Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations Part 9

a.s.sur-bani-pal was not a soldier himself, and he would have preferred remaining at peace with his warlike neighbour. But Elamite raids made this impossible, and the constant civil wars in Elam resulting from disputed successions to the throne afforded pretexts and favourable opportunities for invading it. The Elamites, however, defended themselves bravely, and it was only after a struggle of many years, when their cities had fallen one by one, and Shushan, the capital, was itself destroyed, that Elam became an a.s.syrian province. The conquerors, however, found it a profitless desert, wasted by fire and sword, and in the struggle to possess it their own resources had been drained and well-nigh exhausted.

The second a.s.syrian empire was now at the zenith of its power.

Amba.s.sadors came from Ararat and from Gyges of Lydia to offer homage, and to ask the help of the great king against the Kimmerian and Scythian hordes. His fame spread to Europe; the whole of the civilised world acknowledged his supremacy.

But the image was one which had feet of clay. The empire had been won by the sword, and the sword alone kept it together. Suddenly a revolt broke out which shook it to its foundations. Babylonia took the lead; the other subject nations followed in its train.

Saul-suma-yukin had become naturalised in Babylonia. The experiment of appointing an a.s.syrian prince as viceroy had failed; he had identified himself with his subjects, and like them dreamed of independence. He adopted the style and t.i.tles of the ancient Babylonian mouarchs; even the Sumerian language was revived in public doc.u.ments, and the son of Esar-haddon put himself at the head of a national movement. The a.s.syrian supremacy was rejected, and once more Babylon was free.

The revolt lasted for some years. When it began we do not know; but it was not till B.C. 648 that it was finally suppressed, and Saul-suma-yukin put to death after a reign of twenty years. Babylon had been closely invested, and was at last starved into surrender. But, taught by the experience of the past, a.s.sur-bani-pal did not treat it severely. The leaders of the revolt, it is true, were punished, but the city and people were spared, and its shrines, like those of Kutha and Sippara, were purified, while penitential psalms were sung to appease the angry deities, and the daily sacrifices which had been interrupted were restored. A certain Kandalanu was made viceroy, perhaps with the t.i.tle of king.

Chastis.e.m.e.nt was now taken upon the Arabian tribes who had joined in the revolt. But Egypt was lost to the empire for ever. Psammetikhos had seized the opportunity of shaking off the yoke of the foreigner, and with the help of the troops sent by Gyges from Lydia, had driven out the a.s.syrian garrisons and overcome his brother satraps.

a.s.sur-bani-pal was in no position to punish him. The war with Elam and the revolt of Babylonia had drained the country of its fighting men and the treasury of its resources. And a new and formidable enemy had appeared on the scene. The Scyths had followed closely on the footsteps of the Kimmerians, and were now pouring into Asia like locusts, and ravaging everything in their path. The earlier chapters of Jeremiah are darkened by the horrors of the Scythian invasion of Palestine, and a.s.sur-bani-pal refers with a sigh of relief to the death of that "limb of Satan," the Scythian king Tugdamme or Lygdamis. This seems to have happened in Cilicia, and a.s.syria was allowed a short interval of rest.

a.s.sur-bani-pal's victories were gained by his generals. He himself never appears to have taken the field in person. His tastes were literary, his habits luxurious. He was by far the most munificent patron of learning a.s.syria ever produced; in fact, he stands alone in this respect among a.s.syrian kings. The library of Nineveh was increased tenfold by his patronage and exertions; literary works were brought from Babylonia, and a large staff of scribes was kept busily employed in copying and re-editing them. Unfortunately, the superst.i.tion of the monarch led him to collect more especially books upon omens and dreams, and astrological treatises, but other works were not overlooked, and we owe to him a large number of the syllabaries and lists of words in which the cuneiform characters and the a.s.syrian vocabulary are explained.

