History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12)

The warders at the gates despoiled the new-comers of everything which they had brought with them, and conducted them in a naked condition before Allât, who pronounced sentence upon them, and assigned to each his place in the nether world. The good or evil committed on earth by such souls was of little moment in determining the sentence: to secure the favour of the judge, it was of far greater importance to have exhibited devotion to the gods and to Allât herself, to have lavished sacrifices and offerings upon them and to have enriched their temples. The souls which could not justify themselves were subjected to horrible punishment: leprosy consumed them to the end of time, and the most painful maladies attacked them, to torture them ceaselessly without any hope of release. Those who were fortunate enough to be spared from her rage, dragged out a miserable and joyless existence. They were continually suffering from the pangs of thirst and hunger, and found nothing to satisfy their appetites but clay and dust. They shivered with cold, and they obtained no other garment to protect them than mantles of feathers—the great silent wings of the night-birds, invested with which they fluttered about and filled the air with their screams. This gloomy and cruel conception of ordinary life in this strange kingdom was still worse than the idea formed of the existence in the tomb to which it succeeded. In the cemetery the soul was, at least, alone with the dead body; in the house of Allât, on the contrary, it was lost as it were among spirits as much afflicted as itself, and among the genii born of darkness. None of these genii had a simple form, or approached the human figure in shape; each individual was a hideous medley of human and animal parts, in which the most repellent features were artistically combined. Lions’ heads stood out from the bodies of scorpion-tailed jackals, whose feet were armed with eagles’ claws: and among such monsters the genii of pestilence, fever, and the south-west wind took the chief place. When once the dead had become naturalized among this terrible population, they could not escape from their condition, unless by the exceptional mandate of the gods above. They possessed no recollection of what they had done upon earth. Domestic affection, friendships, and the memory of good offices rendered to one another,—all were effaced from their minds: nothing remained there but an inexpressible regret at having been exiled from the world of light, and an excruciating desire to reach it once more. The threshold of Allat’s palace stood upon a spring which had the property of restoring to life all who bathed in it or drank of its waters: they gushed forth as soon as the stone was raised, but the earth-spirits guarded it with a jealous care, and kept at a distance all who attempted to appropriate a drop of it. They permitted access to it only by order of Ea himself, or one of the supreme gods, and even then with a rebellious heart at seeing their prey escape them. Ancient legends related how the shepherd Dumuzi, son of Ea and Damkina, having excited the love of Ishtar while he was pasturing his flocks under the mysterious tree of Eridu, which covers the earth with its shade, was chosen by the goddess from among all others to be the spouse of her youth, and how, being mortally wounded by a wild boar, he was cast into the kingdom of Allat. One means remained by which he might be restored to the light of day: his wounds must be washed in the waters of the wonderful spring, and Ishtar resolved to go in quest of this marvellous liquid. The undertaking was fraught with danger, for no one might travel to the infernal regions without having previously gone through the extreme terrors of death, and even the gods themselves could not transgress this fatal law. “To the land without return, to the land which thou knowest—Ishtar, the daughter of Sin, turned her thoughts: she, the daughter of Sin, turned her thoughts—to the house of darkness, the abode of Irkalla—to the house from which he who enters can never emerge—to the path upon which he who goes shall never come back—to the house into which he who enters bids farewell to the light—the place where dust is nourishment and clay is food; the light is not seen, darkness is the dwelling, where the garments are the wings of birds—where dust accumulates on door and bolt.” Ishtar arrives at the porch, she knocks at it, she addresses the guardian in an imperious voice: “‘Guardian of the waters, open thy gate—open thy gate that I may enter, even I.—If thou openest not the door that I may enter, even I,—I will burst open the door, I will break the bars, I will break the threshold, I will burst in the panels, I will excite the dead that they may eat the living,—and the dead shall be more numerous than the living.’—The guardian opened his mouth and spake, he announced to the mighty Ishtar: ‘Stop, O lady, and do not overturn the door until I go and apprise the Queen Allât of thy name.’ Allat hesitates, and then gives him permission to receive the goddess: ‘Go, guardian, open the gate to her—but treat her according to the ancient laws. Mortals enter naked into the world, and naked must they leave it: and since Ishtar has decided to accept their lot, she too must be prepared to divest herself of her garments.’” The guardian went, he opened his mouth: ‘Enter, my lady, and may Kutha rejoice—may the palace and the land without return exult in thy presence! ‘He causes her to pass through the first gate, divests her, removes the great crown from her head:—‘Why, guardian, dost thou remove the great crown from my head?’—‘Enter, my lady, such is the law of Allât.’ The second gate, he causes her to pass through it, he divests her—removes the rings from her ears:—‘Why, guardian, dost thou remove the rings from my ears?’—‘Enter, my lady, such is the law of Allât.’” And from gate to gate he removes some ornament from the distressed lady—now her necklace with its attached amulets, now the tunic which covers her bosom, now her enamelled girdle, her bracelets, and the rings on her ankles: and at length, at the seventh gate, takes from her her last covering. When she at length arrives in the presence of Allat, she throws herself upon her in order to wrest from her in a terrible struggle the life of Dumuzi; but Allat sends for Namtar, her messenger of misfortune, to punish, the rebellious Ishtar. “Strike her eyes with the affliction of the eyes—strike her loins with the affliction of the loins—strike her feet with the affliction of the feet—strike her heart with the affliction of the heart—strike her head with the affliction of the head—strike violently at her, at her whole body!” While Ishtar was suffering the torments of the infernal regions, the world of the living was wearing mourning on account of her death. In the absence of the goddess of love, the rites of love could no longer be performed. The passions of animals and men were suspended. If she did not return quickly to the daylight, the races of men and animals would become extinct, the earth would become a desert, and the gods would have neither votaries nor offerings.

