Chapter IX. The Law
Babylonian law was of early growth. Among the oldest records of the country are legal cases, abstracts of which have been transcribed for future use. The first law-book, in fact, was ascribed to Ea, the god of culture, and it was told how he had enacted that the King should deal uprightly and administer justice to his people. “If he regard not justice,” it was said, “Ea, the god of destiny, shall change his fortune and replace him by another.… But if he have regard to the injunction of Ea, the great gods shall establish him in wisdom and the knowledge of righteousness.”
The Ea of the cuneiform text seems to be the Oannes of the Chaldean historian Berossos, who was said to have risen out of the waters of the Persian Gulf, bringing with him the elements of civilization and the code of laws which were henceforth to prevail in Babylonia. The code of Oannes has perished, but fragments of another and more historical one have been preserved to us in a reading-book which was intended to teach the Semitic pupil the ancient language of the Sumerians. The original Sumerian text is given with its Semitic equivalent, as well as a [pg 196] list of technical legal terms. “If a son,” it is said, “denies his father, his hair shall be cut, he shall be put into chains and sold for silver. If he denies his mother, his hair also shall be cut, city and land shall collect together and put him in prison.… If the wife hates her husband and denies him, they shall throw her into the river. If the husband divorces his wife, he must pay her fifty shekels of silver. If a man hires a servant, and kills, wounds, beats, or ill-uses him or makes him ill, he must with his own hand measure out for him each day half a measure of grain.”
We have already seen that the last regulation was in force up to the latest period of Babylonian history. It betrays a humane spirit in the early legislation and shows that the slave was regarded as something more than a mere chattel. It provided against his being over-worked; as soon as the slave was rendered unfit for labor by his hirer's fault, the latter was fined, and the fine was exacted as long as the slave continued ill or maimed. The law which pronounced sentence of death by drowning upon the unfaithful wife was observed as late as the age of Khammurabi. Such at least is the evidence of some curious documents, from which we learn that a certain Arad-Samas married first a daughter of Uttatu and subsequently a half-sister of his wife. In the contract of marriage it is stipulated that unfaithfulness to the husband on the part of both the wives would be punished with drowning, on the part of the second only with slavery. On the other hand he could divorce them on payment of a maneh [pg 197] of silver—that is to say, of 30 shekels apiece. Under Nebuchadnezzar the old power of putting the wife to death in case of adultery was still possessed by the husband, where the wife was of lower rank than himself and little better than a concubine. It was a survival of the patria potestas which had once belonged to him. The wife who came from a wealthy and respectable family, however, stood on a footing of equality with her husband, and he could not venture to put in force against her the provisions of the ancient Sumerian law.
Babylonian law resembled that of England in being founded upon precedents. The code which was supposed to have been revealed by Ea, or Oannes, belonged to the infancy of Chaldean society and contained only a rudimentary system of legislation. The actual law of the country was a complicated structure which had been slowly built up by the labors of generations. An abstract was made of every important case that came before the judges and of the decision given in regard to it; these abstracts were carefully preserved, and formed the basis of future judgments.
The judges before whom the cases were brought were appointed by the King, and acted in his place. They sat under a president, and were usually four or five in number. They had to sign their names at the end of their judgments, after which the date of the document was added. It is probable that they went on circuit like Samuel in Israel and the “royal judges” of Persia.
Where foreigners were involved the case was first [pg 198] tried before special judges, who probably belonged to the same nationality as the parties to the suit; if one of the latter, however, was a Babylonian it was afterward brought again before a native tribunal. Sometimes in such cases the primitive custom was retained of allowing “the elders” of the city to sit along with the judges and pronounce upon the question in dispute. They thus represented to a certain extent an English jury. Whether they appeared in cases in which Babylonians alone were engaged is doubtful. We hear of them only where one at least of the litigants is an Amorite from Canaan, and it is therefore possible that their appearance was a concession to Syrian custom. In Babylonia they had long been superseded by the judges, the royal power having been greater there from the outset than in the more democratic West, and consequently there would have been but little need for their services. If, however, the foreign settlers had been accustomed at home to have their disputes determined by a council of elders, we can understand why they were still allowed in Babylonia to plead before a similar tribunal, though it could do little more than second the decisions of the judges.
