We are apt to look upon letter-writing as a modern invention, some of us,
perhaps, as a modern plague. But as a matter of fact it is an invention
almost as old as civilization itself. As soon as man began to invent
characters by means of which he could communicate his thoughts to others,
he began to use them for holding intercourse with his absent friends. They
took the place of the oral message, which was neither so confidential nor
so safe. Classical scholars have long been familiar with the fact that
letter-writing was one of the accomplishments of an educated Greek and
Roman. The letters of Cicero and Pliny are famous, and the letters of
Plato and Aristotle have been studied by a select few. Even Homer, who
seems to avoid all reference to the art of writing as if it were an
unclean thing, tells us of “the baleful characters” written on folded
tablets, and sent by Prœtos to the King of Lycia. Criticism, it is true,
not so long ago doubted the facts of the story and tried to resolve the
characters and the tablets into a child’s drawings on the slate. But
archæology has come to the rescue of Prœtos, and while we now know that
letters passed freely backward and forward in the world in which he is
supposed to have moved, Mr. Arthur Evans has discovered the very symbols
which he is likely to have used. Even the Lycians, to whom the letter was
sent, have been found, not only on the Egyptian monuments, but also in the
tablets of Tel-el-Amarna.
Letter-writing in the East goes back to a remote antiquity. In the book of
Chronicles it is stated that the messages that passed between Hiram and
Solomon were in writing, but the age of Solomon was modern when compared
with that to which some of the letters we now possess actually belong.
Centuries earlier the words “message” and “letter” had become synonymous
terms, and in Hebrew the word which had originally signified a “message”
had come to mean a “book.” Not only is a message conceived of as always
written, but even the idea of a book is taken from that of a letter.
Nothing can show more plainly the important place occupied by literary
correspondence in the ancient Oriental world or the antiquity to which the
art of the letter-writer reaches back.
While in Egypt the letter was usually written upon papyrus, in Western
Asia the ordinary writing material was clay. Babylonia had been the nurse
and mother of its culture, and the writing material of Babylonia was clay.
Originally pictorial hieroglyphics had been drawn upon the clay, but just
as in Egypt the hieratic or running-hand of the scribe developed out of
the primitive pictographs, so too in Babylonia the pictures degenerated
into cuneiform characters which corresponded with the hieratic characters
of the Egyptian script. What we call cuneiform is essentially a cursive
hand.
As for books, so also for letters the clay tablet was employed. It may
seem to us indeed a somewhat cumbrous mode of sending a letter; but it had
the advantage of being solid and less likely to be injured or destroyed
than other writing materials. The characters upon it could not be
obliterated by a shower of rain, and there was no danger of its being
torn. Moreover, it must be remembered that the tablet was usually of small
size. The cuneiform system of writing allows a large number of words to be
compressed into a small space, and the writing is generally so minute as
to try the eyes of the modern decipherer.
Some of the letters which have been discovered during the last few years
go back to the early days of the Babylonian monarchy. Many of them are
dated in the reign of Khammurabi, or Amraphel, among them being several
that were written by the King himself. That we should possess the
autograph letters of a contemporary of Abraham is one of the romances of
historical science, for it must be remembered that the letters are not
copies, but the original documents themselves. What would not classical
scholars give for the autograph originals of the letters of Cicero, or
theologians for the actual manuscripts that were written by the
Evangelists? And yet here we have the private correspondence of a prince
who took part in the campaign against Sodom and Gomorrah!