“Papsukal, the servant of the great gods, tore his face before Shamash—clothed in mourning, filled with sorrow. Shamash went—he wept in the presence of Sin, his father,—and his tears flowed in the presence of Ea, the king:—‘Ishtar has gone down into the earth, and she has not come up again!—And ever since Ishtar has descended into the land without return... [the passions of men and beasts have been suspended]... the master goes to sleep while giving his command, the servant goes to sleep on his duty.’” The resurrection of the goddess is the only remedy for such ills, but this is dependent upon the resurrection of Damuzi: Ishtar will never consent to reappear in the world, if she cannot bring back her husband with her. Ea, the supreme god, the infallible executor of the divine will—he who alone can modify the laws imposed upon creation—at length decides to accord to her what she desires. “Ea, in the wisdom of his heart, formed a male being,—formed Uddushunâmir, the servant of the gods:—‘Go then, Uddushunâmir, turn thy face towards the gate of the land without return; —the seven gates of the land without return—may they become open at thy presence—may Allât behold thee, and rejoice in thy presence! When her heart shall be calm, and her wrath appeased, charm her in the name of the great gods—turn thy thoughts to the spring’—‘May the spring, my lady, give me of its waters that I may drink of them.’” Allât broke out into a terrible rage, when she saw herself obliged to yield to her rival; “she beat her sides, she gnawed her fingers,” she broke out into curses against the messenger of misfortune. “‘Thou hast expressed to me a wish which should not be made!—Fly, Uddushunâmir, or I will shut thee up in the great prison—the mud of the drains of the city shall be thy food—the gutters of the town shall be thy drink—the shadow of the walls shall be thy abode—the thresholds shall be thy habitation—confinement and isolation shall weaken thy strength.’”* She is obliged to obey, notwithstanding; she calls her messenger Namtar and commands him to make all the preparations for resuscitating the goddess. It was necessary to break the threshold of the palace in order to get at the spring, and its waters would have their full effect only in presence of the Anunnas. “Namtar went, he rent open the eternal palace,—he twisted the uprights so that the stones of the threshold trembled;—he made the Anunnaki come forth, and seated them on thrones of gold,—he poured upon Ishtar the waters of life, and brought her away.” She received again at each gate the articles of apparel she had abandoned in her passage across the seven circles of hell: as soon as she saw the daylight once more, it was revealed to her that the fate of her husband was henceforward in her own hands. Every year she must bathe him in pure water, and anoint him with the most precious perfumes, clothe him in a robe of mourning, and play to him sad airs upon a crystal flute, whilst her priestesses intoned their doleful chants, and tore their breasts in sorrow: his heart would then take fresh life, and his youth flourish once more, from springtime to springtime, as long as she should celebrate on his behalf the ceremonies already prescribed by the deities of the infernal world.