Plaintiff and defendant pleaded their own causes, which were drawn up in legal form by the clerks of the court. Witnesses were called and examined and oaths were taken in the names of the gods and of the King.
The King, it must be remembered, was in earlier times himself a god. In later days the oaths were usually dropped, and the evidence alone considered [pg 199] sufficient. Perhaps experience had taught the bench that perjury was not a preventable crime.
Each case was tried by a select number of judges, who were especially appointed to inquire into it, as we may gather from a document dated at Babylon the 6th day of Nisan in the seventeenth year of Nebuchadnezzar. “[These are] the judges,” it runs, “before whom Sapik-zeri, the son of Zirutu, [and] Baladhu, the son of Nasikatum, the servant of the secretary of the Marshlands, have appeared in their suit regarding a house. The house and deed had been duly sealed by Zirutu, the father of Sapik-zeri, and given to Baladhu. Baladhu, however, had come to terms with Sapik-zeri and handed the house over to him and had taken the deed (from the record-office) and had given it to Sapik-zeri. Nebo-edher-napisti, the prefect of the Marshlands; Nebo-suzzizanni, the sub-prefect of the Marshlands; Merodach-erba, the mayor of Erech; Imbi-ilu, the priest of Ur, Bel-yuballidh, the son of Merodach-sum-ibni, the prefect of the western bank; Abtâ, the son of Suzubu, the son of Babutu; Musezib-Bel, the son of Nadin-akhi, the son of the adopted one; Baniya, the son of Abtâ, the priest of the temple of Sadu-rabu; and Sa-mas-ibni, the priest of Sadu-rabu.” The list of judges shows that the civil governors could act as judges and that the priests were also eligible for the post. Neither the one class nor the other, however, is usually named, and we must conclude, therefore, that, though the governor of a province or the mayor of a town had a right to sit on the judicial bench, he did not often avail himself of it.
[pg 200]The charge was drawn up in the technical form and attested by witnesses before it was presented to the court. We have an example of this dated at Sippara, the 28th day of Adar in the eighth year of Cyrus as King of Babylon: “Nebo-akhi-bullidh, the son of Su—, the governor of Sakhrin, on the 28th of Adar, the eighth year of Cyrus, king of Babylon and of the world, has brought the following charge against Bel-yuballidh, the priest of Sippara: I have taken Nanâ-iddin, son of Bau-eres, into my house because I am your father's brother and the governor of the city. Why, then, have you lifted up your hand against me? Rimmon-sar-uzur, the son of Nebo-yusezib; Nargiya and Erba, his brothers; Kutkah-ilu, the son of Bau-eres; Bel-yuballidh, the son of Barachiel; Bel-akhi-uzur, the son of Rimmon-yusallim; and Iqisa-abbu, the son of Samas-sar-uzur, have committed a crime by breaking through my door, entering into my house, and leaving it again after carrying away a maneh of silver.” Then come the names of five witnesses and the clerk.
A suit might be compromised by the litigants before it came into court. In the reign of Nebuchadnezzar a certain Imliya brought witnesses to the door of the house of an official called Bel-iddin, and accused Arrali, the superintendent of the works, of having stolen an overcoat and a loin-cloth belonging to himself. But it was agreed that there would be no need on the part of the plaintiff to summon witnesses; the stolen goods were returned without recourse to the law.
The care taken not to convict without sufficient [pg 201] evidence, and the thoroughness with which each case was investigated, is one of the most striking features in the records of the Babylonian lawsuits which have come down to us. Mention has already been made of the case of the runaway slave Barachiel, who pretended to be a free citizen and the adopted son of a Babylonian gentleman. Every effort seems to have been made to get at the truth, and some of the higher officials were associated with the judges before whom the matter was brought. Eventually cross-examination compelled Barachiel to confess the actual facts. It is noticeable that no torture was used to compel confession, even though the defendant was not a free citizen. No allusion, in fact, is ever made to torture, whether by the bastinado or otherwise; the evidence of witnesses and the results of cross-examination are alone depended upon for arriving at the truth. In this respect the legal procedure of Babylonia offers an honorable contrast to that of ancient Greece or Rome, or even of Europe down to the middle of the last century.
