The Child in Human Progress

To this the Chief Empress, Her Augustness the Forward Princess, to whom the frank statement is made, plaintively replies:

“Thou ... indeed, being a man, probably hast on the various island-headlands that thou seest and on every beach-headland that thou lookest on, a wife like the young herbs. But I, alas! being a woman have no man except thee; I have no spouse except thee!”103

What became of the children in the cases of conjugal separation does not appear, a statement that is made by no less a Japanese authority than Chamberlain.104 In only one instance is there any reference made to the fate of a child that had been deserted, but this is an unusual case, where the father had violated the rules of the parturition house, with the result that the mother disappears, leaving the father to take care of the child. He pledged himself to look after it until the day of his death but the sister of the child’s mother was first invoked to act as nurse.

The result of this system of family life was that where the children of different mothers but of the same father discovered one another’s presence there were feuds and much fighting, especially as it was the children of the latest affection who were generally the recipients of his favour to the chagrin and anger of the less favoured children and families. Marriages between half-brothers and halfsisters were another result of the system, the only restriction on marriages of any kind being that children of the same mother should not marry. Sons of the same father were thus incited to be enemies rather than brothers, in the accepted sense, and the annals of the civil wars are replete with tales of treachery and ambition and show almost an entire absence of natural affection. The fact that the children had no claim on the love and the protection of the father and that their mother was condemned under the ancient system to the function of a mere animal, is cited by Brinkley as the reason for this cruelty and treachery.105

This was the position of the child in the society that is depicted in the Kojiki and the Nihongi, although the latter, written about forty years after the Kojiki (A. D. 720), and under the influence of the Chinese, is more apt to depict the conditions that sprang up with the spreading Chinese culture.

The fourth century brought to Japan a knowledge of Chinese classics, and Chinese morals, and in 552 A. D., there came a still greater change when the Buddhistic religion was introduced through a copy of the scripture and an image of Buddha being sent to the Yamato Court by the government of one of the Korean kingdoms. Unsuccessful preachments there had been by unofficial missionaries before this, but the arrival of the Korean ambassador served to bring to the attention of the government the new religion in a manner calculated to arouse interest in its doctrines.

Whatever may be the defects of Shintoism, human sacrifice never seems really to have been part of its practice,106 and to this fact, with the increasing regard for life that came with civilization, is undoubtedly due the little emphasis given to infanticide among the Japanese. Another influence, undoubtedly, and this is said to be the “best point of Shinto,”107 is that the people were taught that they themselves were sons and daughters of the gods, a belief apt to save the killing of surplus members of society in a time of economic stress.

According to the Nihongi, human sacrifice was put an end to in Japan in the year A. D. 3:

“Tenth month, fifth day: Yamato-hiko, the Mikado’s younger brother by the mother’s side, died.

“Eleventh month, second day: Yamato-hiko was buried at Tsukizaka in Musa. Thereupon his personal attendants were assembled, and were all buried alive upright in the precinct of the tomb. For several days they died not, but wept and wailed day and night. At last they died and rotted. Dogs and crows gathered and ate them.

“The Emperor, hearing the sound of their weeping and wailing, was grieved at heart, and commanded his high officers, saying:

“‘It is a very painful thing to force these whom one has loved in life to follow him in death. Though it be an ancient custom, why follow it if it is bad? From this time forward, take counsel so as to put a stop to the following of the dead.’

“A. D. 3, seventh month, sixth day: The Empress Hibasuhime no Mikoto died. Sometime before the burial the Emperor commanded his ministers, saying:

“‘We have already recognized that the practice of following the dead is not good. What should now be done in performing this burial?’

“Thereupon Nomi no Sukune came forward and said:

“‘It is not good to bury living men upright at the tumulus of a prince. How can such a practice be handed down to posterity? I beg leave to propose an expedient which I will submit to your Majesty.’

