants of a whole district. A deed exists, signed by a large number
of witnesses, in which Nebuchadnezzar I. of Babylon (about 1200 B.C.)
makes a grant of the kind to the district of Bit-Karziyabku in the
mountains of Namri to the east of Babylonia. We read in it that,
throughout the whole district, neither the royal messengers nor the
governor of Namri shall have any jurisdiction, no horses, foals, mares,
asses, oxen, or sheep shall be carried off by the tax-gatherers, no
stallions shall be sent to the royal stables, and no taxes of grain and
fruit shall be paid to the Babylonian treasury. Nor shall any of the
inhabitants be impressed for military service. It speaks volumes for the
commercial spirit of the Babylonians that a royal decree of this character
should have been thrown into legal form, and that the names of witnesses
should have been attached to it, just as if it had been a contract between
two private persons. The contrast is striking with the decree issued by
the Assyrian King, Assur-bani-pal, to his faithful servant Nebo-sar-uzur.
All that was needed where the King of Assyria was concerned was his
signet-seal and royal command. But Assur-bani-pal was an autocrat at the
head of a military state. The Babylonian sovereign governed a commercial
community and owed his authority to the priests of Bel.