When a.s.sur-bani-pal died the doom of the a.s.syrian empire had already been p.r.o.nounced. The authority of his two successors, a.s.sur-etil-ilani-yukin and Sin-sar-iskun, or Saracos, was still acknowledged both in Syria and in Babylonia, where Kandalanu had been succeeded as viceroy by Nabopola.s.sar. One of the contract-tablets from the north of Babylonia is dated as late as the seventh year of Sin-sar-iskun. But not long after this the Babylonian viceroy revolted against his sovereign, and with the help of the Scythian king, who had established himself at Ekbatana, defeated the a.s.syrian forces and laid siege to Nineveh. The siege ended in the capture and destruction of the city, the death of its king, and the overthrow of his empire. In B.C.

606 the desolator of the nations was itself laid desolate, and its site has never been inhabited again.

Nabopola.s.sar entered upon the heritage of a.s.syria. It has been supposed that he was a Chaldaean like Merodach-baladan; whether this be so or not, he was hailed by the Babylonians as a representative of their ancient kings. The a.s.syrian empire had become the prey of the first-comer. Elam had been occupied by the Persians, the Scyths, whom cla.s.sical writers have confounded with the Medes, had overrun and ravaged a.s.syria and Mesopotamia, while Palestine and Syria had fallen to the share of Egypt.

But once established on the Babylonian throne, Nabopola.s.sar set about the work of re-organising western Asia, and the military abilities of his son Nebuchadrezzar enabled him to carry out his purpose. The marriage of Nebuchadrezzar to the daughter of the Scythian monarch opened the road through Mesopotamia to the Babylonian armies; the Egyptians were defeated at Carchemish in B.C. 604, and driven back to their own land. From Gaza to the mouth of the Euphrates, western Asia again obeyed the rule of a Babylonian king.

The death of Nabopola.s.sar recalled Nebuchadrezzar to Babylon, where he a.s.sumed the crown. But the Egyptians still continued to intrigue in Palestine, and the Jewish princes listened to their counsels. Twice had Nebuchadrezzar to occupy Jerusalem and carry the plotters into captivity. In B.C. 598 Jehoiachin and a large number of the upper cla.s.ses were carried into exile; in B.C. 588 Jerusalem was taken after a long siege, its temple and walls razed to the ground, and its inhabitants transported to Babylonia. The fortress-capital could no longer shelter or tempt the Egyptian foes of the Babylonian empire.

The turn of Tyre came next. For thirteen years it was patiently blockaded, and in B.C. 573 it pa.s.sed with its fleet into Nebuchadrezzar's hands. Five years later the Babylonian army marched into Egypt, the Pharaoh Amasis was defeated, and the eastern part of the Delta overrun. But Nebuchadrezzar did not push his advantage any further; he was content with impressing upon the Egyptians a sense of his power, and with fixing the boundaries of his empire at the southern confines of Palestine.

His heart was in Babylonia rather than in the conquests he had made. The wealth he had acquired by them was devoted to the restoration of the temples and cities of his country, and, above all, to making Babylon one of the wonders of the world. The temples of Merodach and Nebo were rebuilt with lavish magnificence, the city was surrounded with impregnable fortifications, a sumptuous palace was erected for the king, and the bed of the Euphrates was lined with brick and furnished with quays. Gardens were planted on the top of arched terraces, and the whole eastern world poured out its treasures at the feet of "the great king."

His inscriptions, however, breathe a singular spirit of humility and piety, and we can understand from them the friendship that existed between the prophet Jeremiah and himself. All he had done is ascribed to Bel-Merodach, whose creation he was and who had given him the sovereignty over mankind.

He was succeeded in B.C. 562 by his son Evil-Merodach, who had a short and inglorious reign of only two years. Then the throne was usurped by Nergal-sharezer, who had married a daughter of Nebuchadrezzar, and was in high favour with the priests. He died in B.C. 556, leaving a child, whom the priestly chroniclers accuse of impiety towards the G.o.ds, and who was murdered three months after his accession. Then Nabu-nahid or Nabonidos, the son of Nabu-balasu-iqbi, another nominee of the priesthood, was placed on the throne. He was unrelated to the royal family, but proved to be a man of some energy and a zealous antiquarian.