“So he sent messengers to summon up from the land of Idzumo a hundred men of the clay-workers Be. He himself directed the men of the clay-workers Be to take clay and form therewith shapes of men, horses, and various objects, which he presented to the Emperor, saying:

“‘Henceforward, let it be the law for future ages to substitute things of clay for living men, and to set them up at tumuli.’

“Then the Emperor was greatly rejoiced, and commended Nomi no Sukune, saying:

“‘Thy expedient hath greatly pleased our heart.’

“So the things of clay were first set up at the tomb of Hibasuhime no Mikoto. And a name was given to those clay objects. They were called hani-wa or ‘clay rings.’

“Then a decree was issued, saying:

“‘Henceforth these clay figures must be set up at tumuli; let no men be harmed.’

“The Emperor bountifully rewarded Nomi no Sukune for this service, and also appointed him to the official charge of the clay-workers Be. His original title was therefore changed, and he was called Hashi no Omi. This was how it came to pass that the Hashi no Muraji superintended the burials of Emperors.”108

The date ascribed to this incident cannot be depended on. “Chinese accounts speak of the custom of human sacrifices at the burial of a sovereign as in full force in Japan so late as A. D. 247,” says Aston. Probably all the events of this part of Japanese history are very much antedated. But of the substantial accuracy of the narrative there can be no doubt. Some of these clay figures (known as tsuchi-ningio) are still in existence, and may be seen in the British Museum, where they constitute the chief treasure of the Gowland collection. The Uyeno Museum in Tokio also possessed specimens, both of men and horses. None, however, remain in situ at the tombs. The hani-wa (clay-rings), cylinders which may now be seen embedded in the earth round all the principal misasagi, are so numerous that they can hardly have all been surmounted by figures. But they are of the same workmanship and of the same date, and no doubt some of them are the pedestals of images, the above-ground part of which has been destroyed by the weather or by accident.

“A similar substitution of straw or wooden images for living men took place in China in ancient times, though by a curious inversion of ideas, the former practice is described as leading to the latter.”109

While neither the lion or the tiger ever troubled Japan and her most carnivorous and destructive animals have been wolves, tradition has ascribed the sacrifice of human beings in Japan to the desire to placate the god of wild animals. The victim was always a girl, and from the earliest ages the manner of selecting her was to affix to the roof of a house a bow and arrow. When the householder arose in the morning and discovered what was accepted as a divine intimation, the eldest daughter of the family was buried alive, it being supposed that her flesh served as a meal for the deity. Later the priests of Buddha found a more profitable method of disposing of these girls by selling them as slaves; thereby following out the fundamental tenet of the Buddhistic religion, which is the sanctity of human life, and at the same time increasing their wealth. Some writers refer to this practice as being a sacrifice to an animal in the service of Shakamuni, which would have made it a Buddhistic rite, but the idea is scoffed at by Brinkley.110 Even up to recent times it is said the habit of sacrificing human beings in order to make the foundation of any great work more stable was common. The corpses of two human beings were said to be under the scarps “of the futile forts hurriedly erected for defence of Yedo [Tokio] in the interval between Commodore Perry’s first and second coming.”111

In the Tokugawa period, extending from about 1615 to 1860, two and a half centuries, Japan was a hermit nation distinguished for its peaceful character. Yet its population for one hundred years remained almost stationary. By some authorities, this has been explained not only on the ground of many famines and devastating diseases but the common practice of abortion and the fact that the Samurai considered it disgraceful to marry until they were thirty, and equally disgraceful to raise a family of more than three children.

“Among the lower classes it was not common to rear all the children born, especially if girls came too frequently.” Also, “While there was hardly in the whole country a hospital in our sense of the term, there were in the large cities physicians famous for their skill in preventing the birth of living children. They kept private establishments to accommodate calculating patrons. All authorities agreed that sexual morality in the large cities was at a very low ebb among all classes, while luxury and effeminacy prevailed among people high in birth and wealth.”112

As a picture of what the people were driven to and a terrible example of what attitude famine may lead parents to take toward their children, there is no more important document than the statement of Shirakawa Rakuo, distinguished as the Minister of Finance of the Eleventh Shogun, Iyenari. The trace of cannibalism in semi-civilized peoples is easier to understand after the fearful famine in the third year of Temmei (1783).

