It is doubtful how far polygamy was practised among the Assyrians and Babylonians. The rich and powerful, indeed, permitted themselves to indulge in the possession of more than one wife, though even in their case one of the wives ranked before the others, and her children alone, so far as we can gather, were considered legitimate. The bulk of the people, however, as in the modern East, could not have afforded the luxury of several wives. Most of the contract tablets which relate to matrimony imply that the household acknowledged two heads only, and that the husband was contented with a single wife. Moreover, the position held by the woman in the Babylonian community is inconsistent with an extensive system of polygamy. It was rather the nomad Arab tribes on the frontiers of Babylonia than the settled and civilized Babylonians themselves who considered the possession of several wives to be the privilege of the man.

But while polygamy, in the strict sense of the term, seems to have been rare, concubinage prevailed as widely as it did among the inhabitants of Palestine. But it was fenced about with stringent penalties which fell with especial force upon the woman. The Babylonian who made a mésalliance received no dowry with his spouse; should he wish to divorce her, however, he had to pay her a considerable fine in money, which served for her maintenance after she had left his house. Any unfaithfulness to him upon her part was punished with death. We hear, for instance, of a certain Nebo-akhi-iddin in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, who married a singing-woman, and in the marriage contract it is laid down that if he should divorce her and marry another he shall pay her as much as six manehs of silver, or about fifty-four pounds; on the other hand, if she commit adultery, she is to be put to death with ‘an iron sword.’

In ordinary cases the husband received a dowry with his wife. This dowry served not only to provide the wedding trousseau, but also to make the wife independent of the husband in the matter of property. In this way she was protected from tyrannical conduct upon his part, as well as from the fear of divorce on insufficient grounds. If a divorce took place, the husband was required to hand over to the wife all the property she had brought with her as dowry, and she then either returned to her father’s house or set up an independent establishment of her own.

The dowry usually included furniture and slaves as well as money. The slaves were valued at a certain price, and might be given in place of a portion of the money which was originally stipulated to be handed over. In one case, for example, a female slave was accepted in place of two-thirds of a maneh of silver (six pounds) which the father of the bride had agreed to pay. Where the dowry was not immediately forthcoming, security for the payment of it was taken by the bridegroom.

The dowry was paid by the father of the bride, if he were alive. If he were dead, or if the mother of the bride had been divorced and was in the enjoyment of her own property, it was she by whom the dowry was given. In such a case permission to marry the daughter was asked by the suitor from the mother instead of from the father, and the mother accordingly was called upon to contribute the dowry.

If the husband died, and his widow married again, she carried her former dowry with her. In such a case, however, the children of the first marriage received two-thirds of the dowry after the mother’s death, and the children of the second marriage only one-third. This was in accordance with the law that in the case of a second marriage the children inherited only one-third of the father’s property, the other two-thirds going to the children by the first wife. Besides her dowry, the wife might hold other property, either bequeathed to her by her parents or given by her husband. On her death this was usually reckoned along with the dowry for purposes of division among the heirs. It was also reckoned along with the dowry as constituting her property during life. Thus, in the thirty-fourth year of Nebuchadnezzar, we find a father stipulating that the creditors of the father of his son-in-law should have no claim upon either the dowry or the other property of his daughter. Where the dowry had been promised merely, and not symbolically handed over to the bride, the bridegroom could claim only a proportionate amount of it, should his father-in-law have incurred pecuniary losses after the promise had been made. The heirs had to pay the dowry if the father-in-law died between his agreement to give it and the actual marriage, and when the wife died without children it returned to her ‘father’s house.’

The bridegroom was not usually required to offer anything, except his hand. In some instances, however, we find him buying his wife like a slave, with a present of money to her parents, and receiving no dowry in return. Thus a certain Dagil-ili, who married the daughter of a lady named Khammâ, gave the mother one and a half manehs of silver, and a slave worth half a maneh (or about eighteen pounds in all), and stipulated that if he married a second wife he would pay her daughter one maneh of silver and send her back to her mother’s house. Here it would appear that Dagil-ili was marrying beneath him, the consequence being that his wife, as long as she lived with him, had no property of her own, and was somewhat in the position of a slave. It is therefore interesting to learn that even in this case marriage with a second wife brought with it as a matter of course the divorce of the first. Nothing could show more clearly how little hold polygamy had upon the Babylonian people.