He caused excavations to be made in the various temples of Babylonia, in order to discover the memorial-stones of their founders and verify the history of them that had been handed down. But he offended local interests by endeavouring to centralise the religious worship of the country at Babylon, in the sanctuary of Bel-Merodach, as Hezekiah had done in the case of Judah. The images of the G.o.ds were removed from the shrines in which they had stood from time immemorial, and the local priesthoods attached to them were absorbed in that of the capital. The result was the rise of a powerful party opposed to the king, and a spirit of disaffection which the gifts showered upon the temples of Babylon and a few other large cities were unable to allay. The standing army, however, under the command of the king's son, Belshazzar, prevented this spirit from showing itself in action.

But a new power was growing steadily in the East. The larger part of Elam, which went by the name of Anzan, had been seized by the Persians in the closing days of the a.s.syrian empire, and a line of kings of Persian origin had taken the place of the old sovereigns of Shushan.

Cyrus II., who was still but a youth, was now on the throne of Anzan, and, like his predecessors, acknowledged as his liege-lord the Scythian king of Ekbatana, Istuvegu or Astyages. His first act was to defeat and dethrone his suzerain, in B.C. 549, and so make himself master of Media.

A year or two later he obtained possession of Persia, and a war with Lydia in B.C. 545 led to the conquest of Asia Minor. Nabonidos had doubtless looked on with satisfaction while the Scythian power was being overthrown, and had taken advantage of its fall to rebuild the temple of the Moon-G.o.d at Harran, which had been destroyed by the Scythians fifty-four years before. But his eyes were opened by the conquest of his ally the King of Lydia, and he accordingly began to prepare for a war which he saw was inevitable. The camp was fixed near Sippara, towards the northern boundary of Babylonia, and every effort was made to put the country into a state of defence.

Cyrus, however, was a.s.sisted by the disaffected party in Babylonia itself, amongst whose members must doubtless be included the Jewish exiles. In B.C. 538 a revolt broke out in the south, in the old district of the Chaldaeans, and Cyrus took advantage of it to march into the country. The Babylonian army moved northward to meet him, but was utterly defeated and dispersed at Opis in the beginning of Tammuz, or June, and a few days later Sippara surrendered to the conqueror.

Gobryas, the governor of Kurdistan, was then sent to Babylon, which also opened its gates "without fighting," and Nabonidos, who had concealed himself, was taken prisoner. The daily services in the temples as well as the ordinary business of the city proceeded as usual, and on the 3rd of Marchesvan Cyrus himself arrived and proclaimed a general amnesty, which was communicated by Gobryas to "all the province of Babylon," of which he had been made the prefect. Shortly afterwards, the wife--or, according to another reading, the son--of Nabonidos died; public lamentations were made for her, and Kambyses, the son of Cyrus, conducted the funeral in one of the Babylonian temples. Cyrus now took the t.i.tle of "King of Babylon," and a.s.sociated Kambyses with himself in the government. Conquest had proved his t.i.tle to the crown, and the priests and G.o.d of Babylon hastened to confirm it. Cyrus on his side claimed to be the legitimate descendant of the ancient Babylonian kings, a true representative of the ancient stock, who had avenged the injuries of Bel-Merodach and his brother-G.o.ds upon Nabonidos, and who professed to be their devoted worshipper. Offerings to ten times the usual amount were bestowed on the Babylonian temples, and the favour of the Babylonian priesthood was secured. The images which Nabonidos had sacrilegiously removed from their shrines were restored to their old homes, and the captive populations in Babylonia were allowed to return to their native soil. The policy of transportation had proved a failure; in time of invasion the exiles had been a source of danger to the government, and not of safety.