“A trustworthy man,” says Rakuo,113 “who had travelled in this district [northern part of country], told me that in a village which had previously contained 800 houses there were only thirty left, the inhabitants of the rest all having died. Having entered a village in which the houses seemed to be larger and more numerous than usual, he proposed to rest there for the night. He soon discovered, however, that not a single house was inhabited, but in all the houses he saw bones and skulls scattered about the floor. As he went on he saw innumerable bones and skulls by the roadside. He met a man leading a pack-horse on the road, who said that he could survive without eating the flesh of human beings as he was supported by a rich uncle. In some places even those who abandoned themselves to eating human flesh could not find food enough to live. Great numbers starved to death. The price paid for a dog was 500 sen, sometimes even as high as 800 sen, a rat 50 sen. A rare work of art found no purchasers and could not be exchanged for a go of rice. If a person died he was of course eaten by the survivors. Those who died of starvation, however, could not be eaten, because their flesh decayed so soon. Some people, therefore, killed those who were certain to starve and put the flesh into brine so as to keep it for a long time. Among other people there was a farmer who went to his neighbour and said, ‘My wife and one of my sons have already died from want of food. My remaining son is certain to die within a few days, so I wish to kill him while his flesh is still eatable, but being his father, I do not dare to raise the sword against him, so I beg you to kill the boy for me.’ The neighbour agreed to do this, but stipulated that he should get a part of the flesh as a reward for his service. This was agreed to and the neighbour at once killed the boy. As soon as the deed was done, the farmer, who stood by, struck his neighbour with a sword and killed him, saying that he ‘was very glad to avenge his son and at the same time have double the quantity of food.’”

Up to the close of the seventeenth century, feudal legislation was very harsh, one of the worst laws of ancient times in force until that time being that by which children were punished for the crime of their parents.114 If a man or a woman had been sentenced to be crucified or burnt and had male children above fifteen years of age, those children were similarly executed, and if they were under that age they were given over to a relative to be reared until they reached the age of fifteen, when they were banished. When the criminal parent was condemned to the ordinary hanging or beheading it was still within the discretion of the judge to condemn the male children to be executed or exiled. The female children, while exempt from the capital punishment, were liable to be sold as slaves.

In 1721, during the reign of the enlightened Yoshimune, who was Shogun from 1716 to 1746, there were many reforms, and it was then enacted that for all crimes, even those punishable with crucifixion and exposure of the head, only the criminal himself must be punished. In the case of the most heinous of all crimes, according to Japanese standards, parricide or the murder of a teacher, a special tribunal was declared to be the only place where it could be decided whether the children and grandchildren should be implicated. Interesting too is the fact that this leniency extended to the farmers and merchants only, the Samurai not being included, it being assumed that the crime of a person of nobility and education was a more serious matter than a crime by a person less fortunate—a theory of justice that has never taken root in the minds of the Occidentals except among romancers.

From the time, early in the seventeenth century, when the governing power of Japan fell into the hands of the Buddhist Tokugawa family, through Iyeyasu, the head of the house, there was an endeavour to check the sale of children. No less than eight enactments were issued between 1624 and 1734 declaring the sale of human beings punishable by death.

Progress naturally was slow when the conditions were so flagrant that there were open offices where the sales and purchase of children were effected.115 In 1649 an absurd compromise was attempted when a law was passed declaring it was lawful to sell a child, providing that the consent of the child was obtained. There was an attempt to regulate, without abolishing, slavery in the law of 1655, which declared that in a dispute between an employer and the employed, the employer, if found to be in the wrong, might be imprisoned or meted out any punishment that the employed might suggest. It is safe to add that the administrative criminal machinery was not in the hands of the proletariat, nor was there any suffrage that threatened to put the employed in the position of judge.