One of the letters which has found a resting-place in the Museum of
Constantinople refers to another of the actors in the campaign against the
cities of the cunei-plain. This was the King of Elam, Chedor-laomer, whose
name is written Kudur-Loghghamar in the form. The Elamites had invaded
Babylonia and made it subject and tributary. Sin-idinnam, the King of
Larsa, called Ellasar in the book of Genesis, had been compelled to fly
from his ancestral kingdom in the south of Chaldea, and take refuge in
Babylon at the court of Khammurabi. Eri-Aku, or Arioch, the son of an
Elamite prince, was placed on the throne of Larsa, while Khammurabi also
had to acknowledge himself a vassal of the Elamite King. But a time came
when Khammurabi believed himself strong enough to shake off the Elamite
yoke, and though the war at first seemed to go against him, he ultimately
succeeded in making himself independent. Arioch and his Elamite allies
were driven from Larsa, and Babylon became the capital of a united
monarchy. It was after the overthrow of the Elamites that the letter was
written in which mention is made of Chedor-laomer. Its discoverer, Père
Scheil, gives the following translation of it: “To Sin-idinnam, Khammurabi
says: I send you as a present (the images of) the goddesses of the land of
Emutalum as a reward for your valor on the day of (the defeat of)
Chedor-laomer. If (the enemy) annoy you, destroy their forces with the
troops at your disposal, and let the images be restored in safety to their
old habitations.”(10)
The letter was found at Senkereh, the ancient Larsa, where, doubtless, it
had been treasured in the archive-chamber of the palace. Two other letters
of Khammurabi, which are now at Constantinople, have also been translated
by Dr. Scheil. One of them is as follows: “To Sin-idinnam, Khammurabi
says: When you have seen this letter you will understand in regard to
Amil-Samas and Nur-Nintu, the sons of Gis-dubba, that if they are in
Larsa, or in the territory of Larsa, you will order them to be sent away,
and that one of your servants, on whom you can depend, shall take them and
bring them to Babylon.” The second letter relates to some officials about
whom, it would seem, the King of Larsa had complained to his suzerain
lord: “To Sin-idinnam, Khammurabi says: As to the officials who have
resisted you in the accomplishment of their work, do not impose upon them
any additional task, but oblige them to do what they ought to have
performed, and then remove them from the influence of him who has brought
them.”
Long before the age of Khammurabi a royal post had been established in
Babylon for the conveyance of letters. Fragments of clay had been found at
Tello, bearing the impressions of seals belonging to the officials of
Sargon of Akkad and his successor, and addressed to the viceroy of Lagas,
to King Naram-Sin and other personages. They were, in fact, the envelopes
of letters and despatches which passed between Lagas and Agadê, or Akkad,
the capital of the dynasty.
Sometimes, however, the clay fragment has the form of a ball, and must
then have been attached by a string to the missive like the seals of
mediæval deeds. In either case the seal of the functionary from whom the
missive came was imprinted upon it as well as the address of the person
for whom it was intended. Thousands of letters seem to have passed to and
fro in this manner, making it clear that the postal service of Babylonia
was already well organized in the time of Sargon and Naram-Sin. The
Tel-el-Amarna letters show that in the fifteenth century before our era a
similar postal service was established throughout the Eastern world, from
the banks of the Euphrates to those of the Nile. To what an antiquity it
reached back it is at present impossible to say.
At all events, when Khammurabi was King, letters were frequent and common
among the educated classes of the population. Most of those which have
been preserved are from private individuals to one another, and
consequently, though they tell us nothing about the political events of
the time, they illustrate the social life of the period and prove how like
it was to our own. One of them, for instance, describes the writer’s
journey to Elam and Arrapakhitis, while another relates to a ferry-boat
and the boat-house in which it was kept. The boat-house, we are told, had
fallen into decay in the reign of Khammurabi, and was sadly in want of
repair, while the chief duty of the writer, who seems to have been the
captain of the boat, was to convey the merchants who brought various
commodities to Babylon. If the merchant, the letter states, was furnished
with a royal passport, “we carried him across” the river; if he had no
passport, he was not allowed to go to Babylon. Among other purposes for
which the vessel had been used was the conveyance of lead, and it was
capable of taking as much as 10 talents of the metal. We further gather
from the letter that it was the custom to employ Bedâwin as messengers.
Among the early Babylonian documents found at Sippara, and now in the
Museum at Constantinople, which have been published by Dr. Scheil, are two
private letters of the same age and similar character. The first is as
follows: “To my father, thus says Zimri-eram: May the Sun-god and Merodach
grant thee everlasting life! May your health be good! I write to ask you
how you are; send me back news of your health. I am at present at Dur-Sin
on the canal of Bit-Sikir. In the place where I am living there is nothing
to be had for food. So I am sealing up and sending you three-quarters of a
silver shekel. In return for the money, send some good fish and other
provisions for me to eat.” The second letter was despatched from Babylon,
and runs thus: “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 coming to me, so that I may be happy. Come in the month of Marchesvan
(October). May you live for ever for my sake!”