Each people was permitted to carry back with it its ancestral G.o.ds. The Jews alone had no images to take; the sacred vessels of the temple of Jerusalem were accordingly given to them. It was a faithful remnant that returned to the land of their fathers, consisting mostly of priests and Levites, determined henceforward to obey strictly the laws of their G.o.d, and full of grat.i.tude to their deliverer. In Jerusalem Cyrus thus had a colony whose loyalty to himself and his successors could be trusted, and who would form, as it were, an outpost against attacks on the side of Egypt.

As long as Cyrus and his son Kambyses lived Babylonia also was tranquil.

They flattered the religious and political prejudices of their Babylonian subjects, and the priesthood saw in them the successors of a Sargon of Akkad. But with the death of Kambyses came a change. The new rulers of the empire of Cyrus were Persians, proud of their nationality and zealous for their Zoroastrian faith. They had no reverence for Bel, no belief in the claim of Babylon to confer a t.i.tle of legitimacy on the sovereign of western Asia. The Babylonian priesthood chafed, the Babylonian people broke into revolt. In October B.C. 521 a pretender appeared who took the name of Nebuchadrezzar II., and reigned for nearly a year. But after two defeats in the field, he was captured in Babylon by Darius and put to death in August 520. Once more, in B.C. 514, another revolt took place under a second pretender to the name of "Nebuchadrezzar the son of Nabonidos." The strong walls of Babylon resisted the Persian army for more than a year, and the city was at last taken by stratagem. The walls were partially destroyed, but this did not prevent a third rebellion in the reign of Xerxes, while the Persian monarch was absent in Greece. On this occasion, however, it was soon crushed, and e-Sagila, the temple of Bel, was laid in ruins. But a later generation restored once more the ancient sanctuary of Merodach, at all events in part, and services in honour of Bel continued to be held there down to the time when Babylon was superseded by the Greek town of Seleucia, and the city of Nebuchadrezzar became a waste of shapeless mounds.

Babylonian religion was a mixture of Sumerian and Semitic elements. The primitive Sumerian had believed in a sort of animism. Each object had its _zi_ or "spirit," like men and beasts; the _zi_ gave it its personality, and endowed it, as it were, with vital force. The _zi_ corresponded with the _ka_ or "double" of the Egyptians, which accompanied like a shadow all things in heaven and earth. The G.o.ds themselves had each his _zi_; it was this alone that made them permanent and personal. With such a form of religion there could be neither deities nor priests in the usual sense of the words. The place of the priest was taken by the sorcerer, who knew the spells that could avert the malevolence of the "spirits" or bring down their blessings upon mankind.

With the progress of civilisation, certain of the "spirits" emerged above the rest, and became veritable G.o.ds. The "spirit" of heaven became Ana of Erech, the Sky-G.o.d; the "spirit" of earth pa.s.sed into El-lil of Nippur; and the "spirit" of the deep into Ea of Eridu. The change was hastened by contact with the Semite. The Semite brought with him a new religious conception. He believed in a G.o.d who revealed himself in the sun, and whom he addressed as Baal or "Lord." By the side of Baal stood his colourless reflection, the G.o.ddess Baalath, who owed her existence partly to the feminine gender possessed by the Semitic languages, partly to the a.n.a.logy of the human family. But the Baalim were as mult.i.tudinous as their worshippers and the high-places whereon they were adored; there was little difficulty, therefore, in identifying the G.o.ds and "spirits"

of Sumer with the local Baals of the Semitic creed.

El-lil became Bel of Nippur, Asari or Merodach Bel of Babylon. But in taking a Semitic form, the Sumerian divinities did not lose their old attributes. Bel of Nippur remained the lord of the ghost-world, Bel-Merodach the G.o.d who "raises the dead to life" and "does good to man." Moreover, in one important point the Semite borrowed from the Sumerian. The G.o.ddess Istar retained her independent position among the crowd of colourless female deities. Originally the "spirit" of the evening-star, she had become a G.o.ddess, and in the Sumerian world the G.o.ddess was the equal of the G.o.d. It is a proof of the influence of the Sumerian element in the Babylonian population, that this conception of the G.o.ddess was never forgotten in Babylonia; it was only when Babylonian culture was handed on to the Semitic nations of the west that Istar became either the male Atthar of southern Arabia and Moab, or the emasculated Ashtoreth of Canaan.