It was during this period that the law was passed allowing the parent to have his son or daughter imprisoned, a just cause being assumed. A father had the right to punish his son, but the son had the right to appeal to a magistrate for a review of the sentence; but “costs” of the appeal were dangerous inasmuch as if the son lost he had to suffer whatever penalty his father might dole out to him. The Occidental mind will not appreciate so readily the attempts of the Tokugawas, beginning 1627, to regulate the social evil, one of their early laws depriving employers of all authority “to retain the services of a female for immoral purposes outside the appointed quarter.”

Modern writers on Japan lay stress on the affection of the Japanese for their children, and yet “during the famine of 1905 many girls who had been sold by the suffering parents were redeemed by the Christians.”116 This sacrifice of the children to the welfare of the parents is traceable to the influence of Confucius. To the same source may be ascribed the fact that, though in ancient times the female sex was prominent in Japan, after the introduction of Confucianism the Samurai considered it beneath him to even converse with his wife and children.117 “Neither God nor the ladies inspired any enthusiasm in the Samurai’s heart,” says Professor Chamberlain. For is it not written by the great moralist Karbara Ekken in the Owna Dargaku, “It was the custom of the ancients, on the birth of a female child, to let it lie on the floor for the space of three days. Even in this may be seen the likening of the man to heaven and of the woman to earth.”118

Only a few years ago a child, both of whose parents had died of cholera, was on the point of being buried alive by neighbours when it was rescued.119 “Certain parts of Japan have been notorious from of old for this practice,” says Gulick. “In Toas the evil was so rampant that a society for its prevention has been in existence many years. It helps support children of poor parents who might be tempted to dispose of them criminally.”

On the other hand, this word from Professor Goodrich, who as a member of the faculty of the Imperial College pictures a nation far from indifferent to the welfare of the child:

“Ever since the beginning of that indefinite period which we call ‘modern times’ the birth of a child has always been an occasion for rejoicing. To be sure, in Japan that joy was very much greater when it was a boy baby; yet the Japanese have never displayed such intense dislike to girl babies as have the Chinese. One great reason for this was that the population of Japan was not so dense as it is in China. It was easier to provide for children, and therefore there was no incentive to put girl babies out of the way. I am sorry to say that very lately, since the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), when the Japanese people are almost crushed by the weight of taxes to provide money with which to pay war expenses and to keep up army and navy, the number of cases of female infanticide is increasing alarmingly.”120

CHAPTER VI

MESOPOTAMIA THE EARLIEST CIVILIZATION KNOWN—FAINT TRACES OF CHILD-SACRIFICE—LAWS FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN—CENSUS FIGURES IN STONES—CODE OF HAMMURABI—THE STORY OF SARGON.

OUR great grandfathers who accepted the chronology of the good Bishop Usher, by which the creation of the world was placed neatly and exactly at 4004 years before Christ, would never have dreamed of such periods of time as those the ethnologist, in his search for the natural history of man, compasses today in the annals of a single family, like the so-called, and at present discredited, Aryan. Nor yet would it have seemed possible to our grandfathers, that modern archæology would have made it possible for our savants and scientists to be today correcting the mistakes of Herodotus, and showing by their decipherings of new-found inscriptions and monuments, that before the earliest Greeks, the Egyptians, and even the Semitic peoples who inhabited Babylon and Assyria, there was another people,—a people whose origin it is not possible to place even now,—the Sumerians and Akkadians, who in the fourth millennial period B. C. were already a cultured and civilized people.

Recent excavations have changed the entire historical attack. Instead of beginning with the Homeric Age as an age of legend, “civilization may now be traced beyond the Mycenæan epoch, through the different stages of Ægean culture back into the Neolithic Age.”121 In Egypt we can now go back before the pyramid builders to the earliest dynastic kings, even to Neolithic Egyptians of whom there are no written records. Back of the known civilization of Assyria and Babylon, there has been discovered an even older civilization.