It is plain that the writer was in love with his correspondent, and had
grown impatient to see her again. Both belonged to what we should call the
professional classes, and nothing can better illustrate how like in the
matter of correspondence the age of Abraham was to our own. The old
Babylonian’s letter might easily have been written to-day, apart from the
references to Merodach and the Sun-god. It must be noticed, moreover, that
the lady to whom the letter is addressed is expected to reply to it. It is
taken for granted that the ladies of Babylon could read and write as well
as the men. This, however, is only what might have been concluded from the
other facts of Babylonian social life, and the footing of equality with
the man upon which the woman was placed in all matters of business. The
fact that she could hold and bequeath property, and trade with it
independently, implies that she was expected to know how to read and
write. Even among the Tel-el-Amarna we find one or two from a lady who
seems to have taken an active part in the politics of the day. “To the
king my lord,” she writes in one of them, “my gods, my Sun-god, thus says
Nin, thy handmaid, the dust of thy feet. At the feet of the king my lord,
my gods, my Sun-god, seven times seven I prostrate myself. Let the king my
lord wrest his country from the hand of the Bedâwin, in order that they
may not rob it. The city of Zaphon has been captured. This is for the
information of the king my lord.”
The letters of Tel-el-Amarna bridge over the gulf that separates the early
Babylonia of Khammurabi from the later Assyria of Tiglath-pileser III. and
his successors. The inner life of the intervening period is still known to
us but imperfectly. No library or large collection of tablets belonging to
it has as yet been discovered, and until this is the case we must remain
less intimately acquainted with it than we are with the age of Khammurabi
on the one hand, or that of the second Assyrian empire on the other.
It is true that the library of Nineveh, of which Assur-bani-pal was such a
munificent patron, has preserved copies of some of the earlier epistolary
literature of the country. Thus we have from it a fragment of a letter
written by a King of Babylonia to two kings of Assyria, at a time when
Assyria still acknowledged the supremacy of Babylon. But such documents
are very rare, and apart from the Tel-el-Amarna tablets we have to descend
to the days of the second Assyrian empire before we find again a
collection of letters.
These are the letters addressed to the Assyrian government, or more
generally to the King, in the reigns of Tiglath-pileser III., Shalmaneser
IV., Sargon, Sennacherib, Esar-haddon, and Assur-bani-pal. They were
preserved in the royal library of Nineveh, principally on account of their
political and diplomatic importance, and are now in the British Museum. As
might have been expected from their character, they throw more light on
the politics of the day than on the social condition of the people. A few
of them, however, are private communications to the King on other than
political matters, and we also find among them reports in the form of
letters from the royal astronomers, as well as upon such subjects as the
importation of horses from Asia Minor for the royal stud. The letters have
been copied by Professor R. F. Harper, who is now publishing them in a
series of volumes. How numerous the letters are may be gathered from the
fact that no less than 1,575 of them (including fragments) have come from
that part of the library alone which was excavated by Sir A. H. Layard,
and was the first to be brought to England.
Many of them are despatches from generals in the field or from the
governors of frontier towns who write to inform the Assyrian government of
the movements of the enemy or of the political events in their own
neighborhood. It is from these letters, for example, that we learn the
name of the King of Ararat who was the antagonist of Sennacherib and the
predecessor of the King Erimenas, to whom his murderers fled for
protection. The details, again, of the long Elamite war, which eventually
laid Susa at the feet of Assyria, have been given us by them. It is
needless, therefore, to insist upon the value they possess for the
historian.
