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This transition of certain spirits into gods seems to have been aided by that study of the heavens and of the heavenly bodies for which the Babylonians were immemorially famous. At all events, the ideograph which denotes "a god" is an eight-rayed star, from which we may perhaps infer that, at the time of the invention of the picture-writing out of which the cuneiform characters grew, the gods and the stars were identical.
One of the oldest of the Sumerian temples was that of Nippur, the modern Niffer, built in honor of Mul-lil or El-lil, "the lord of the ghost-world." He had originally been the spirit of the earth and the underground world; when he became a god his old attributes still clung to him. To the last he was the ruler of the lil-mes, "the ghosts" and "demons" who dwelt in the air and the waste places of the earth, as well as in the abode of death and darkness that lay beneath it. His priests preserved their old Shamanistic character; the ritual they celebrated was one of spells and incantations, of magical rites and ceremonies. Nippur was the source and centre of one of the two great streams of religious thought and culture which influenced Sumerian Babylonia.
The other source and centre was Eridu on the Persian Gulf. Here the spirit of the water was worshipped, who in process of time passed into Ea, the god of the deep. But the deep was a channel for foreign culture and foreign ideas. Maritime trade brought the natives of Eridu into contact with the populations of other lands, and introduced new religious conceptions which intermingled with those of the Sumerians. Ea, the patron deity of Eridu, became the god of culture and light, who delighted in doing good to mankind and in bestowing upon them the gifts of civilization. In this he was aided by his son Asari, who was at once the interpreter of his will and the healer of men. His office was declared in the title that was given to him of the god "who benefits mankind."
Two strongly contrasted streams of religious influence thus flowed from Nippur in the north of Babylonia and from Eridu in the south. The one brought with it a belief in the powers of darkness and evil, in sorcery and magic, and a religion of fear; the other spoke of light and culture, of gods who poured blessings upon men and healed the diseases that afflicted them. Asari was addressed as "he who raises the dead to life," and Ea was held to be the first legislator and creator of civilized society.
How far the foreign influence which moulded the creed of Eridu was of Semitic origin it is impossible to say. Semitic influences, however, began to work upon Sumerian religion at a very early date. The Semite and the Sumerian intermingled with one another; at first the Semite received the elements of culture from his more civilized neighbor, but a time came when he began to give something in return. The result of this introduction of Semitic and Sumerian beliefs and ideas was the official religion of later Babylonia.
The "spirits" who had ranked above the rest now became gods in the Semitic sense of the term. Mul-lil of Nippur became the Semitic Baal or Bel, the supreme lord of the world, who governs the world below as well as the world above. He it was who conferred empire over mankind upon his worshippers and whose ministers and angels were the spirits of popular belief. Ea wanted but little to become a true god; his name remained unchanged and his dominion extended to all waters whatever, wherever they might be. His son Asari passed into Merodach, the patron-deity of Babylon, who, when his city became the capital of Babylonia, took the place of Bel of Nippur as the supreme Bel. As in Greek mythology the younger Zeus dethroned his father, so in Babylonia the younger Bel of Babylonia dethroned the older Bel of Nippur.
Similarly, Anu, the spirit of the sky, became the Semitic Sky-god Anu, whose temple stood at Erech. Ur, on the western bank of the Euphrates, was dedicated to the Moon-god under the name of Sin, like Harran in Mesopotamia; Larsa was dedicated to the Sun-god. When Borsippa became a suburb of Babylon its presiding deity became at the same time the minister and interpreter of Merodach under the title of Nabium or Nebo "the prophet." The Semitic god everywhere took the place of the Sumerian "spirit," while those among the "spirits" themselves who had not undergone the transforming process merged in the three hundred spirits of heaven and the six hundred spirits of earth. They formed the "hosts of heaven," of whom Bel was the lord.
But Semitic belief necessitated the existence of a goddess by the side of the god. It was, indeed, a grammatical necessity rather than a theological one; the noun in the Semitic languages has a feminine as well as a masculine gender, and the masculine Bilu or Bel, accordingly, implied a female Belit or Beltis. But the goddess was little more than a grammatical shadow of the god, and her position was still further weakened by the analogy of the human family where the wife was regarded as the lesser man, the slave and helpmeet of her husband.
One goddess only escaped the general law which would have made her merely the pale reflection of the god. This was Istar. Istar was an independent deity, owing no allegiance to a husband, and standing on a footing of equality with the gods. But this was because she had once been one of the chief objects of Sumerian worship, the spirit of the evening star. In the Sumerian language there was no gender, nothing that could distinguish the goddess or the woman from the god or man, and the "spirits," therefore, were indifferently of both sexes. Moreover, the woman occupied an important place in the Sumerian family; where the Semitic translation speaks of "man and woman" the Sumerian original makes it "woman and man." To the Sumerian mind, accordingly, the female "spirit" was as powerful as the male, acting independently and possessing the same attributes. Hence it was that in taking Istar over from their Sumerian predecessors the Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia took over at the same time a goddess who was the equal of a god.