Dumuzi was a god, the lover, moreover, of a goddess, and the deity succeeded where mortals failed.* Ea, Nebo, Gula, Ishtar, and their fellows possessed, no doubt, the faculty of recalling the dead to life, but they rarely made use of it on behalf of their creatures, and their most pious votaries pleaded in vain from temple to temple for the resurrection of their dead friends; they could never obtain the favour which had been granted by Allât to Dumuzi.

When the dead body was once placed in the tomb, it rose up no more, it could no more be reinstated in the place in the household it had lost, it never could begin once more a new earthly existence. The necromancers, indeed, might snatch away death’s prey for a few moments. The earth gaped at the words of their invocations, the soul burst forth like a puff of wind and answered gloomily the questions proposed to it; but when the charm was once broken, it had to retrace its steps to the country without return, to be plunged once more in darkness. This prospect of a dreary and joyless eternity was not so terrifying to the Chaldæans as it was to the Egyptians. The few years of their earthly existence were of far more concern to them than the endless ages which were to begin their monotonous course on the morrow of their funeral. The sum of good and evil fortune assigned to them by destiny they preferred to spend continuously in the light of day on the fair plains of the Euphrates and Tigris: if they were to economize during this period with the view of laying up a posthumous treasure of felicity, their store would have no current value beyond the tomb, and would thus become so much waste. The gods, therefore, whom they served faithfully would recoup them, here in their native city, with present prosperity, with health, riches, power, glory, and a numerous offspring, for the offerings of their devotion; while, if they irritated the deities by their shortcomings, they had nothing to expect but overwhelming calamities and sufferings. The gods would “cut them down like a reed,” and their “names would be annihilated, their seed destroyed;—they would end their days in affliction and hunger,—their dead bodies would be at the mercy of chance, and would receive no sepulture.” They were content to resign themselves, therefore, to the dreary lot of eternal misery which awaited them after death, provided they enjoyed in this world a long and prosperous existence. Some of them felt and rebelled against the injustice of the idea, which assigned one and the same fate, without discrimination, to the coward and the hero killed on the battle-field, to the tyrant and the mild ruler of his people, to the wicked and the righteous. These therefore supposed that the gods would make distinctions, that they would separate such heroes from the common herd, welcome them in a fertile, sunlit island, separated from the abode of men by the waters of death—the impassable river which leads to the house of Allât. The tree of life flourished there, the spring of life poured forth there its revivifying waters; thither Ea transferred Xisuthros after the Deluge; Gilgames saw the shores of this island and returned from it, strong and healthy as in the days of his youth. The site of this region of delights was at first placed in the centre of the marshes of the Euphrates, where this river flows into the sea; afterwards when the country became better known, it was transferred beyond the ocean. In proportion as the limits of the Chaldæan horizon were thrust further and further away by mercantile or warlike expeditions, this mysterious island was placed more and more to the east, afterwards to the north, and at length at a distance so great that it tended to vanish altogether. As a final resource, the gods of heaven themselves became the hosts, and welcomed into their own kingdom the purified souls of the heroes.

These souls were not so securely isolated from humanity that the inhabitants of the world were not at times tempted to rejoin them before their last hour had come. Just as Gilgames had dared of old the dangers of the desert and the ocean in order to discover the island of Khasisadra, so Etana darted through the air in order to ascend to the sky of Anu, to become incorporated while still living in the choir of the blessed. The legend gives an account of his friendship with the eagle of Shamash, and of the many favours he had obtained from and rendered to the bird. It happened at last, that his wife could not bring forth the son which lay in her womb; the hero, addressing himself to the eagle, asked from her the plant which alleviates the birth-pangs of women and facilitates their delivery. This was only to be found, however, in the heaven of Anu, and how could any one run the risk of mounting so high, without being destroyed on the way by the anger of the gods? The eagle takes pity upon the sorrow of his comrade, and resolves to attempt the enterprise with him. “‘Friend,’ she says, ‘banish the cloud from thy face! Come, and I will carry thee to the heaven of the god Anu. Place thy breast against my breast—place thy two hands upon the pinions of my wings—place thy side against my side.’ He places his breast against the breast of the eagle, he places his two hands upon the pinions of the wings, he places his side against her side;—he adjusts himself firmly, and his weight was great.” The Chaldæan artists have more than once represented the departure of the hero. They exhibit him closely attached to the body of his ally, and holding her in a strong embrace. A first flight has already lifted them above the earth, and the shepherds scattered over the country are stupefied at the unaccustomed sight: one announces the prodigy to another, while their dogs seated at their feet extend their muzzles as if in the act of howling with terror. “For the space of a double hour the eagle bore him—then the eagle spake to him, to him Etana: ‘Behold, my friend, the earth what it is; regard the sea which the ocean contains! See, the earth is no more than a mountain, and the sea is no more than a lake.’ The space of a second double hour she bore him, then the eagle spake to him, to him Etana: ‘Behold, my friend, the earth what it is; the sea appears as the girdle of the earth! ‘The space of a third double hour she bore him, then the eagle spake to him, to him Etana: ‘See, my friend, the earth, what it is:—the sea is no more than the rivulet made by a gardener.’”