The official religion of Babylonia was thus the Baal-worship of the Semites engrafted on the animism of the Sumerians. It was further modified by the introduction of star-worship. How far this went back to a belief in the "spirits" of the stars, or whether it had a Semitic origin, we do not know; but it is significant that the cuneiform character which denotes "a G.o.d" is a picture of a star, and that the Babylonians were from the first a nation of star-gazers. In the astro-theology of a later date the G.o.ds of the pantheon were identified with the chief stars of the firmament, but the system was purely artificial, and must have been the invention of the priests.

The religion and deities of Babylonia were adopted by the a.s.syrians. But in a.s.syria they were always somewhat of an exotic, and even the learned cla.s.s invoked a.s.sur rather than the other G.o.ds. a.s.sur was the personification of the old capital of the country and of the nation itself, and though the scribes found an etymology for the name in that of An-sar, the primaeval G.o.d of Sumerian cosmogony, the fact was always remembered. a.s.sur was purely Semitic in his attributes, and, like Yahveh of Israel or Chemosh of Moab, was wifeless and childless. It is true that a learned scribe now and then found a wife for him among the numerous divinities of the Babylonian cult, but the discovery was never accepted, and a.s.sur for the ma.s.s of his worshippers remained single and alone. It was through trust in him that the a.s.syrian kings believed their victories were gained, and it was to punish those who disbelieved in him that their campaigns were undertaken.

In the worship of a.s.sur, accordingly, a tendency to monotheism reveals itself. The tendency was even more p.r.o.nounced in a certain literary school of thought in Babylonia. We have texts which resolve the deities of the popular faith into forms of one G.o.d; sometimes this is Anu of Erech, sometimes it is Merodach of Babylon.

Babylonian worship necessitated a large hierarchy of priests. At the head was the high-priest, who in early times possessed temporal power and in many states was the predecessor of the king. The king, in fact, inherited his priesthood from him, and was consequently qualified to perform priestly functions. Under the high-priest there were numerous cla.s.ses of ministers of the G.o.ds, such as the "anointers," whose duty it was to anoint the holy images with oil, the ordinary "priests," the "seers," and the "prophets." The prophets enjoyed high consideration; they even accompanied the army to the field, and decided whether the campaign would result in victory or defeat. Quite apart from all these were the astrologers, who did not belong to the priesthood at all. On the contrary, they professed to be men of science, and the predictions of the future which they read in the stars were founded on the records and observations of former generations.

A chief part of the duty of the priests consisted in offering sacrifice and reciting the services. The sacrifices were of two kinds, as in the Jewish ritual. The same animals and the same fruits of the earth were offered by both Babylonians and Israelites, and in many cases the regulations relating to the sacrifices were similar. The services were elaborate, and the rubrics attached to the hymns and prayers which had to be recited are minute and complicated. The hymns had been formed into a sort of Bible, which had in time acquired a divine authority. So sacred were its words, that a single misp.r.o.nunciation of them was sufficient to impair the efficacy of the service. Rules for their p.r.o.nunciation were accordingly laid down, which were the more necessary as the hymns were in Sumerian. The dead language of Sumer had become sacred, like Latin in the Middle Ages, and each line of a hymn was provided with a translation in Semitic Babylonian.

In appearance, a Babylonian temple was not very unlike those of Canaan or of Solomon. The image of the G.o.d stood in the innermost shrine, the Holy of Holies, where also was the mercy-seat, whereon it was believed, as upon a throne, the deity was accustomed to descend at certain times of the year. In the little temple of Balawat, near Nineveh, discovered by Mr. Hormuzd Ra.s.sam, the mercy-seat was shaped like an ark, and contained two written tables of stone; no statue of the G.o.d, however, seems in this instance to have stood beside it. In front of it was the altar, approached by steps.

