Society in Assyria and Babylonia in the later period to which most of our documentary evidence belongs was highly complex. Trades and professions of all kinds were recognized by it. Agriculturists, shepherds and drovers, masons, carpenters, brickmakers, blacksmiths, silversmiths, weavers, dyers, tailors, bakers and cooks, musicians, barbers, wine-merchants, sailors and soldiers, architects and doctors, bankers and poets, lawyers and priests, scribes and librarians, all alike existed and exercised their trade or profession, like their representatives in modern days. Caste, such as we find in India, was unknown. The son was free to follow any trade or profession he liked, irrespective of that of his father. Naturally there was a tendency for the father to bring up his son to his own calling; the son of a priest, for instance, was often a priest, the son of a blacksmith a blacksmith, but it was a tendency only, and the exception to it was the rule. Even the king himself might be a usurper, the ‘son of a nobody,’ as he was termed, who had begun life in some humble trade.

In Babylonia, and still more in Assyria, an aristocracy existed by the side of the king, which derived its descent from the ancient families of the land. They were the ‘princes’ referred to in Jeremiah⁠[26], among whom was Nergal-sharezer, who afterwards seized the crown. But even the ‘princes’ included those who owed their position to the personal favour of the king. The Rab-shakeh (Rab-saki), or Prime Minister, the Tartan (Turtannu), or Commander-in-chief, and other high functionaries, were appointed by the monarch, and might be selected by him from among the dregs of the people, as well as from among the members of the nobility.

The king, in fact, was an autocrat, and consequently the source of all honour. But, as in Russia, his autocracy was tempered and controlled by a powerful bureaucracy. The civil service was on a vast scale, descending from the governors of provinces and cities, from the statesmen who surrounded the king and managed affairs at home and abroad, and from the heads of departments, down to an army of clerks and subordinate officials. A considerable part of the revenue raised by taxation was devoted to the payment of the bureaucracy.

Ability to read and write and to speak foreign languages was a passport to its ranks. In Assyria its influence was counterbalanced by that of the army, which seems to have been mainly recruited at home. It was by means of its well-disciplined and well-armed forces that Assyria was enabled to establish its empire, and it was the exhaustion of that army which brought about the fall, not only of the empire, but of Assyria itself.

It took several centuries to bring the Assyrian army to that point of perfection which it attained in the time of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon. It consisted of infantry and cavalry as well as of a corps of chariot-drivers. The chariots had two wheels and a single pole, and were drawn by a couple of horses, to which a spare horse was often attached, in case of accidents. The chariot held a driver and a warrior; if the latter was the king, he was accompanied by an armed attendant, sometimes even by two. They all rode standing, and were armed with bows and spears.

In the earlier days of the Assyrian monarchy chariots were employed in preference to cavalry. As time went on, however, the horse-soldiers were increased, while the number of chariots was lessened. At first the cavalry rode without saddles, with bare legs, and armed with the bow. Subsequently saddles came into use, the unarmed groom who had previously looked after the horse ceased to run by its side, and along with the mounted archers mounted spearmen made their appearance. The rider’s legs were completely protected by leathern drawers over which high boots were drawn, laced in front. This costume was introduced towards the end of the reign of Tiglath-pileser III. In the time of Sennacherib the dress was improved by a closely-fitting coat of mail.

The infantry were about ten times as numerous as the cavalry, and were divided into heavy-armed and light-armed. The regular dress consisted of a peaked helmet and a tunic, which was fastened round the waist by a girdle, and descended half-way down the thighs. From the time of Sargon onwards, however, the infantry were separated into the two classes of bowmen and spearmen. The bowmen were either light-armed or heavy-armed, the latter being again subdivided into two classes. One of these classes wore sandals, and a coat of mail over the tunic. The other class was clad in a long fringed robe which came down to the feet, over which a cuirass was worn; they carried a short sword at the side, and used sandals. They were accompanied by attendants, one of whom held a long rectangular shield of wicker-work. The dress of the light-armed bowmen consisted simply of a kilt and of a fillet bound round the head. The spearmen were distinguished by a crested helmet and a circular shield: their feet were usually bare.