Two cases which were pleaded before the courts in the reign of Nabonidos illustrate the carefulness with which the evidence was examined. One of them was a case of false witness. Beli-litu, the daughter of Bel-yusezib, the wine merchant (?), “gave the following testimony before the judges of Nabonidos, king of Babylon: In the month Ab, the first year of Nergal-sharezer, king of Babylon, I sold my slave Bazuzu for thirty-five shekels of silver to Nebo-akhi-iddin, the son of Sula of the family of Egibi, but he now asserts that I owed him a debt and so has not [pg 202] paid me the money. The judges heard the charge, and caused Nebo-akhi-iddin to be summoned and to appear before them. Nebo-akhi-iddin produced the contract which he had made with Beli-litu; he proved that she had received the money, and convinced the judges. And Ziriya, Nebo-suma-lisir, and Edillu gave further testimony before the judges that Beli-litu, their mother, had received the silver.” The judges deliberated and condemned Beli-litu to a fine of 55 shekels, the highest fine that could be inflicted on her, and then gave it to Nebo-akhi-iddin. It is possible that the prejudice which has always existed against the money-lender may have encouraged Beli-litu to commit her act of dishonesty and perjury. That the judges should have handed over the fine to the defendant, instead of paying it to the court or putting it into their own pockets, is somewhat remarkable in the history of law.
The second case is that of some Syrians who had settled in Babylonia and there been naturalized. The official abstract of it is as follows: “Bunanitum, the daughter of the Kharisian, brought the following complaint before the judges of Nabonidos, king of Babylon: Ben-Hadad-nathan, the son of Nikbaduh, married me and received three and one-half manehs of silver as my dowry, and I bore him a daughter. I and Ben-Hadad-nathan, my husband, traded with the money of my dowry, and we bought together a house standing on eight roods of ground, in the district on the west side of the Euphrates in the suburb of Borsippa, for nine and one-third manehs of silver, as [pg 203] well as an additional two and one-half manehs, which we received on loan without interest from Iddin-Merodach, the son of Iqisa-ablu, the son of Nur-Sin, and we invested it all in this house. In the fourth year of Nabonidos, king of Babylon, I claimed my dowry from my husband Ben-Hadad-nathan, and he of his own free will gave me, under deed and seal, the house in Borsippa and the eight roods on which it stood, and assigned it to me for ever, stating in the deed he gave me that the two and one-half manehs which Ben-Hadad-nathan and Bunanitum had received from Iddin-Merodach and laid out in buying this house had been their joint property. This deed he sealed and called down in it the curse of the great gods (upon whoever should violate it). In the fifth year of Nabonidos, king of Babylon, I and my husband, Ben-Hadad-nathan, adopted Ben-Hadad-amara as our son and subscribed to the deed of adoption, and at the same time we assigned two manehs ten shekels of silver and the furniture of the house as a dowry for my daughter Nubtâ. My husband died, and now Aqabi-ilu (Jacob-el), the son of my father-in-law, has raised a claim to the house and property which was willed and assigned to me, as well as (a claim) to Nebo-nur-ilani, whom we bought for money through the agency of Nebo-akhi-iddin.
“I have brought him before you; pass judgment. The judges heard their pleas; they read the deeds and contracts which Bunanitum produced in court, and disallowed the claim of Aqabi-ilu to the house in Borsippa, which had been assigned to Bunanitum in [pg 204] lieu of her dowry, as well as to Nebo-nur-ilani, whom she and her husband had bought, and to the rest of the property of Ben-Hadad-nathan; they confirmed Bunanitum and Ben-Hadad-amara in their titles. (It was further added that) Iddin-Merodach should receive in full the sum of two and one-half manehs which he had given toward the purchase of the house, and that then Bunanitum should take in full three and one-half manehs, the amount of her dowry, and that part of the property (which had not been bequeathed to Nubtâ). Nebo-nur-ilani was to be given to Nubtâ in accordance with the will of her father. The following judges were present at the delivery of this judgment: Nergal-banunu the judge, the son of the architect; Nebo-akhi-iddin the judge, the son of Egibi; Nebo-sum-ukin the judge, the son of Irani; Bel-akhi-iddin the judge, the son of ——; Nebo-balasu-iqbi the judge, the son of ——; and the clerks Nadin and Nebo-sum-iskun. Babylon, the 29th day of Elul, the ninth year of Nabonidos, king of Babylon.”