In the court of the temple was a "sea" or "deep," like that which was made by Solomon. An early hymn which describes the construction of one of them, states that it was of bronze, and that it rested on the figures of twelve bronze oxen. It was intended for the ablutions of the priests and the vessels of the sanctuary, and was a representation of that primaeval deep out of which it was believed that the world originated.

One peculiarity the Babylonian temples possessed which was not shared by those of the west. Each had its _ziggurat_ or "tower," which served for the observation of the stars, and in the topmost storey of which was the altar of the G.o.d. It corresponded with the "high-place" of Canaan, where man imagined himself nearest to the G.o.ds of heaven. But in the flat plain of Babylonia it was needful that the high-place should be of artificial construction, and here accordingly they built the towers whose summits "reached to" the sky.

The temples and their ministers were supported partly by endowments, partly by voluntary gifts, sometimes called _kurbanni_, the Hebrew _korban_, partly by obligatory contributions, the most important of which was the _esra_ or "t.i.the." Besides the fixed festivals, which were enumerated in the calendar, special days of thanksgiving or humiliation were appointed from time to time. There was also a weekly Sabattu or "Sabbath," on the 1st, 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days of the month, as well as on the 19th, the last day of the seventh week from the beginning of the previous month. The Sabbath is described as "a day of rest for the heart," and all work upon it was forbidden. The king was not allowed to change his dress, to ride in his chariot, or even to take medicine, while the prophet himself was forbidden to utter his prophecies.

The ma.s.s of the people looked forward to a dreary existence beyond the grave. The shades of the dead flitted like bats in the darkness of the under-world, hungry and cold, while the ghosts of the heroes of the past sat beside them on their shadowy thrones, and Allat, the mistress of Hades, presided over the warders of its seven gates. The Sumerians had called it "the land whence none return," though in the theology of Eridu and Babylon Asari or Merodach was already a G.o.d who, through the wisdom of his father Ea, "restored the dead to life." But as the centuries pa.s.sed, new and less gloomy ideas grew up in regard to the future life.

In a prayer for the a.s.syrian king the writer asks that he may enjoy an endless existence hereafter in "the land of the silver sky," and the realms of the G.o.ds of light had been peopled with the heroes of Babylonian literature at an early date.

The belief in Hades went back to those primitive ages when the Sumerians of Eridu conceived of the earth as floating on the deep, which surrounded it as a snake with its coils, while the sky covered it above like an extinguisher, and was supported on the peak of "the mountain of the world," where the G.o.ds had their abode. This primitive cosmological conception underwent changes in the course of time, but the underlying idea of an abyss of waters out of which all things were shaped remained to the end. The Chaldaean Epic of the Creation declares that "in the beginning," "the chaos of the deep" had been the "mother" of both heaven and earth, out of whom first came the primaeval deities Lakhmu and Lakhamu, and then An-sar and Ki-sar, the upper and lower firmament. Long ages had to elapse before the Trinity of the later theology--Anu, Ea, and Bel--were born of these, and all things made ready for the genesis of the present world. Merodach, the champion of the G.o.ds of light and law, had first to do battle with Tiamat, "the dragon" of "the deep," and her allies of darkness and disorder. He had proved his powers by creating and annihilating by means of his "word" alone, and the conflict which he waged ended in the destruction of the enemy. The body of Tiamat was torn asunder and transformed into the heaven and earth, her springs of water were placed under control, and the forces of anarchy and chaos were banished from the universe. Then followed the creation of the existing order of things. The sun and moon and stars were fixed in their places, and laws given to them which they should never transgress, plants and animals were created, and finally man.