“They at length arrive at the heaven of Anu, and rest there for a moment. Etana sees around him nothing but empty space—no living thing within it—not even a bird: he is struck with terror, but the eagle reassures him, and tells him to proceed on his way to the heaven of Ishtar. “‘Come, my friend, let me bear thee to Ishtar,—and I will place thee near Ishtar, the lady,—and at the feet of Ishtar, the lady, thou shalt throw thyself.—Place thy side against my side, place thy hands on the pinions of my wings.’ The space of a double hour she bore him: ‘Friend, behold the earth what it is.—The face of the earth stretches out quite flat—and the sea is no greater than a mere.’ The space of a second double hour she bore him: ‘Friend, behold the earth what it is,—the earth is no more than a square plot in a garden, and the great sea is not greater than a puddle of water.’” At the third hour Etana lost courage, and cried, “Stop!” and the eagle immediately descended again; but, Etana’s strength being exhausted, he let go his hold, and was dashed to pieces on the ground.

The eagle escaped unhurt this time, but she soon suffered a more painful death than that of Etana. She was at war with the serpent, though the records which we as yet possess do not vouchsafe the reason, when she discovered in the roots of a tree the nest in which her enemy concealed its brood. She immediately proposed to her young ones to pounce down upon the growing snakes; one of her eaglets, wiser than the rest, reminded her that they were under the protection of Shamash, the great righter of wrongs, and cautioned her against any transgression of the divine laws. The old eagle felt herself wiser than her son, and rebuked him after the manner of wise mothers: she carried away the serpent’s young, and gave them as food to her own brood. The hissing serpent crawled as far as Shamash, crying for vengeance: “The evil she has done me, Shamash—behold it! Come to my help, Shamash! thy net is as wide as the earth—thy snares reach to the distant mountain—who can escape thy net?—The criminal Zu, Zu who was the first to act wickedly, did he escape it?” Shamash refused to interfere personally, but he pointed out to the serpent an artifice by which he might satisfy his vengeance as securely as if Shamash himself had accomplished it. “Set out upon the way, ascend the mountain,—and conceal thyself in a dead bull;—make an incision in his inside—tear open his belly,—take up thy abode—establish thyself in his belly. All the birds of the air will pounce upon it....—and the eagle herself will come with them, ignorant that thou art within it;—she will wish to possess herself of the flesh, she will come swiftly—she will think of nothing but the entrails within. As soon as she begins to attack the inside, seize her by her wings, beat down her wings, the pinions of her wings and her claws, tear her and throw her into a ravine of the mountain, that she may die there a death of hunger and thirst.”

The serpent did as Shamash advised, and the birds of the air began to flock round the carcase in which she was hidden. The eagle came with the rest, and at first kept aloof, looking for what should happen. When she saw that the birds flew away unharmed all fear left her. In vain did the wise eaglet warn her of the danger that was lurking within the prey; she mocked at him and his predictions, dug her beak into the carrion, and the serpent leaping out seized her by the wing. Then “the eagle her mouth opened, and spake unto the snake, ‘Have mercy upon me, and according to thy pleasure a gift I will lavish upon thee!’ The snake opened her mouth and spake unto the eagle, ‘Did I release thee, Shamash would take part against me; and the doom would fall upon me, which now I fulfil upon thee.’ She tore out her wings, her feathers, her pinions; she tore her to pieces, she threw her into a cleft, and there she died a death of hunger and of thirst.”