The term used in reference to the loan made by Iddin-Merodach implies that the lender accepted a share in the property that was bought instead of demanding interest for his money. Hence it was that, when the estate came to be settled after the death of Ben-Hadad-nathan, it was necessary to pay him off. What the grounds were upon which Aqabi-ilu laid claim to the property we are not told, and the dossier in which it was set forth has not been found. His name, however, is interesting, as it proves that the old Western Semitic name of Jacob-el, of which the [pg 205] Biblical Jacob is a shortened form, still survived in a slightly changed shape among the Syrian settlers in Babylonia. Indeed, Iqubu, or Jacob itself, is found in a contract of the tenth year of Nabonidos as the name of a coppersmith at Babylon. Two thousand years before there had been other Semitic settlers in Babylonia from Western Asia who had also taken part in the legal transactions of the country, and among whom the name of Ya'qub-ilu was known. The name had even spread to the Assyrian colonists near Kaisarîyeh, in Cappadocia, who have left us inscriptions in uniform characters, and among them it appears as Iqib-ilu. Iqib-ilu and Aqabi-ilu are alike kindred forms of Ya'qub-ilu (or Yaqub-ilu), the Jacob-el of Canaan.
Death, more especially with “an iron sword,” was the punishment of the more serious offences; imprisonment and scourging of lighter ones. Imprisonment might be accompanied by chains or the stock, but the prisoner might also be left unfettered and be allowed to range freely through the court or cell of the prison. Whether the penalty of imprisonment with hard labor was ever inflicted is questionable; in a country where slavery existed and the corvée was in force there would have been but little need for it.
The prisoner could be released on bail, his surety being responsible for his appearance when it was required. Thus in the seventh year of Cyrus one of the officials of the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara was put into “iron fetters” by the chief priest of the god, but was afterward released, bail being given for him by another official of the temple. The latter [pg 206] undertook to do the work of the prisoner if he absconded. The bail was offered and accepted before “the priests and elders of the city,” and the registration of the fact was duly dated and attested by witnesses. At a later date a citizen of Nippur was allowed to become surety for the release of his nephew from prison on condition that the latter did not leave the city without permission. The prison is called bit-karê, or “House of Walls.”9
There was another bit-karê, which had a very different meaning and was used for a very different purpose. This was “the House of Cereals,” the storehouse or barn in which were stored such tithes of the temples as were paid in grain. The name is also sometimes applied to the sutumme, or royal storehouses, where the grain and dates collected by the tax-gatherers were deposited, and from which the army and the civil servants were provided with food. The superintendent of these storehouses was an important personage; he was the paymaster of the state officials, in so far as they received their salaries in kind, and the loyalty of the standing army could be trusted only so long as it could be fed. Similar storehouses existed in Egypt, from the age of the eighteenth dynasty downward, and it is probable that the adoption of them was due to Babylonian influence. They gave the King a powerful hold upon his subjects, by enabling him to supply them with grain in the years of scarcity, or to withhold it except upon such terms as he chose to make with them.
[pg 207]The exportation of the grain, moreover, was a yearly source of wealth and revenue which flowed into the royal exchequer. In Babylonia, as in Egypt, the controller of the granaries was master of the destinies of the people.
Chapter X. Letter-Writing
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 [pg 209] 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 [pg 210] 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 [pg 211] 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
[pg 212]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.
[pg 213]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” [pg 214] 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 [pg 215] 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 [pg 216] 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 [pg 217] 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) [pg 218] 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 [pg 219] 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 [pg 220] 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 [pg 221] 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 [pg 222] 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 [pg 223] 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 [pg 224] 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 [pg 225] 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 [pg 226] 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 [pg 227] 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 [pg 228] 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.
[pg 229]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 [pg 230] 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.