Babylonian literature went back to a remote date. The age of Sargon of Akkad was already a highly literary one, and the library he founded at Akkad contained works which continued to be re-edited down to the latest days of Babylonian literature. Every great city had its library, which was open to every reader, and where the books were carefully catalogued and arranged on shelves. Here too were kept the public records, as well as t.i.tle-deeds, law-cases, and other doc.u.ments belonging to private individuals. The office of librarian was held in honour, and was not unfrequently occupied by one of the sons of the king. Every branch of literature and science known at the time was represented. Theology was naturally prominent, as well as works on omens and charms. The standard work on astronomy and astrology, in seventy-two books, had been compiled for the library of Sargon of Akkad; so too had the standard work on terrestrial omens. There was also a standard work on medicine, in which medical prescriptions and spells were mixed together. Philological treatises were numerous. There were dictionaries and grammars for explaining the Sumerian language to Semitic pupils, interlinear translations of Sumerian texts, phrase-books, lists of synonyms, and commentaries on difficult or obsolete words and pa.s.sages, besides syllabaries, in which the cuneiform characters were catalogued and explained. Mathematics were diligently studied, and tables of squares and cubes have come to us from the library of Larsa. Geography was represented by descriptions of the countries and cities known to the Babylonians, natural history by lists of animals and birds, insects and plants. The a.s.syrians were endowed with a keen sense of history, and had invented a system of reckoning time by means of certain officers called _limmi_, who gave their names to their years of office. The historical and chronological works of the a.s.syrian libraries are therefore particularly important. They have enabled us to restore the chronology of the royal period of Israelitish history, and to supplement the Old Testament narrative with the contemporaneous records of the a.s.syrian kings. The Babylonians were less historically exact, perhaps because they had less of the Semitic element in their blood; but they, too, carefully kept the annals of their kings, and took a deep interest in the former history of their country.

Contract and other tablets relating to trade and business formed, however, the larger part of the contents of most Babylonian libraries.

They have revealed to us the inner and social life of the people, so that the age of Khammurabi, or even of Sargon, in Babylonia, is beginning to be as well known to us as the age of Perikles in Greece.

Along with the contract-tablets must be counted the numerous legal doc.u.ments and records of law-cases which have been preserved. Babylonian law was, like English law, built upon precedents, and an elaborate and carefully considered code had been formed at an early date.

Collections of letters, partly royal, partly private, were also to be found in the libraries. The autograph letters of Khammurabi, the Amraphel of Genesis, have come down to us, and we even have letters of his time from a lover to his mistress, and from a tenant to his landlord, whom he begs to reduce his rent. Boys went to school early, and learning the cuneiform syllabary was a task that demanded no small amount of time and application, especially when it is remembered that in the case of the Semitic Babylonian this involved also acquiring a knowledge of the dead language of Sumer. One of the exercises of the Sumerian schoolboy bids him "rise like the dawn, if he would excel in the school of the scribes."

Purely literary texts were numerous, especially poems, though nothing corresponding to the Egyptian novel has been met with. The epic of Gilgames, composed by Sin-liqi-unnini, has already been referred to. Its twelve books answered to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and the eleventh accordingly contains the episode of the Deluge. Gilgames was the son of a royal mother, whose son was fated to slay his grandfather, and who was consequently confined in a tower. But an eagle carried him to a place of safety, and when he grew up he delivered Erech from its foes, and made it the seat of his kingdom. He slew the tyrant Khumbaba in the forest of cedars, and by means of a stratagem tempted the satyr Ea-bant to leave the woods and become his counsellor and friend. Istar wooed him, but he scorned her offers, and taunted her with her misdeeds to the hapless lovers who had been caught in her toils. In revenge the G.o.ddess persuaded her father Anu to create a winged bull, which should work havoc in the country of the Babylonians. But Gilgames destroyed the bull, an achievement, however, for which he was punished by Heaven.

Ea-bani died of the bite of a gadfly, and his spirit mounted to the skies, while Gilgames himself was smitten by a sore disease. To heal it he sailed beyond the mouth of the Euphrates and the river of death, leaving behind him the deserts of Arabia and the twin-mountain where men in the shape of huge scorpions guard the gateways of the sun. At last he found Xisuthros, the hero of the Deluge, and learned from him how he had escaped death. Cured of his malady, he returned homeward with a leaf of the tree of life. But as he rested at a fountain by the way it was stolen by a serpent, and man lost the gift of immortality.

