Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs Part 7

CHAPTER VII. THE MONEY-LENDER AND BANKER

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 cla.s.ses 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 doc.u.ments 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 ca.n.a.l." 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-G.o.d, 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 a.s.syria, 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 Nabopola.s.sar, 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-su, as well as the lower field, which forms the boundary of the house of the Seer, and is planted with palm-trees and gra.s.s, 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-dini-ebus, the son of Kinenuna; 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 a.s.syria 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 munic.i.p.ality 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 a.s.syria 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 Phnician 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 a.s.syrian campaigns in Syria was to divert the trade of the Mediterranean into a.s.syrian hands; the fall of Carchemish made a.s.syria 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 a.s.syria was slow to avail itself of the commercial advantages which had fallen to it, and a large part of its trading cla.s.ses were Arameans or other foreigners who had settled in the country. So large, indeed, was the share in a.s.syrian trade which the Arameans absorbed that Aramaic became the _lingua panca_, the common medium of intercommunication, in the commercial world of the second a.s.syrian empire, and, as has been already stated, many of the a.s.syrian 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 a.s.syria 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 a.s.syria 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 s.e.xagesimal 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 s.e.xagesimal 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 Nabopola.s.sar, 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 7 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 a.s.syrian contract-tablets make mention of "the maneh of Carchemish," which was introduced into a.s.syria after the conquest of the Hitt.i.te 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 sh.o.r.es of the aegean, 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 a.s.syria, 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 doc.u.ments 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 a.s.syrian empire, though its prescriptions are mixed up with charms and incantations. But an attempt was made in it to cla.s.sify 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 a.s.sign a precise signification to most of the drugs that are named, or to identify the various herbs contained in the Babylonian pharmacopia.

As time pa.s.sed on, the charms and other superst.i.tious practices which had at first played so large a part in Babylonian medicine fell into the background and were abandoned to the more uneducated cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sume that his science had been derived from the valley of the Nile. It must not be supposed, however, that the superst.i.tious beliefs and practices of the past were altogether abandoned, even by the most distinguished pract.i.tioners, 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 acc.u.mulated 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 a.s.syria 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 a.s.syrian King from one of his subjects full of grat.i.tude 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 G.o.ds 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 pet.i.tion 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 harim 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.syrian 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 a.s.syrian artist has represented three captives playing on a lyre, an interesting ill.u.s.tration 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 a.s.syrian 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 cla.s.s 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.

CHAPTER VIII. THE GOVERNMENT AND THE ARMY

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 G.o.d 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 t.i.tle 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 t.i.tles 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 G.o.d. According to one of these, sonship conferred upon him actual divinity; he was not merely the representative of a G.o.d, but a G.o.d himself. This was the view which prevailed in the earlier days of Semitic supremacy. Sargon of Akkad and his son Naram-Sin are ent.i.tled "G.o.ds;" 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 Ka.s.site dynasty from the mountains of Elam that a new conception of the King was introduced. He ceased to be a G.o.d himself, and became, instead, the delegate and representative of the G.o.d of whom he was the adopted son. His relation to the G.o.d 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 G.o.ddesses 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ddess 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-G.o.d" of Heliopolis, rather than Horus, the Sun-G.o.d, 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 G.o.d of Agade," 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 va.s.sal, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d Dungi. III.... Half a measure of good beer, half a measure of herbs, on the new moon, the 15th day, for the G.o.d 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 G.o.d upon earth was unable to survive the conquest of Babylonia by the half-civilized mountaineers of Elam and the subst.i.tution of foreigners for the Semitic or Semitized Sumerian rulers of the country. As the doctrine of the divine right of kings pa.s.sed away in England with the rise of the Hanoverian dynasty, so, too, in Babylonia the deified King disappeared with the Ka.s.site conquest.

But he continued to be supreme pontiff to the adopted son of the G.o.d of Babylon. Babylon had become the capital of the kingdom, and Merodach, its patron-deity, was, accordingly, supreme over the other G.o.ds of Chaldea. He alone could confer the royal powers that the G.o.d of every city which was the centre of a princ.i.p.ality 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 a.s.syrian conquerors of the second a.s.syrian 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 t.i.tle 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.syria, in contrast to Babylonia, the government rested on a military basis. It is true that the kings of a.s.syria had once been the high-priests of the city of a.s.sur, 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 a.s.syrian 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 t.i.tle to reign.

The conception of the supreme G.o.d himself differed in a.s.syria and Babylonia. In Babylonia, Bel-Merodach was "lord" of the city; in a.s.syria, a.s.sur was the deified city itself. In the one case, therefore, the King was appointed vicegerent of the G.o.d over the city which he governed and preserved; in the other case the G.o.d represented the state, and, in so far as the King was a servant of the G.o.d, he was a servant also of the state.