Among them, however, as has been already said, are some of a more private
character. Here, for instance, is one which reminds us that human nature
is much the same in all ages of the world: “To the king my lord, thy
servant, Saul-miti-yuballidh: Salutation to the king my lord; may Nebo and
Merodach for ever and ever be gracious to the king my lord. 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
another letter the writer expresses his gratitude to the King for his
kindness in sending him his own doctor, who had cured him of a serious
disease. “May Istar of Erech,” he says, “and Nana (of Bit-Ana) grant long
life to the king my lord, for he sent Basa the physician of the king my
lord to save my life and he has cured me; therefore may the great gods of
heaven and earth be 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.” In fact there are a good many letters
which relate to medical matters. Thus Dr. Johnston gives the following
translation of a letter from a certain Arad-Nana, who seems to have been a
consulting physician, to Esar-haddon about a friend of the prince who had
suffered from violent bleeding of the nose: “As regards the patient who
has a bleeding from the nose, the Rab-Mag (or chief physician) reports:
‘Yesterday, toward evening, there was a good deal of hæmorrhage.’ The
dressings have not been properly applied. They have been placed outside
the nostrils, oppressing the breathing and coming off when there is
hæmorrhage. Let them be put inside the nostrils and then the air will be
excluded and the hæmorrhage stopped. If it is agreeable to my lord the
king I will go to-morrow and give instructions; (meanwhile) let me know
how the patient is.” Another letter from Arad-Nana translated by the same
Assyriologist is as follows: “To the king my lord, thy servant Arad-Nana:
May there be peace for ever and ever to the king my lord. May Ninip and
Gula grant health of soul and body to the king my lord. All is going on
well with the poor fellow whose eyes are diseased. I had applied a
dressing covering the face. Yesterday, toward evening, undoing the bandage
which held it (in place), I removed the dressing. There was pus upon the
dressing, the size of the tip of the little finger. If any of your gods
set his hand thereto, let him say so. Salutation for ever! Let the heart
of the king my lord be rejoiced. Within seven or eight days the patient
will recover.”
The doctors were not alone in writing to the Assyrian King. Besides the
reports which they were bound to make, the astronomers also sent letters
to him on the results of their observations. Among the letters published
by Professor Harper is an interesting one—unfortunately defaced and
imperfect—which was sent to Nineveh from one of the observatories in
Babylonia. After the ordinary compliments the writer, Abil-Istar, says:
“As for the eclipse of the moon about which the king my lord has written
to me, a watch was kept for it in the cities of Akkad, Borsippa, and
Nippur. We observed it ourselves in the city of Akkad.” Abil-Istar then
goes on to describe the progress of the eclipse, but the lines are so
broken as to be untranslatable, and when the text becomes perfect again we
find him saying that he had written an exact report of the whole
occurrence and sent it in a letter to the King. “And whereas the king my
lord ordered me to observe also the eclipse of the sun, I watched to see
whether it took place or not, and what passed before my eyes I now report
to the king my lord. It was an eclipse of the moon that took place.… It
was total over Syria and the shadow fell on the land of the Amorites, the
land of the Hittites, and in part on the land of the Chaldees.” We gather
from this letter that there were no less than three observatories in
Northern Babylonia: one at Akkad, near Sippara; one at Nippur, now Niffer;
and one at Borsippa, within sight of Babylon. As Borsippa possessed a
university, it was natural that one of the three observatories should be
established there.
As nothing is said about the eclipse of the sun which the astronomers at
the Assyrian court had led the King to expect, it is probable that it did
not take place, or at all events that it did not occur so soon as was
anticipated. The expression “the land of the Amorites (and) the land of
the Hittites” is noteworthy on account of its biblical ring; in the mind
of the Assyrian, however, it merely denoted Palestine and Northern Syria.
The Babylonians at an early age called Palestine “the land of the
Amorites,” the Assyrians termed it “the land of the Hittites,” and it
would appear that in the days of the second Assyrian empire, when
Babylonia had become a province of its Assyrian rival, the two names were
combined together in order to denote what we should entitle “Syria.”
Letters, however, were written to the King by all sorts of people, and
upon all sorts of business. Thus we find Assur-bani, the captain of a
river-barge, writing about the conveyance of some of those figures of
colossal bulls which adorned the entrance to the palace of Sennacherib.
The letter is short and to the point: “To the king my lord, thy servant
Assur-bani: Salutation to the king my lord. Assur-mukin has ordered me to
transport in boats the colossal bulls and cherubim of stone. The boats are
not strong enough, and are not ready. But if a present be kindly made to
us, we will see that they _are_ got ready and ascend the river.” The
unblushing way in which _bakshish_ is here demanded shows that in this
respect, at all events, the East has changed but little.
Of quite a different character is a letter about some wine that was sent
to the royal cellars. The writer says in it: “As for the wine about which
the king my lord has written to me, there are two homers of it for
keeping, as well as plenty of the best oil.” Later on, in the same letter,
reference is made to a _targu-manu,_ or “dragoman,” who was sent along
with the wine, which probably came from the Armenian highlands. It may be
noted that in another letter mention is made of a “master of languages,”
who was employed in deciphering the despatches from Ararat.