The gods allowed no living being to penetrate with impunity into their empire: he who was desirous of ascending thither, however brave he might be, could do so only by death. The mass of humanity had no pretensions to mount so high. Their religion gave them the choice between a perpetual abode in the tomb, or confinement in the prison of Allât; if at times they strove to escape from these alternatives, and to picture otherwise their condition in the world beyond, their ideas as to the other life continued to remain vague, and never approached the minute precision of the Egyptian conception. The cares of the present life were too absorbing to allow them leisure to speculate upon the conditions of a future existence.

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CHALDÆAN CIVILIZATION—ROYALTY—THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FAMILY AND ITS PROPERTY—CHALMAN COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY.

The kings not gods, but the vicegerents of the gods: their sacerdotal character—The queens and the women of the royal family: the sons and the order of succession to the throne—The royal palaces: description of the palace of Gudea at Lagash, the façades, the zigurât, the private apartments, the furniture, the external decoration—Costume of the men and women: the employees of the palace and the method of royal administration; the military and the great lords.

The scribe and the clay books.—Cuneiform writing: its hieroglyphic origin; the Protean character of the sounds which may be assigned to the ideograms, grammatical tablets, and dictionaries—Their contracts, and their numerous copies of them: the finger-nail mark, the seal.

The constitution of the family: the position held by the wife—Marriage, the contract, the religious ceremonies—Divorce: the rights of wealthy women; woman and marriage among the lower classes—Adopted children, their position in the family; ordinary motives for adoption—Slaves, their condition, their enfranchisement.

The Chaldæan towns: the aspect and distribution of the houses, domestic life—The family patrimony: division of the inheritance—Lending on usury, the rate of interest, commercial intercourse by land and sea—Trade corporations: brick-making, industrial implements in stone and metal, goldsmiths, engravers of cylinders, weavers; the state of the working classes.

Farming and cultivation of the ground: landmarks, slaves, and agricultural labourers—Scenes of pastoral life: fishing, hunting—Archaic literature; positive sciences: arithmetic and geometry, astronomy and astrology, the science of foretelling the future—The physician; magic and its influence on neighbouring countries.

CHAPTER III—CHALDÆAN CIVILIZATION

Royalty—The constitution of the family and its property—Chaldæan commerce and industry.