“On the northern and eastern confines of the Babylonian culture-system, new nations pass within our ken; Vannic men of Armenia, ruled by powerful kings; Kassites of the Zagros, whose language seems to contain elements which if really Aryan are probably the oldest known monuments of Indo-European speech (c. 1600 B. C.); strange tongued Elamites, also, akin neither to Iranian nor Semite. Nor does it seem to us remarkable that we should read the trilingual proclamations of Darius Hystaspis to his peoples in their original tongues, although an eighteenth century philosopher would have regarded the prospect of our ever being able to do so as the wildest of chimeras!”122

Recent excavations have established the fact that the earliest known civilization was in what afterwards came to be known as Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and that groups of people living in cities and calling themselves, in the lower section of the country, the Sumerians, and in the upper section, the Akkadians, dwelt in civilized state until they were conquered by the Semitic peoples. The Semites in their conquest of the Greeks, as we now know, took from the conquered the culture of the race that was physically weaker, as indeed the Gauls did from the Romans.

In government, law, literature, and art the Sumerians were the superior people, and though the Semites improved on their models, the impulse, says King, came from the Sumerians.123 It is now known that Hammurabi’s Code of Laws, which influenced in so marked a degree the Mosaic legislation, was of Sumerian origin, and the later religions and mythological literature from which the Hebrews borrowed so freely, was also of Sumerian origin.

Even with the excavations that are now going on and the discoveries that are being made almost daily, our evidence is still too scanty and imperfect, the gaps in it are too numerous,124 as Professor Sayce says, apropos of the Babylonian religion, to make it possible for us to discuss with any definiteness the attitude of these first civilized peoples toward children. Years will pass before the tablets already in the museums will have been deciphered, to say nothing of those that are being dug out now. A library of 30,000 tablets was discovered by M. de Srazec at Telloh in Northern Babylonia, at Nippur in the great temple of Bel, and five times as many were discovered later by the American excavators. Once the British Museum was the sole repository of these treasures, containing everything from business contracts to prayers to the gods, but now they are in the Louvre, the Berlin Museum, the Museum of Constantinople, the University of Pennsylvania, and even in private collections.

From these Semitic conquerors of the Sumerians, however, there came the first civilization and the first humanization, for in this rich valley with its abundance of water and its rich soil, the Nomads became an agricultural people; there was plenty for all, and the germ of human tolerance that the world was to show later toward the child, was there in that long ago pre-Semitic civilization of Babylonia.

Traces there are, however, of an earlier attitude, when the first-born was sacrificed. Speaking of a Babylonian text, that he believed established the fact that there were sacrifices of the first-born among the Sumerians, Professor Sayce said:

“My interpretation of the text has been disputed, but it still appears to me to be the sole legitimate one. The text is bilingual, in both Sumerian and Semitic, and therefore probably goes back to Sumerian times. Literally rendered, it is as follows: ‘Let the abgal proclaim: the offspring who raises his head among men, the offspring for his life he must give; the head of his head among men, the offspring for the head of the man he must give, the neck of the offspring for the neck of the man he must give, the breast of the offspring for the breast of the man he must give.’” It is difficult to attach any other meaning to this than that which makes it refer to the sacrifice of children.125

Further corroboration of this belief of Professor Sayce was furnished by the recently dug up Stele of the Vultures, now in the Louvre. Here there is a representation of a wicker cage, filled with captives who are waiting to be put to death by the god Ningirsu, who holds in his hand the heraldic emblem of the city of Lagash. The Stele of the Vultures records the triumph of the King of Lagash, the great Eannatum, over the men of Umma who are undoubtedly the captives and are about to be sacrificed.126 These few examples of human sacrifice indicate, however, that the practice had disappeared at an early date, but, as we shall see, it did not entirely disappear, or rather reappeared among the Semites of Palestine at a later period.127

More positive knowledge, however, we have of the Sumerian laws, laws it should be remembered that tell of a civilization 1000 years before the Chinese.