A letter from the cellarers of the palace has been translated as follows
by Dr. Johnston: “To the king our lord, thy servants … Bel-iqisa and
Babi-lû: Salutation to the king our lord! May Assur, … Bel, and Nebo grant
long life and everlasting years to the king our lord! Let the king our
lord know that the wine received during the month Tebet has been bottled,
but that there is no room for it, so we must make (new) cellars for the
king our lord. Let the king our lord give orders that a (place for) the
cellars be shown to us, and we shall be relieved from our embarrassment
(?). The wine that has come for the king our lord is very considerable.
Where shall we put it?”
A good deal of the correspondence relates to the importation of horses
from Eastern Asia Minor for the stables of the Assyrian King. The
following is a specimen of what they are like: “To the king my lord, thy
servant Nebo-sum-iddin: Salutation to the king my lord; for ever and ever
may Nebo and Merodach be gracious to the king my lord. Thirteen horses
from the land of Kusa, 3 foals from the land of Kusa—in all 16
draught-horses; 14 stallions; altogether 30 horses and 9 mules—in all 39
from the city of Qornê: 6 horses from the land of Kusa; 3 foals from
Kusa—in all 9 draught-horses; 14 stallions; altogether 23 horses and 9
mules—in all 28 from the city of Dâna (Tyana): 19 horses of Kusa and 39
stallions—altogether 57 from the city of Kullania (Calneh); 25 stallions
and 6 mules—in all 31 from the city of Arpad. All are gelded. Thirteen
stallions and 10 mules—altogether 23 from the city of Isana. In all 54
horses from Kusa and 104 stallions, making 148 horses and 30
mules—altogether 177 have been imported. (Dated) the second day of Sivan.”
The land of Kusa is elsewhere associated with the land of Mesa, which must
also have lain to the north-west of Syria among the valleys of the Taurus.
Kullania, which is mentioned as a city of Kusa, is the Calneh of the Old
Testament, which Isaiah couples with Carchemish, and of which Amos says
that it lay on the road to Hamath. The whole of this country, including
the plains of Cilicia, has always been famous for horse-breeding, and one
of the letters to the Assyrian King specially mentions Melid, the modern
Malatiyeh, as exporting them to Nineveh.
Here the writer, after stating that he had “inscribed in a register the
number of horses” that had just arrived from Arrapakhitis, goes on to say:
“What are the orders of the king about the horses which have arrived this
very day before the king? Shall they be stabled in the garden-palace, or
shall they be put out to grass? Let the king my lord send word whether
they shall be put out to grass or whether they are to be stabled?”
As is natural, several of the letters are upon religious matters. Among
those which have been translated by Dr. Johnston there is one which throws
light on the religious processions which were held in honor of the gods.
“To the son of the king my lord, thy servant Nebo-sum-iddina: salutation
to the son of the king my lord for ever and ever! May Nebo and Merodach be
gracious unto the son of the king my lord! On the third day of the month
Iyyar the city of Calah will consecrate the couch of Nebo, and the god
will enter the bed-chamber. On the fourth day Nebo will return. The son of
the king my lord has (now) received the news. I am the governor of the
temple of Nebo thy god, and will (therefore) go. At Calah the God will
come forth from the interior of the palace, (and) from the interior of the
palace will go to the grove. A sacrifice will be offered. The charioteer
of the gods will go from the stable of the gods, will take the god out of
it, will carry him in procession and bring him back. This is the course of
the procession. Of the vase-bearers, whoever has a sacrifice to make will
offer it. Whoever offers up one _qa_ of his food may enter the temple of
Nebo. May the offerers fully accomplish the ordinances of the gods, to the
life and health of the son of the king my lord. What (commands) has the
son of the king my lord to send me? May Bel and Nebo, who granted help in
the month Sebat, protect the life of the son of the king my lord, and
cause thy sovereignty to continue to the end of time!”
There is another letter in which, if Dr. Johnston’s rendering is correct,
reference is made to the inscriptions that were written on the walls of
the temples like the texts which the book of Deuteronomy orders to be
inscribed on the door-posts and gates (Deut. vi. 9, and xi. 20). “To the
king my lord, thy servant Istar-Turi: salutation to the king my lord! I am
sending Nebo-sum-iddina and Nebo-erba, the physicians of whom I spoke to
the king, [with] my messenger to the presence of the king my lord. Let
them be admitted to the presence of the king my lord; let the king my lord
converse with them. I have not disclosed to them the real facts, and tell
them nothing. As the king my lord commands, so is it done. Samas-bel-utsur
sends word from the city of Der that ‘there are no inscriptions which we
can place on the walls of the Beth-el.’ I send accordingly to the king my
lord in order that an inscription may be written and despatched, (and)
that the rest may be soon written and placed on the walls of the Beth-el.