In Babylonia, and to a lesser extent in a.s.syria, women were practically on a footing of equality with the men. They could trade in their own names, could make wills, could appear as witnesses or plaintiffs in court. We hear of a father transferring his property to his daughter, reserving only the use of it during his life. Polygamy was not common; indeed, we find it stipulated in one instance that in the case of a second marriage on the part of the husband the dowry of the first wife should be returned to her, and that she should be free to go where she would. Of course these rules did not apply to concubines, who were often purchased. Adoptions were frequent, and slaves could be adopted into the family of a freeman.

The large number of slaves caused the wages of the free labourer to be low. But the slaves were treated with humanity. From early times it was a law that if a slave were hired to another, the hirer should pay a penalty to his master whenever he was incapable of work, thus preventing "sweating" or overwork. Similarly, injuries to a slave were punished by a fine. The slave could trade and acquire property for himself, could receive wages for his work when hired to another, could give evidence in a court of law, and might obtain his freedom either by manumission, by purchase, by adoption, or by impressment into the royal service.

Farms were usually held on a sort of _metayer_ system, half the produce going to the landlord as rent. Sometimes, however, the tenant received only a third, a fourth, or even a tenth part of the produce, two-thirds of the annual crop of dates being also a.s.signed to the owner of the land. The tenant had to keep the farm-buildings in order, and to build any that were required. House-property seems to have been even more valuable than farm-land. The deeds for the lease or sale of it enter into the most minute particulars, and carefully define the limits of the estate. The house was let for a term of years, the rent being paid either twice or three times a year. At the expiration of the lease, the property had to be returned in the state in which the tenant had found it, and any infringement of the legal stipulations was punished with a heavy fine. Agents were frequently employed in the sale or letting of estates.

The cities were busy centres of trade. Commercial intercourse was carried on with all parts of the known world. Wheat was exported in large quant.i.ties, as well as dates and date-wine. The staple of Babylonian industry, however, was the manufacture of cloths and carpets.

Vast flocks of sheep were kept on the western bank of the Euphrates, and placed under the charge of Bedawin from Arabia. Their wool was made into curtains and rugs, and dyed or embroidered fabrics of various kinds.

Even Belshazzar, the heir-apparent of Nabonidos, did not disdain to be a wool-merchant, and we find him lending twenty manehs, the proceeds of the sale of some of it, and taking as security for the repayment of the debt certain house-property in Babylon. It was "a goodly Babylonish garment," secreted by Achan from among the spoil of Jericho, that brought destruction upon himself and his family.

Money-lending naturally occupied a prominent place in the transaction of business. The ordinary rate of interest was 20 per cent, paid in monthly instalments; in the time of Nebuchadrezzar, however, it tended to be lower, and we find loans made at 13-1/2 per cent. The penalty was severe if the capital were not repaid at the specified date. The payment was occasionally in kind, but money was the usual medium of exchange. It consisted of rings or tongue-like bars of gold, silver, and copper, representing manehs and shekels. The maneh was divided into sixty shekels, and the standard used in later Babylonia had been fixed by Dungi, king of Ur. One of the standard maneh-weights of stone, from the mint of Nebuchadrezzar, is now in the British Museum. In the time of the Second Babylonian empire stamped or coined money was introduced, as well as pieces of five or more shekels. This was the period when the great banking firm of Egibi flourished, which antic.i.p.ated the Rothschilds in making loans to the State.

The Babylonian cemetery adjoined the cities of the living, and was laid out in imitation of the latter. The tombs were built of crude bricks, and were separated from one another by streets, through which flowed streams of "living water." Gardens were planted by the side of some of the tombs, which resembled the houses of the living, and in front of which offerings were made to the dead. After a burial, brushwood was heaped round the walls of the tomb and set on fire, partially cremating the body and the objects that were interred with it within. Sanitary reasons made this partial cremation necessary, while want of s.p.a.ce in the populous plain of Babylonia caused the brick tombs to be built, like the houses of the towns, one on the top of the other.