Sennacherib introduced a corps of slingers, possibly, as Canon Rawlinson suggests, in imitation of Egyptian modes of warfare. They were clothed in helmet and cuirass, leather drawers, and short boots. Sennacherib made changes in the equipment of the bowmen, providing the second class of heavy-armed among them with leather greaves and boots, and depriving them of the long robe. The first class now usually appear without sandals, and their head-dress consists of an embroidered turban with lappets, not unlike the kuffiyeh of the modern Bedouin. In addition to the other forces of the army a corps of pioneers was also established, armed with double-headed axes, and clothed with conical helmets, greaves, and boots. The helmets, it may be observed, were made of iron or bronze, underneath which was a leather cap, while the coats of mail consisted of metal scales sewn to a leather shirt. The shields were partly of wicker-work, partly of metal, and were of various shapes. The heads of the spears and arrows were of bronze, more rarely of iron; in ancient Chaldea stone weapons had also been used. The metal heads were sometimes socketed, sometimes tanged.

The army carried with it, on the march, standards, tents, baggage-carts, battering-rams, and other engines for attacking a town. The tents were occasionally very elaborate, that of the king, for instance, being accompanied by a cooking and dining tent. They were furnished with chairs, tables, couches, and various utensils.

The commissariat department has left us some records of the amount of the provisions required for the troops at home. Thus in the first year of Nabonidos seventy-five qas of flour and sixty-three qas (or nearly 100 quarts) of beer were furnished to the troops in the neighbourhood of Sippara on the eleventh of the month Iyyar, presumably, therefore, for their maintenance during a given period; and in the second year of the same king, fifty-four qas of beer were provided on the twenty-ninth of Nisan ‘for the troops which had marched from Babylon.’ At the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign we find a contractor guaranteeing ‘the goodness of the beer’ that had been furnished to ‘the army which had entered into Babylon.’ In the first year of Nabonidos, three gur of sesame were ordered for the use of ‘the bowmen’ during the first two months of the year, and in the thirteenth year of the same king, fifteen soldiers were provided with five gur of wheat. Accordingly, rather more than two bushels and a half were allotted to each man.

The Assyrians were essentially a military nation, and never turned their attention to naval matters. When Sennacherib wished to pursue the relics of Merodach-baladan’s troops across the Persian Gulf, he had to fetch Phœnician sailors to build and man his ships. On the Tigris, rafts on which heavy monuments were transported, or small round boats like the kufas still in use on the river, were almost the only means employed for crossing the water. When the Assyrian army had to pass a river pontoons were thrown across it, or else the soldiers swam across the stream on inflated skins. The ferry-boat was rarely used.

In this respect the Babylonians were markedly different from their northern neighbours. ‘The cry’ of the Chaldeans, whose original home was among the marshes at the head of the Persian Gulf, was in their ships. One of the earliest seats of culture in Babylonia was the seaport of Eridu, which carried on an extensive trade by sea with distant lands.

Certain forms of ships were named after the districts or cities of Babylonia where they had been invented or were chiefly used. A fleet, in fact, was kept by the later kings of Babylon, as well as an army, and a receipt, dated in the month Tammuz, or June, of the sixteenth year of Nabonidos, runs as follows:—‘210 qas (about 300 quarts) of dates have been given to Samas-sumebus, the son of Sula, from the royal granary, for the support of the sailors during the sixteenth year’ of the king’s reign. As the Phœnician ships of war employed by the Assyrians were biremes, with two tiers of oars, it is probable that the Babylonian war-ships were at least of the same size.

Ships were often hired for the conveyance of goods; in the tenth year of Nabonidos, for example, a shekel and a quarter were given by Belshazzar ‘the son of the king,’ through the agency of Bel-sar-bullidh, for the hire of a boat, in order to convey three oxen and twenty-four sheep for sacrifice at the beginning of the year in the great temple of the Sun-god at Sippara. The boatmen were at the same time furnished with sixty qas of dates. In the time of Nebuchadnezzar, three shekels, or 9s., were paid for the hire of a grain-boat, thirty-two shekels, or nearly £5, being given at the same time for an ass.

The king, it may be observed, kept a state-barge on the Euphrates. A contract has been preserved which informs us that in the twenty-fourth year of Darius a new state-barge was made for the king, the two contractors agreeing to work upon it from the beginning of Iyyar, or April, to the end of Tisri, or September, and employ one particular growth of wood for the purpose.

Among the various trades that were represented in Babylonia the only one that need be specially noticed is that of the blacksmith. Originally only the coppersmith was known; when iron, however, came into use the ironsmith took his place by the side of the coppersmith, whose trade ceased to have the importance it once possessed. A document has been preserved which acknowledges the payment of six qas (about eight and a half quarts) of flour to ‘Libludh, the coppersmith,’ for overlaying a chariot with a lining of copper in the second year of Nabonidos.