Among the mixed population of Babylonia, with its mixed culture and language and religion, the character and position of Istar underwent but little change. But when the conquerors of Sargon of Akkad and his predecessors carried the civilization of Babylonia to the West, Istar assumed a new form. Among the Canaanites she became Ashtoreth with the feminine termination, and was identified with the Moon, the consort and reflection, as it were, of Baal the Sun-god. But even so, the existence, of an independent goddess by the side of Baal seemed strange to the Semitic imagination, and among the Semites of Southern Arabia she was transformed into a male god, while the Moabites made her one with the god Chemosh. Even among the learned classes of Semitic Babylonia it was whispered that she was of both sexes, a goddess when imaged in the evening star, a god when visible in the star of the morning.
Closely connected with the worship of Istar was that of Tammuz. Tammuz among the Sumerians appears to have been the "spirit" of the rivulets and waters of spring, and his name signified literally "the son of life" or "of the spirit." But among the Semites he became the young and beautiful shepherd, the beloved of Istar, slain by the boar's tusk of winter, or, as others held, of the parching heats of the summer. He symbolized the fresh vegetation of the spring and the Sun-god who called it forth. Once each year, in the sultry heats of June, the women wept and tore their hair in memory of his untimely death, and Istar, it was said, had descended into Hades in the vain hope of bringing him back to life. One of the most famous of Babylonian poems was that which told of the descent of Istar through the seven gates of the underground world, and which was chanted at the annual commemoration of his death. At each gate, it is said, the goddess left behind her some one of her adornments, until at last she arrived stripped and naked before the throne of the goddess of the infernal world. The poem was composed at a time when astronomical conceptions had laid hold of the old mythology, and the poet has interwoven the story of the waning and waxing of the moon into the ancient tale.
The world was generally believed to have originated out of a watery chaos, and to float, as it were, upon the deep. This belief was derived from Eridu, where it was also taught that the deep surrounded the earth like the coils of a serpent.
But other ideas about the origin of things prevailed elsewhere. Inland it was supposed that the firmament of heaven rested on the peak of a mountain—"the mountain of the East," or "of the World," as it was commonly called—where the gods lived in an Olympus of their own and the stars were suspended from it like lamps. The firmament was regarded as a kind of extinguisher or as the upturned hull of one of the round coracles that plied on the Euphrates. Other ideas again were prevalent in other parts of the country. Thus at Eridu the place of "the mountain of the World" was taken by a magical tree which grew in the midst of the garden of Eden, or "plain" of Babylonia, and on either side of which were the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates. It is probably to be identified with the tree of life which figures so frequently in the sculptures of Assyria and on the seal-cylinders of Chaldea, but it may be the tree of knowledge of which we hear in the old Sumerian texts, and upon which "the name of Ea was written." At all events it is "the holy tree of Eridu," of whose "oracle" Arioch calls himself "the executor."
The sun, it was believed, rose and set from between the twin mountains whose gates were guarded by men with the bodies of scorpions, while their heads touched the skies and their feet reached to Hades. The scorpion was the inhabitant of the desert of Northern Arabia, the land of Mas, where the mountains of the sunset were imagined to be. Beyond them were the encircling ocean and the waters of Death, and beyond these again the island of the Blest, where the favorites of the gods were permitted to dwell. It was hither that Xisuthros, the Chaldean Noah, was translated for his piety after the Deluge, and it was here, too, that the flower of immortality blossomed.
For the ordinary mortal a very different fate was reserved. He had to descend after death into the underground world of Hades, where the spirits of the dead flitted about like bats in the darkness, with dust only for their food. It was a land of gloom and forgetfulness, defended by seven gates and seven warders, who prevented the dead from breaking forth from their prison-house and devouring the living under the form of vampires. The goddess Allat presided over it, keeping watch over the waters of life that bubbled up under her golden throne. Before her sat the shades of the heroes of old, each crowned with a shadowy crown and seated on a shadowy throne, rising up only that they might salute the ghost of some human potentate who came to join them from the upper world. In later days, it is true, brighter and higher conceptions of the after life came to prevail, and an Assyrian poet prays that his King, when he dies, may pass away to "the land of the silver sky."
The various cosmological speculations and beliefs of ancient Chaldea were collected together in later times and an attempt made to combine them into a philosophical system. What this was like we learn from the opening lines of the epic which recounted the story of the Creation. In the beginning, we are told, was the chaos of the deep, which was the mother of all things. Out of it came first the primeval gods, Lakhum and Lakhamu, whose names had been handed down from the Sumerian age. Then came An-sar and Ki-sar, the Upper and Lower Firmaments, and, lastly, the great gods of the Semitic faith, Anu, Bel of Nippur, and Ea. All was ready at last for the creation of the present heavens and earth. But a struggle had first to be carried on between the new gods of light and order and Tiamat, the dragon of the "Deep," the impersonation of chaos. Merodach volunteered the task; Tiamat and her demoniac allies were overthrown and the sky formed out of her skin, while her blood became the rivers and springs. The deep was placed under fetters, that it might never again break forth and reduce the world to primeval chaos; laws were laid down for the heavenly bodies, which they were to keep forever and so provide a measure of time, and the plants and animals of the earth were created, with man at the head to rule over them. Though man was made of the dust, he was, nevertheless, the "son" of the gods, whose outward forms were the same as his.