There has been a great deal of rain, (but) the harvest is gathered. May
the heart of the king my lord rejoice!”
While the letters which have been found on the site of Nineveh come from
the royal archives and are therefore with few exceptions addressed to the
King, those which have been discovered in Babylonia have more usually been
sent by one private individual to another. They represent for the most
part the private correspondence of the country, and prove how widely
education must have been diffused there. Most of them, moreover, belong to
the age of Khammurabi or that of the kings of Ur who preceded the dynasty
to which he belonged, and thus cast an unexpected light on the life of the
Babylonian community in the times of Abraham. Here, for example, is one
that was written by a tenant to his landlord: “To my lord says Ibgatum,
your servant. As, my lord, you have heard, an enemy has carried away my
oxen. Though I never before wrote to you, my lord, now I send this letter
(_literally_ tablet). O my lord, send me a cow! I will lie up five shekels
of silver and send them to my lord, even to you. O my lord, by the command
of Merodach you determine whatever place you prefer (to be in); no one can
hinder you, my lord. O my lord, as I will send you by night the five
shekels of silver which I am tying up, so do you put them away at night. O
my lord, grant my request and do glorify my head, and in the sight of my
brethren my head shall not be humbled. As to what I send you, O my lord,
my lord will not be angry (?). I am your servant; your wishes, O my lord,
I have performed superabundantly; therefore entrust me with the cow which
you, my lord, shall send, and in the town of Uru-Batsu your name, O my
lord, shall be celebrated for ever. If you, my lord, will grant me this
favor, send [the cow] with Ili-ikisam my brother, and let it come, and I
will work diligently at the business of my lord, if he will send the cow.
I am tying up the five shekels of silver and am sending them in all haste
to you, my lord.”
Ibgatum was evidently the lessee of a farm, and he does his best to get a
cow out of his landlord in order to make up for the loss of his oxen. The
5 shekels probably represented the rent due to the landlord, and his
promptitude in sending them was one of the arguments he used to get the
cow. The word rendered “tie up” means literally “to yoke,” so that the
shekels would appear to have been in the form of rings rather than bars of
metal.
A letter in the collection of Sir Henry Peck, which has been translated by
Mr. Pinches, is addressed to the landlord by his agent or factor, whose
duty it was to look after his country estates. It runs as follows: “Letter
from Daian-bel-ussur to Sirku my lord. I pray to-day to Bel and Nebo for
the preservation of the life of my lord. As regards the oxen which my lord
has sent, Bel and Nebo know that there is an ox [among them] for them from
thee. I have made the irrigation-channel and wall. I have seen thy servant
with the sheep, and thy servant with the oxen; order also that an ox may
be brought up thence [as an offering?] unto Nebo, for I have not purchased
a single ox for money. I saw fifty-six of them on the 20th day, when I
offered sacrifice to Samas. I have caused twenty head to be sent from his
hands to my lord. As for the garlic, which my lord bought from the
governor, the owner of the field took possession of it when [the sellers]
had gone away, and the governor of the district sold it for silver; so the
plantations also I am guarding there [?], and my lord has asked: Why hast
thou not sent my messenger and [why] hast thou measured the ground? about
this also I send thee word. Let a messenger take and deliver [?] thy
message.”
Another letter of the same age is interesting as showing that the name of
the national God of Israel, Yahum or Yahveh, was known in Babylonia at a
much earlier date than has hitherto been suspected: “To Igas-Nin-sagh thus
says Yahum-ilu: As thou knowest, Adâ-ilu has obtained for me the money …
for the maid-servant Khisam-ezib. Mida [?] the merchant has settled the
price with me [?]. Now let the notary of Babylon send Arad-Istar in …, the
three shekels of silver which you have in hand and the two shekels which
you have put out at interest, and I will straightway bring the money [and]
Arad-Istar. Do not hinder Arad-Istar and I will straightway bring him to
the government.”