That there was a sense of justice in Sumer and Akkad long before the period of Hammurabi, is evident from the inscriptions found at Tello by Gerzec. Inscriptions of the year 3500 B. C., according to Cuq, and about the year 2800, according to Kang, show that Hammurabi was indebted to the reform king, Urukagina, for many of his laws. Urukagina declared that the people had rights, and even went so far as to say that if the king bought the property of a subject, he must pay for it. We have many tablets telling of the wonderful things that he did, but the one reform which indicates that he had a regard for the family, and consequently, there was probably more care for children, is that provision of his laws which deals with divorce.

In telling of his reforms in these inscriptions, Urukagina records the fact that under the old régime, if a man put away his wife, he paid the patesi five shekels of silver and gave one to the grand vizir.

Undoubtedly in the beginning, the object of these fees was to prevent the nobles, and through them by force of example, the plain people, from putting away their wives too easily. In other words there was a desire to hold together the old Sumerian family. In the course of time, however, this became merely a bribe, for as the economic conditions improved, the money became not so much a deterrent as a bribe. One of the things that Urukagina did was to abolish the fees of divorce, and to attempt to stamp out practices that were growing up.

Tablets of the time of Urukagina and his predecessor, Lugalanda, translated by M. de Genouillac, give some indication of what the family condition was, although we still have to guess as to what was the real attitude toward children. Women were important; they could hold property and they were protected in their property rights by law. This in itself might indicate that there were no such primeval practices as exposing or drowning female children. Among these tablets of Tello, is a series telling what provision was made for the women who were attached to the Temple of Bau, the goddess to whom the great ruler prays, as:

“... The one that grantest life unto the land....

“Thou art the Queen, the mother that founded Lagash.”128 In these tablets the name of each woman is followed with the number of infants belonging to her family, and their sex. In all, two hundred and twenty-nine infants are enumerated, of which ninety-seven are boys and one hundred and thirty-two, girls. Five hundred and fifty-two women are named, but before coming to a conclusion as to the percentage this shows of children to mothers, it is well, as de Genouillac points out,129 to remember that among these five hundred and fifty-two women there were many young girls. Some idea of the size of the Sumerian family may be obtained from the fact that the number of infants charged to a single mother is seldom more than four. Once the number seven occurs, but this is in connection with the wife of the king, and two of these children would seem to have been adopted.

“The education of a large number of infants,” concluded de Genouillac, “was encouraged by the pension for mothers.” Here indeed was progress!—at a time when there was nothing but barbarism everywhere else in the world.

It is interesting to note in these same tablets the fact that the wife of the king or the patesi was of great importance, for all documents signed by Lugalanda bear the name of his wife, Barnamtarra, and those under Urukagina have the signature of his wife, Sagsag. It is more than likely too, that the service mentioned above as being for the Temple of Bau, was for the goddess’s representative, the Queen Sagsag. Another tablet, in which are set forth the expenses of the servants who were apparently more attached to the queen, speaks of thirty infants to fifty-seven women,130 and in this and other tablets the frequent reference to the orphans who were being taken care of, shows that there was provision for the infant whose immediate protectors had passed away.

In the Imperial Museum at Constantinople two tablets show that parents were free to sell their children and that these sales were frequent matters of legal adjudication four centuries before Hammurabi. Tablet No. 830, excavated at Tello, is imperfect, but there is enough of it to show us that in the month of the fête of the goddess Bau, the daughter of Ab-ba-gi-na was sold by her father, and the sale was confirmed and properly sworn to and then registered. In Tablet No. 925, we have the sale of a daughter to a cook, by a widow who was probably in hard straits. The daughter tries to break the contract and the mother stands by her, but the cook brings two witnesses who prove that the sale took place and was a proper one; as a result of this attempted fraud, the master then inflicts punishment on the slave.131

As a further evidence of the humanity of the Sumerians, we have the fact that, like the Egyptians, they had a god who presided over the accouchements, a god who corresponded in some ways to the Hera of the Greeks and the Juno of the Latins, but who had other and more kindly functions, and was there to ameliorate pain and apparently to protect the young. Among the Greeks and Romans the young were never thought of except as the property of adults, whose interest always came first. In fact, among the Babylonians and Egyptians, there was this essential difference, that the goddess was really a midwife. Among the Sumerians, she was known as Belitile, and was afterwards identified with Mama, the goddess of the young; and in two texts translated by P. Dhorme,132 the two are referred to as one. Later on the two goddesses were absorbed by the all-powerful Istar.