Marriage, however, was permitted among near relatives by blood. We hear of a man marrying his niece, and, in the time of Cambyses, of a brother marrying his sister by the same father. Perhaps this was in imitation of a well-known Persian custom.

Marriage was partly a religious and partly a civil function. The contracting parties frequently invoked the gods, and signed the contract in the presence of the priest. At the same time it was a contract, and in order to be legally valid it had to be drawn up in legal form and attested by a number of witnesses. Like all other legal documents, it was carefully dated and registered.

The possession of property by the wife brought with it the enjoyment of considerable authority. The wife could act apart from her husband, could enter into partnership, could trade with her money, and conduct law-suits in her own name. Numerous deeds exist which record the sale and purchase of slaves by women, who appear in them as the legal equals of men. In other instances the husband and wife, or brother and sister, act together, the property sold or bought being regarded as their joint possession. In the eighth year of Nabonidos, for example, we hear of a brother and sister selling a Persian slave-girl ‘and her son who is on the breast’ for nineteen shekels of silver (£2 17s.), and four years later (B.C. 544) of a husband and wife borrowing in common a sum of money, on which they promise to pay interest at the usual rate of twenty per cent. Even more interesting is a contract dated in the second year of Nabonidos (B.C. 555), in which a father transfers his property to his daughter, reserving to himself only the use of it during the rest of his life. In return, his daughter undertakes to take care of him and to provide him with the necessaries of existence, food and drink, oil and clothing.

Equally interesting is the case of a mother in the fifth year of Cambyses, who ‘brought a document’ to the priest of the Sun-god at Sippara and ‘gave’ him, like Hannah, her three sons, that they might ‘enter the house of the males.’ She alleged that they had not yet entered it, as she had ‘lived’ and ‘grown old’ with them since they were ‘little ones’ until ‘they had been counted among grown-up men.’

The ‘house of the males,’ into which the young men were introduced, seems to have been a sort of monastic establishment attached to the great temples of Babylonia. The community was under a head, or superintendent, who received each month a certain amount of food and other provision for the support of himself and his associates. They appear to have been celibates, to have lived together in a kind of college, into which women were forbidden to enter, and to have taken part in the daily services of the temple to which they were attached. The expenses of their maintenance were borne partly by endowments, partly by the tithes and other offerings made to the temple. The institution reminds us of the college in which Daniel and his companions were placed, where they were under a superintendent who provided them with the food furnished by the king⁠[18].

The naming of a child was an important event to the Babylonians and Assyrians. The name was believed to bring with it good or evil fortune, and to represent the owner of it not only symbolically, but even in a more material sense. To change the name, it was believed, had an important bearing on the course of events. When Sennacherib determined to nominate his favourite younger son for the succession to the throne, he changed his name from Esar-haddon to Assur-etil-mukin-abla—‘Assur, the lord, is the establisher of (my) son.’ The child was consequently named immediately after birth, perhaps in the presence of the asip, or ‘prophet,’ to whom reference is made in the nursery-tale which has been already quoted. As circumcision was also practised in Babylonia, it is possible that the two ceremonies of circumcision and name-giving were performed at the same time.

If the parents were childless, it was not unusual for them to adopt a son or daughter, to whom the property of the family could be handed on. The act of adoption consisted in allowing the hands to be taken by the person who was to be adopted, and thus symbolically receiving him into the family. The ceremony must have come down from prehistoric days, as it served to establish the king as the legitimate ruler of Babylon. Babylon was theoretically under a theocracy, under the divine government of Bel Merodach; and before a claimant to the throne could be recognized as its sovereign it was necessary that he should clasp the hands of the image of the god, and thereby become the adopted son of the true ruler of the city.