The cost of building may be gathered from a contract which was made in the sixth year of the same king’s reign. Here we read: ‘It is agreed that twelve manehs of silver (£108) be paid for bricks, reeds, beams, doors, and chopped straw for building the house of Rimut,’ who was a grandson of the priest of the goddess Beltis. The contract was undertaken by the grandson of another priest, ‘the priest of Sippara.’ At another time we hear of four shekels of silver, or 12s., being paid for certain loads of brick. The material cost a good deal more than the wages of the men who made or delivered it. Remembering the price of corn, we have only to compare the cost of building a house with the following receipt, which is dated in the first year of Cyrus: ‘One gur (180 qas) of corn from the granary of the store-house on the river (Euphrates) for the wages of the men who have carried to the store-house the corn that has arrived from Borsippa.’

The doctor had long been an institution in Assyria and Babylonia. It is true that the great bulk of the people had recourse to religious charms and ceremonies when they were ill, and ascribed their sickness to possession by demons instead of to natural causes. But there was a continually increasing number of the educated who looked for aid in their maladies rather to the physician with his medicines than to the sorcerer or priest with his charms. The British Museum contains fragments of an edition made for the library of Nineveh of an old and renowned Babylonian treatise on medicine, which seems to have emanated from the school of Borsippa. In this work an attempt is made to classify and describe diseases, and to enumerate the various remedies that had been proposed for them. Some of the prescriptions are of inordinate length, containing a mixture of the most heterogeneous drugs. At other times the patient was given his choice of the remedies he might adopt. Thus, for an attack of spleen, he was told that he might ‘slice the seed of a reed and dates in palm-wine,’ or ‘mix calves’ milk and bitters in palm-wine,’ or ‘drink garlic and bitters in palm-wine,’ or finally try several other recipes which are severally named. ‘For an aching tooth,’ we are told, ‘the root of the plant of human destiny (perhaps the mandrake) is the medicine; it must be placed upon the tooth. The fruit of the yellow snakewort is the medicine for an aching tooth; it must be placed upon the tooth.... The roots of a thorn which does not see the face of the sun when growing is the medicine for an aching tooth; it must be placed upon the tooth.’ In the midst of all these prescriptions, however, room was still found for some of the old superstitious charms and incantations, which might be tried when everything else had failed. The practice of medicine had advanced to a much higher point in Egypt, but it is probable that it was from Babylonia rather than from Egypt that the Jews acquired their knowledge of it. At all events the name of King Asa who ‘sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians⁠[27],’ not only signifies ‘physician,’ but is of Aramaic origin, pointing to the fact that medical knowledge came to Judah from North-eastern Asia. It will be remembered that when Hezekiah was ‘sick unto death,’ Isaiah ordered a poultice of figs to be laid upon the boil from which he suffered⁠[28].

In a country of merchants and traders, where law entered so largely into the daily life of the people, it was inevitable that lawyers should be numerous. At the head of the profession stood ‘the judges,’ who were appointed by the king. Over the judges presided a superior judge—the Chancellor, as we may call him—who took his seat among them in important cases. Examples have already been given of the cases which were brought before them, and of the procedure of the court. Cases, however, might be settled by arbitration; in this event, the matter was brought before an official called the gugallu, and witnesses were produced on both sides. Here, for instance, is the report of a case which happened in the twenty-eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar:—‘On the second day of the month Ab (July), Imbiya summoned his witnesses to the gate of the house of Bel-nadin, the gugallu; against Arrabi, the grandson of the superintendent of the works, he alleged that a cloak and kilt belonging to himself had been carried off by him. If he convicts him, Arrabi shall return the cloak and kilt to Imbiya; if he does not convict him, Arrabi shall stand acquitted. If Arrabi does not appear on the second day of the month Ab, without witnesses he shall restore the cloak and kilt.’ Then follow the names of the witnesses produced by Imbiya.