It was in December, 1901, that M. J. de Morgan, Director-General of the expedition sent out by the French Government, while excavating the acropolis of Susa, found three large fragments of a block of black diorite among the debris.133 When fitted together these three fragments formed a stele eight feet high, on the upper end of the front side of which was a bas-relief showing the sun-god, Shamash, presenting the Code of Laws to the king, Hammurabi.

Under this bas-relief was the longest cuneiform Semitic inscription yet recovered, having sixteen columns of text of which four and a half formed the prologue. On the reverse of the stele there were twenty-eight columns, the entire inscription being estimated by Johns to contain “forty-nine columns four thousand lines, and eight thousand words.”134

Hammurabi, identified by Assyriologists as the Amraphael of Genesis xiv., 1, was the sixth King of the dynasty of Babylon, reigning over fifty-five years, about 2250 B. C., and the first king to consolidate the Semitic empire, making Babylon the capital.135

There are two periods in the history of humanity: one when the morals make the laws, and one when the laws change the morals. The Code of Hammurabi, the oldest known code in the world, belongs to the second period.136

While it appears from the prologue and epilogue of the Code that Hammurabi was deeply devoted to religion and was, in addition to being king, a pious, God-fearing man, one who destroyed his enemies North and South, the Code is strictly devoted to civil and secular affairs. Nevertheless, scarcely anything is known of the laws of the time dealing with crimes, nothing having been discovered to show how murder or theft was treated.137

Hammurabi’s Code is undoubtedly a compilation and, while he enacted fresh laws, he built for the most part on the foundations of other men.

In the Sumerian days that preceded these Semitic kings, of whom Hammurabi, Sargon I., and Lugalzaggisi were the greatest, there were codes of laws on which Hammurabi doubtless built. The attitude taken toward children in this period is indicated in extracts from the series called ana ittisu, the seven tablets of the series giving the following seven laws:

“I. If a son has said to his father, ‘You are not my father,’ he may brand him, lay fetters upon him, and sell him.

“II. If a son has said to his mother, ‘You are not my mother,’ one shall brand his forehead, drive him out of the city, and make him go out of the house.

“III. If a father has said to his son, ‘You are not my son,’ he shall leave house and yard.

“IV. If a mother has said to her son, ‘You are not my son,’ he shall leave house and property.

“V. If a wife hates her husband and has said, ‘You are not my husband,’ one shall throw her into the river.

“VI. If a husband has said to his wife, ‘You are not my wife,’ he shall pay half a mina of silver.

“VII. If a man has hired a slave and he dies, is lost, has fled, has been incapacitated, or has fallen sick, he shall measure out 10 ka of corn per diem as his wages.”138

From this it will be observed that if the son repudiates his parent, real or adoptive, he meets with a swift and heavy punishment. On the other hand, a father and mother have the power to drive the child out without any ceremony whatever. That such laws were the result of the disposition of foundling children is without question. We will see later that the Roman Empire in its endeavour to save the lives of children, was continually attempting legislative reforms for the purpose of giving men and women incentive to protect the helpless infant that had been deserted by its own parents.

Adoption was an ancient institution, and the rights of the man who adopted the infant were protected in order that he might be paid for the trouble and expense of his charge.139

The adoption of children in the Code of Hammurabi is the subject of much minute regulation. In the Code the endeavour to protect the father who picks up a child, is shown in paragraphs 185, 186, 187 and 188:

“185. If a man take in his name a young child as a son and rear him, one may not bring claim for that adopted son.

“186. If a man take a young child as a son, and, when he takes him, he is rebellious toward his father and mother (who have adopted him), that adopted son shall return to the house of his father.

“187. One may not bring claim for the son of a NER. SE. GA, who is a palace guard, or the son of a devotee.