The Chaldæan kings, unlike their contemporaries the Pharaohs, rarely put forward any pretensions to divinity. They contented themselves with occupying an intermediate position between their subjects and the gods, and for the purpose of mediation they believed themselves to be endowed with powers not possessed by ordinary mortals. They sometimes designated themselves the sons of Ea, or of Nînsun, or some other deity, but this involved no belief in a divine parentage, and was merely pious hyperbole: they entertained no illusions with regard to any descent from a god or even from one of his doubles, but they desired to be recognized as his vicegerents here below, as his prophets, his well-beloved, his pastors, elected by him to rule his human flocks, or as priests devotedly attached to his service. While, however, the ordinary priest chose for himself a single master to whom he devoted himself, the priest-king exercised universal sacerdotal functions and claimed to be pontiff of all the national religions. His choice naturally was directed by preference to the patrons of his city, those who had raised his ancestors from the dust, and had exalted him to the supreme rank, but there were other divinities who claimed their share of his homage and expected of him a devotion suited to their importance. If he had attempted to carry out these duties personally in detail, he would have had to spend his whole life at the foot of the altar; even when he had delegated as many of them as he could to the regular clergy, there still remained sufficient to occupy a large part of his time. Every month, every day, brought its inevitable round of sacrifices, prayers, and processions. On the 1st of the second Elul, the King of Babylon had to present a gazelle without blemish to Sin; he then made an offering of his own choosing to Shamash, and cut the throats of his victims before the god. These ceremonies were repeated on the 2nd without any alteration, but from the 3rd to the 12th they took place during the night, before the statues of Merodach and Ishtar, in turn with those of Nebo and Tashmit, of Mullil and Ninlil, of Eamman and of Zirbanit; sometimes at the rising of a particular constellation—as, for instance, that of the Great Bear, or that of the sons of Ishtar; sometimes at the moment when the moon “raised above the earth her luminous crown.” On such a date a penitential psalm or a litany was to be recited; at another time it was forbidden to eat of meat either cooked or smoked, to change the body-linen, to wear white garments, to drink medicine, to sacrifice, to put forth an edict, or to drive out in a chariot. Not only at Babylon, but everywhere else, obedience to the religious rites weighed heavily on the local princes; at Uru, at Lagash, at Nipur, and in the ruling cities of Upper and Lower Chaldæa. The king, as soon as he succeeded to the throne, repaired to the temple to receive his solemn investiture, which differed in form according to the gods he worshipped: at Babylon, he addressed himself to the statue of Bel-Merodach in the first days of the month Nisan which followed his accession, and he “took him by the hands” to do homage to him. From thenceforth, he officiated for Merodach here below, and the scrupulously minute devotions, which daily occupied hours of his time, were so many acts of allegiance which his fealty as a vassal constrained him to perform to his suzerain. They were, in fact, analogous to the daily audiences demanded of a great lord by his steward, for the purpose of rendering his accounts and of informing him of current business: any interruption not justified by a matter of supreme importance would be liable to be interpreted as a want of respect or as revealing an inclination to rebel. By neglecting the slightest ceremonial detail the king would arouse the suspicions of the gods, and excite their anger against himself and his subjects: the people had, therefore, a direct interest in his careful fulfilment of the priestly functions, and his piety was not the least of his virtues in their eyes. All other virtues—bravery, equity, justice—depended on it, and were only valuable from the divine aid which piety obtained for them. The gods and heroes of the earliest ages had taken upon themselves the task of protecting the faithful from all their enemies, whether men or beasts. If a lion decimated their flocks, or a urus of gigantic size devastated their crops, it was the king’s duty to follow the example of his fabulous predecessors and to set out and overcome them. The enterprise demanded all the more courage and supernatural help, since these beasts were believed to be no mere ordinary animals, but were looked on as instruments of divine wrath the cause of which was often unknown, and whoever assailed these monsters, provoked not only them but the god who instigated them. Piety and confidence in the patron of the city alone sustained the king when he set forth to drive the animal back to its lair; he engaged in close combat with it, and no sooner had he pierced it with his arrows or his lance, or felled it with axe and dagger, than he hastened to pour a libation upon it, and to dedicate it as a trophy in one of the temples. His exalted position entailed on him no less perils in time of war: if he did not personally direct the first attacking column, he placed himself at the head of the band composed of the flower of the army, whose charge at an opportune moment was wont to secure the victory.

What would have been the use of his valour, if the dread of the gods had not preceded his march, and if the light of their countenances had not struck terror into the ranks of the enemy? As soon as he had triumphed by their command, he sought before all else to reward them amply for the assistance they had given him. He poured a tithe of the spoil into the coffers of their treasury, he made over a part of the conquered country to their domain, he granted them a tale of the prisoners to cultivate their lands or to work at their buildings. Even the idols of the vanquished shared the fate of their people: the king tore them from the sanctuaries which had hitherto sheltered them, and took them as prisoners in his train to form a court of captive gods about his patron divinity. Shamash, the great judge of heaven, inspired him with justice, and the prosperity which his good administration obtained for the people was less the work of the sovereign than that of the immortals.

We know too little of the inner family life of the kings, to attempt to say how they were able to combine the strict sacerdotal obligations incumbent on them with the routine of daily life. We merely observe that on great days of festival or sacrifice, when they themselves officiated, they laid aside all the insignia of royalty during the ceremony and were clad as ordinary priests. We see them on such occasions represented with short-cut hair and naked breast, the loin-cloth about their waist, advancing foremost in the rank, carrying the heavily laden “kufa,” or reed basket, as if they were ordinary slaves; and, as a fact, they had for the moment put aside their sovereignty and were merely temple servants, or slaves appearing before their divine master to do his bidding, and disguising themselves for the nonce in the garb of servitors. The wives of the sovereign do not seem to have been invested with that semi-sacred character which led the Egyptian women to be associated with the devotions of the man, and made them indispensable auxiliaries in all religious ceremonies; they did not, moreover, occupy that important position side by side with the man which the Egyptian law assigned to the queens of the Pharaohs. Whereas the monuments on the banks of the Nile reveal to us princesses sharing the throne of their husbands whom they embrace with a gesture of frank affection, in Chaldæa the wives of the prince, his mother, sisters, daughters, and even his slaves, remain invisible to posterity.