A very curious document has been preserved which indicates the close relation that existed between adoption and the devolution of property. A certain Babylonian, named Bel-katsir, had married a widow, and having no children of his own, wished to adopt his step-son. His father, however, intervened, and ‘made a will’ to the effect that the father’s property should descend only to a genuine son of Bel-katsir; if no son of his own were born to him, it was to pass after his death to his brother, and in case of his brother’s death to his sister; in no case was it to go to an adopted child. Bel-katsir was compelled to assent to these stipulations.

The document is interesting from several points of view, as it shows that a Babylonian had the same power as ourselves, not only of willing his property as he chose after death, but also of tying it up.

The dead were carried to the grave on biers, and were accompanied by mourners. The cemetery in which they were laid was outside the town, and formed a city in itself. The corpse was placed on the ground, wrapped in mats of reed, and covered with asphalt; it was clothed in the dress and ornaments that had been worn during life—the woman with her earrings in her ears, her spindle-whorl and thread in her hand; the man with his seal and weapons of bronze or stone; the child with his necklace of shells. Over all was laid a thick coating of clay, above which branches of palm, terebinth, and sandal-wood were frequently placed; the whole was then set on fire, and the corpse and all about it were reduced to ashes. This at least was the earlier custom; in later times ovens of brick were constructed, in which the corpse was placed in its coffin of clay and reeds, and the cremation was not allowed to be complete. The skeletons of the dead are consequently often found in a fair state of preservation. Offerings were made at the same time that the body was burned: these consisted of dates, calves and sheep, birds and fish, which were consumed along with the corpse.

After the process of burning was over, the remains were either allowed to continue on the spot where the cremation had taken place, or were collected into urns and vases of clay. Of course it was only where the cremation had been complete that the latter mode of burial was possible, and even in such cases a portion only of the ashes was deposited in the urn. Where the cremation had been partial, an aperture was made in the shell of clay with which the body had been covered, the aperture was then closed, and a tomb of bricks built over the whole. A similar brick tomb was built over the urns containing the ashes of those whose bodies had been completely consumed.

It was believed that the spirits of the dead needed sustenance in their new home, and clay-vases were accordingly placed in the tombs, some of them filled with dates and grain, others with wine and oil; but a more bountiful provision was made in the case of water, which, it was thought, was wholesome to drink only when it was fresh and running. Little rivulets were made by the side of the tombs, through which a constant supply of water could be kept flowing for the spiritual needs of the dead. This represented ‘the water of life,’ of which we hear so often in the inscriptions. Pure water was indispensable in all religious ceremonies, and ancient legends recorded that there was a spring of ‘life’ bubbling up beneath the throne of the spirits of the under-world, of which whosoever drank would live for ever. It was of this spring that the water which ran in numberless rills through the cities of the dead was a symbol and outward sign.

The Necropolis was constantly growing in height. Successive generations of the dead were burned one above the other, the tombs of the older serving as a floor for the funeral pyres of the younger generation. The tombs thus rose one upon the other like the houses of crude brick in an Egyptian or Babylonian village. In this way terraces were formed which were surrounded with walls, and became the special burial-places of particular families or districts.

The rich were distinguished in death as well as in life; for them houses were erected, in the chambers of which their corpses were burned and buried. The house consisted of several chambers, and sometimes served as the last resting-place of a single individual, sometimes of other members also of his family; rivulets of water were conducted into the house itself; here were laid, moreover, the various offerings of food and wine on which the soul of the dead man was supposed to live. At times tombstones were set up recounting the name and deeds of the deceased, at other times the tomb was adorned with seated statues of stone, which commemorated the features of the dead.

Only members of the royal family, it would appear, were permitted to be buried within the precincts of the town. Their bodies might be burned and entombed in one of the many palaces of the country. We are told of one king, for instance, that he was ‘burned’ or buried in the palace of Sargon, of another that he was ‘burned’ in his own palace. The practice throws light on what we read in the Books of Kings: there too we are told that Manasseh ‘was buried in the garden of his own house,’ and Amon in the ‘garden of Uzza.’ Private burial in the palaces they had inhabited when alive was a privilege reserved for the kings alone.