“188. If an artisan take a son for adoption and teach him his handicraft, one may not bring claim for him.”140

Coming down to a later period, we may see the influence of other peoples on the Babylonians in the Assyrian Doomsday Book or Liber Censualis, copied from the cuneiform tablets of the seventh century, B. C.141 Sixty-eight families are enumerated in these tablets, and to these sixty-eight husbands there are allotted ninety-four wives. Seventy-four sons are mentioned and only twenty-six daughters, a proportion that is extremely suspicious. That there was no such slaughter of the females as we find in other countries, is shown by the fact that in some of the families enumerated there were as many as three daughters to one son, but the majority of the families were without female children and had one or two sons, an evenness of distribution which would lead one to surmise that the people of the district of Harran, where this census was taken, were regulating the birthrate themselves.

Of this period too, is the story of Sargon the younger—a legend that is interesting not alone because of its similarity to that of Moses, but because it shows that this section of the country had also fallen into the ways of the rest of the world. Here, at the time of the legend, it was a common thing for a child to run the risks of exposure and death.

As an indication of the conditions a thousand years later, we may take the certificate of adoption cited by Dr. Rogers, of the time of King Kurigalzu who reigned in Babylon from about 1390 B. C. to 1375.

“Ina-Uruk-rishat, daughter of (mu) shallim, had no daughter and therefore she adopted Etirtu, daughter of Ninib-mushallim, as her daughter. Seven shekels of gold she gave. She may give her to a husband, she may appoint her a temple slave, but she may not make her a servant. If she does make her a servant, Etirtu shall go to her father’s house. As long as Ina-Uruk-rishat lives, Etirtu shall pay her reverence. When Ina-Uruk-rishat dies, Etirtu, as her daughter, shall offer the water libation. If Ina-Uruk-rishat should say, ‘Thou art not my daughter,’ she shall lose the gold which she has paid. If Etirtu should say, ‘Thou art not my mother,’ she shall become a servant. There shall no claim be made. Before Ellil, Ninib, Nusku, and King Kurigalzu they have made oath together.

“Before Damkum, her uncle on the mother’s side. Before Rabasha-Ninib. Before Ellil-ibni, son of Ellil-ishu. Before Etel-pi-Azagshug, son of Amel-Marduk; before Rish-Marduk, son of Ba’il-Nusku; before Arad-Belit, the scribe, son of Ninib-mushallim. The fifth day of Shebat, the twenty-first year of Kurigalzu, king of the world.”142

From another point of view we may also understand the Babylonian morality. As a characteristic it is interesting to note “that the general modesty of the Babylonian art, in the matter of clothes, is very marked,” says Ward, “we never see any display of Phallism.”143 That the influence and importance of the women had much to do with the character of these people is undoubtedly true.

They were a truly remarkable people of whom we are yet to learn a great deal. Future excavations may reveal much, but up to now “the abundant literature of Babylon,” says Dussaud, “does not offer a single example of human sacrifice and yet one has the right to suppose that it was common among them.”144

CHAPTER VII

MOST ANCIENT NATION WAS KIND TO CHILDREN—ECONOMIC PRESSURE BROUGHT NO SPECIAL CRUELTY—PICTURE OF THE PROLETARIAT—ABJURATIONS OF THE OLDEST BOOK IN THE WORLD—EGYPTIANS AS SEEN BY DIODORUS SICULUS—DEGENERATING EFFECT OF GREEK SUPREMACY.

PLEISTOCENE man wandered from the Indo-Malaysia region into the northern part of Africa, and there, in the Nile valley, the Egyptian Hamites, as a truly autochthonous race, were evolved.

In a climate particularly favourable, great progress was made by these aboriginal people, especially in the New Stone Age, which was of unusually long duration, as can be seen from the beautiful flint knives plated with gold on which are carved animal figures.145 That the actual beginnings of Egyptian culture are twice as long as the historic period is the statement of Keane, and Oppert claims that there are indications of a thoroughly established social and political organization as far back as 11,500 years B. C.