Yahum-ilu is the Joel of the Old Testament, with the final _m_ which
distinguished the languages of early Babylonia and Southern Arabia, and
the name probably belonged to one of those “Amorites” or natives of Syria
and Palestine who were settled in Babylonia. Yahum-ilu, however, might
also have been a native of Southern Arabia. The important fact is the
occurrence of the name at so early a date.
That the clay tablet should ever have been used for epistolary purposes
seems strange to us who are accustomed to paper and envelopes. But it
occupied no more space than many modern official letters, and was lighter
to carry than most of the packages that pass through the parcel-post. Now
and then it was enveloped in an outer covering of clay, on which the
address and the chief contents of it were noted; but the public were
usually prevented from knowing what it contained in another way. Before it
was handed over to the messenger or postman it was “sealed,” which
generally appears to mean that it was deposited in some receptacle,
perhaps of leather or linen, which was then tied up and sealed. In fact,
Babylonian and Assyrian letters were treated much as ours are when they
are put into a post-bag to which the seals of the post-office are
attached. There were excellent roads all over Western Asia, with
post-stations at intervals where relays of horses could be procured. Along
these all letters to or from the King and the government were carried by
royal messengers. It is probable that the letters of private individuals
were also carried by the same hands.
The letters of Tel-el-Amarna give us some idea of the wide extension of
the postal system and the ease with which letters were constantly being
conveyed from one part of the East to another. The foreign correspondence
of the Pharaoh was carried on with Babylonia and Assyria in the east,
Mesopotamia and Cappadocia in the north, and Palestine and Syria in the
west. The civilized and Oriental world was thus bound together by a
network of postal routes over which literary intercourse was perpetually
passing. They extended from the Euphrates to the Nile and from the plateau
of Asia Minor to the confines of Arabia. These routes followed the old
lines of war and trade along which armies had marched and merchants had
travelled for unnumbered generations.
The Tel-el-Amarna tablets show us that letter-writing was not confined to
Assyria and Babylonia on the one hand, or to Egypt on the other. Wherever
the ancient culture of Babylonia had spread, there had gone with it not
only the cuneiform characters and the use of clay as a writing material,
but the art of letter-writing as well. The Canaanite corresponded with his
friends and neighbors quite as much as the Babylonian, and his
correspondence was conducted in the same language and script. Hiram of
Tyre, in sending letters to Solomon, did but carry on the traditions of a
distant past. Long before the Israelites entered Palestine both a foreign
and an inland postal service had been established there while it was still
under Babylonian rule. The art of reading and writing must have been
widely spread, and, when it is remembered that for the larger number of
the Tel-el-Amarna writers the language and system of writing which they
used were of foreign origin, it may be concluded that the education given
at the time was of no despicable character.
The same conclusion may be drawn from another fact. The spelling of the
Babylonian and Assyrian letters is in general extraordinarily correct. We
meet, of course, with numerous colloquialisms which do not occur in the
literary texts, and now and then with provincial expressions, but it is
seldom that a word is incorrectly written. Even in the Tel-el-Amarna
tablets, where all kinds of local pronunciation are reproduced, the
orthography is usually faultless, in spite of the phonetic spelling. All
this shows how carefully the writers must have been instructed at school.
The correctness of the spelling in the Assyrian letters is really
marvellous, especially when we consider all the difficulties of the
cuneiform script, and what a tax it must have been to the memory to
remember the multitudinous characters of the syllabary with their still
more multitudinous phonetic and ideographic values. It gives us a high
idea of the perfection to which the teachers’ art had already been
brought.
In Assyria, however, the writers usually belonged to the special class of
scribes who employed the same conventional hand and devoted their lives to
the acquisition of learning. It is probable that they acted as private
secretaries as well as public clerks, and that consequently many of the
letters which purport to come from other members of the community were
really written by the professional scribes. But in Babylonia it is
difficult to find any traces of the public or private letter-writer who is
still so conspicuous a figure in the East. It is seldom if ever that the
Babylonian, whoever he may be, betrays any ignorance of the art of reading
and writing, and the endless variety of handwritings and the execrable
character of many of them indicate pretty plainly that the aid of the
professional letter-writer was rarely invoked. In a commercial community
like that of Babylonia an ability to write was of necessity a matter of
primary importance.