The harem in which they were shut up by custom, rarely opened its doors: the people seldom caught sight of them, their relatives spoke of them as little as possible, those in power avoided associating them in any public acts of worship or government, and we could count on our fingers the number of those whom the inscriptions mention by name. Some of them were drawn from the noble families of the capital, others came from the kingdoms of Chaldæa or from foreign courts; a certain number never rose above the condition of mere concubines, many assumed the title of queen, while almost all served as living pledges of alliances made with rival states, or had been given as hostages at the concluding of a peace on the termination of a war.* As the kings, who put forward no pretensions to a divine origin, were not constrained, after the fashion of the Pharaohs, to marry their sisters in order to keep up the purity of their race, it was rare to find one among their wives who possessed an equal right to the crown with themselves: such a case could be found only in troublous times, when an aspirant to the throne, of base extraction, legitimated his usurpation by marrying a sister or daughter of his predecessor.

The original status of the mother almost always determined that of her children, and the sons of a princess were born princes, even if their father were of obscure or unknown origin.* These princes exercised important functions at court, or they received possessions which they administered under the suzerainty of the head of the family; the daughters were given to foreign kings, or to scions of the most distinguished families. The sovereign was under no obligation to hand down his crown to any particular member of his family; the eldest son usually succeeded him, but the king could, if he preferred, select his favourite child as his successor even if he happened to be the youngest, or the only one born of a slave. As soon as the sovereign had made known his will, the custom of primogeniture was set aside, and his word became law. We can well imagine the secret intrigues formed both by mothers and sons to curry favour with the father and bias his choice; we can picture the jealousy with which they mutually watched each other, and the bitter hatred which any preference shown to one would arouse in the breasts of all the others. Often brothers who had been disappointed in their expectations would combine secretly against the chosen or supposed heir; a conspiracy would break out, and the people suddenly learn that their ruler of yesterday had died by the hand of an assassin and that a new one filled his place.

Sometimes discontent spread beyond the confines of the palace, the army became divided into two hostile camps, the citizens took the side of one or other of the aspirants, and civil war raged for several years till some decisive action brought it to a close. Meantime tributary vassals took advantage of the consequent disorder to shake off the yoke, the Blamites and various neighbouring cities joined in the dispute and ranged themselves on the side of the party from which there was most to be gained: the victorious faction always had to pay dearly for this somewhat dubious help, and came out impoverished from the struggle. Such an internecine war often caused the downfall of a dynasty—at times, indeed, that of the entire state.**

The palaces of the Chaldæan kings, like those of the Egyptians, presented the appearance of an actual citadel: the walls had to be sufficiently thick to withstand an army for an indefinite period, and to protect the garrison from every emergency, except that of treason or famine. One of the statues found at Telloh holds in its lap the plan of one of these residences: the external outline alone is given, but by means of it we can easily picture to ourselves a fortified place, with its towers, its forts, and its gateways placed between two bastions. It represents the ancient palace of Lagash, subsequently enlarged and altered by Oudea or one of the vicegerents who succeeded him, in which many a great lord of the place must have resided down to the time of the Christian era. The site on which it was built in the Girsu quarter of. the city was not entirely unoccupied at the time of its foundation. Urbau had raised a ziggurat on that very spot some centuries previously, and the walls which he had constructed were falling into ruin.

Gudea did not destroy the work of his remote predecessor, he merely incorporated it into the substructures of the new building, thus showing an indifference similar to that evinced by the Pharaohs for the monuments of a former dynasty. The palaces, like the temples, never rose directly from the soil, but were invariably built on the top of an artificial mound of crude brick. At Lagash, this solid platform rises to the height of 40 feet above the plain, and the only means of access to the top is by a single narrow steep staircase, easily cut off or defended.

The palace which surmounts this artificial eminence describes a sort of irregular rectangle, 174 feet long by 69 feet wide, and had, contrary to the custom in Egypt, the four angles orientated to the four cardinal points. The two principal sides are not parallel, but swell out slightly towards the middle, and the flexion of the lines almost follows the contour of one of those little clay cones upon which the kings were wont to inscribe their annals or dedications. This flexure was probably not intentional on the part of the architect, but was owing to the difficulty of keeping a wall of such considerable extent in a straight line from one end to another; and all Eastern nations, whether Chaldæans or Egyptians, troubled themselves but little about correctness of alignment, since defects of this kind were scarcely ever perceptible in the actual edifice, and are only clearly revealed in the plan drawn out to scale with modern precision.*