An interesting case which was tried before the judges in the ninth year of Nabonidos (B.C. 547) has recently been translated by Dr. Peiser. It concerned a Syrian family settled in Borsippa, whose names, Ben-Hadad-nathan, ‘the god Ben-Hadad has given,’ Ben-Hadad-amar, ‘Ben-Hadad has spoken,’ and Aqab-ili, ‘Jacob is god,’ are especially worth the attention of the Biblical student. ‘Bunanit,’ we read, ‘the daughter of the Kharitsian, made the following statement before the judges of Nabonidos, the King of Babylon, “Ben-Hadad-nathan, the son of Nikbaduh, obtained me for a wife, and received three and a half manehs of silver as my dowry, and I bore him one daughter. I and Ben-Hadad-nathan, my husband, bought and sold with the money of my dowry, and we purchased eight canes of land occupied by a house in the district called Beyond the Galla in Borsippa for nine manehs forty shekels of silver, and two and a half manehs of silver which we had borrowed from Iddin-Merodach the son of Iqisa-abla of the family of Nur-Sin, and we purchased the house together. In the fourth year of Nabonidos, King of Babylon, I demanded my dowry from Ben-Hadad-nathan, my husband, and Ben-Hadad-nathan willingly registered the eight canes on which the house stood in Borsippa, and handed them over to me for ever, and declared in the deed that Ben-Hadad-nathan and Bunanit have paid in common two and a half manehs of silver which they had borrowed from Iddin-Merodach, and had given towards the price of the aforesaid house. This deed he sealed, and wrote upon it the curse of the great gods (against its transgressor). In the fifth year of Nabonidos, King of Babylon, I and Ben-Hadad-nathan, my husband, adopted Ben-Hadad-amar as a son, and registered the adoption, and declared that two manehs ten shekels of silver, and the furniture of the house, should be the dowry of my daughter Nubta. My husband died, and now Aqab-ili the son of my father-in-law lays claim to the house and all that was registered and made over to me, as well as to the slave Nebo-nur-ili, whom we bought for money from Nebo-akhi-iddin. I have brought the defendant before you; give judgement upon us.” The judges heard their pleadings, read the deeds and bonds which Bunanit produced before them, and did not grant Aqab-ili possession of the house in Borsippa, which had been assigned to Bunanit in place of her dowry or of the slave Nebo-nur-ili whom she and her husband had bought with money, or of any of the property of Ben-Hadad-nathan. They confirmed Bunanit and Ben-Hadad-amar in the validity of their deeds. Iddin-Merodach was first to receive in full the two and a half manehs which had been given towards the purchase of the aforesaid house; then Bunanit should receive in full her dowry of three and a half manehs of silver, and part of the property of her husband. Nubta should receive the slave Nebo-nur-ili, according to the stipulation of her father. By the order of the judges of the country.’ Then follow the names of the six judges and their two clerks, and the date (the twenty-sixth of Elul or August, B.C. 547), and the place of registration (Babylon).

The poet and musician each occupied a place in the social system of Babylonia. As far back as the age of the Judges in Israel, a poet at the Babylonian court was rewarded with the present of a piece of land for some verses which had pleased the sovereign. Figures of musicians often appear in the Assyrian sculptures. One of them wears a curious cap of great height, and shaped like a fish. The instruments on which they played were numerous; drums and tambourines, trumpets and horns, lyres and guitars, harps and cithers, pipes and cymbals, are all represented on the monuments. Besides single musicians, bands were employed, under the conduct of leaders who kept time with a double rod. Occasionally the music was accompanied by dancing, sometimes also by clapping the hands. In one instance three captives are depicted playing on the lyre, and proving that like the Babylonians the Assyrians also ‘required’ from their prisoners ‘a song⁠[29].’ Canon Rawlinson notices that the speaking-trumpet was known to the Assyrians as well as the musical trumpet. In the representation of the conveyance of a colossal bull from the quarries of the Baladians to the palace of Sennacherib, one of the overseers is standing on the body of the bull, and giving orders through a trumpet to the workmen.

The most striking fact brought out by a survey of the trades and professions carried on in the two great kingdoms of the Tigris and Euphrates is the industrial character of their population. This indeed was more the case in Babylonia than in Assyria, where the military organization became predominant, and eventually fell crushed by its own weight. But even in Assyria the merchant was a leading figure, and the campaigns of the later kings were directed by the jealousies of trade. In neither kingdom was there anything that resembled a feudal aristocracy. Below the monarch and the civil service stood a large middle class, whose chief aim in life was the acquisition of riches. The foundation of the fabric of the state was essentially plutocratic. A man’s worth was measured by his wealth, and in Babylonia, at least, the possession of money meant power and dignity. Hence the keen interest taken in commerce by all classes of the community, from the king downward; hence, too, the independent position occupied by women, and the right they had to buy and sell on their own account. There was, however, a fatal flaw in the industrial system of Babylonia. This was the existence of slavery. It lowered the position of the free labourer, it depressed his wages, and enabled the capitalist to tyrannize over him. The overthrow of the commercial prosperity of Babylonia was due more to the slavery that existed in its midst than to the wars and invasions that came upon it from abroad.