It is not to be supposed that this philosophizing of the old myths and legends made its way beyond the circle of the learned classes, but the myths and legends themselves were known to the people and served instead of a cosmology. The struggle between Tiamat and Merodach was depicted on the walls of the temple of Bel at Babylon, and the belief that this world has arisen out of a victory of order over chaos and anarchy was deeply implanted in the mind of the Babylonian. Perhaps it goes back to the time when the soil of Babylonia was won by the cultivator and the engineer from wild and unrestrained nature.
Babylonian religion had its sacred books, and, like the official cosmology, a real knowledge of them was probably confined to the priests and educated classes. But a considerable part of their contents must have been more widely known.
Some of the hymns embodied in them, as well as the incantations and magical ceremonies, were doubtless familiar to the people or derived from current superstitions. The work in which the hymns were collected and procured, and which has been compared with the Veda of India, was at once the Bible and the Prayer-book of Chaldea. The hymns were in Sumerian, which thus became a sacred language, and any mistake in the recitation of them was held to be fatal to the validity of a religious rite. Not only, therefore, were the hymns provided with a Semitic translation, but from time to time directions were added regarding the pronunciation of certain words. The bulk of the hymns was of Sumerian origin, but many new hymns, chiefly in honor of the Sun-god, had been added to them in Semitic times. They were, however, written in the old language of Sumer; like Latin in the Roman Catholic Church, that alone was considered worthy of being used in the service of the gods. It was only the rubric which was allowed to be written in Semitic; the hymns and most of the prayers were in what had come to be termed "the pure" or "sacred language" of the Sumerians. Each hymn is introduced by the words "to be recited," and ends with aman, or "Amen."
The religious services were incessant. Every day the sacrifice was offered, accompanied by a special ritual, and the festivals and fasts filled up each month of the year. There were services even for the night as well as for the day. The new moons were strictly observed, and the seventh day was one of solemn rest. The very name Sabattu or "Sabbath" was derived by the native etymologists from the Sumerian words sa, "heart," and bat, "to end," because it was "a day of rest for the heart." Not only were there Sabbaths on the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of the month, there was also a Sabbath on the nineteenth, that being the end of the seventh week from the first day of the previous month. On these Sabbaths no work was permitted to be done. The King, it was laid down, "must not eat flesh cooked at the fire or in the smoke; must not change his clothes; must not put on white garments; must not offer sacrifices; must not drive in his chariot; or issue royal decrees." Even the prophet was forbidden to practise augury or give medicine to the sick.
From time to time extraordinary days of public humiliation or thanksgiving were ordered to be observed. These were prescribed by the government and were generally the result of some political crisis or danger. When the Assyrian empire, for instance, was attacked by the nations of the north in the early part of Esar-haddon's reign, public prayers and fasts "for one hundred days and one hundred nights" were ordained by the "prophets" in the hope that the Sun-god might "remove the sin" of the people and stave off the threatened attack. So, again, when Assur-bani-pal had suppressed the Babylonian revolt and taken Babylon after a long siege, he tells us that "at the instance of the prophets he purified the mercy-seats and cleansed the processional roads that had been polluted; the wrathful gods and angry goddesses he appeased with special prayers and penitential psalms."
The temple was erected on ground that had been consecrated by libations of wine, oil, and honey, and was a square or rectangular building enclosing an open court, on one side of which was a ziggurat, or "tower." The tower was built in successive stages, and in the topmost stage was the shrine of the god. Each "tower" had a name of its own, and was used for astronomical purposes. It corresponded with "the high-place" of Canaan; in the flat plain of Babylonia it was only by means of a tower that the worshipper could "mount up to heaven" and so approach the gods. Herodotus states that the topmost story of the tower attached to the temple of Bel Merodach at Babylon contained nothing but a couch and a table.
The image of the god stood in the innermost shrine or Holy of Holies of the temple itself. In front of it was the golden table on which the shew-bread was laid, and below was the parakku, or "mercy-seat," whereon, according to Nebuchadnezzar, at the festival of the new year, "on the eighth and eleventh days, the king of the gods of heaven and earth, Bel, the god, seats himself, while the gods of heaven and earth reverently regard him, standing before him with bowed heads." It was "the seat of the oracles" which were delivered from it by the god to his ministering priests.
In front of the shrine was an altar cased in gold, and another altar stood in the outer court. Here also was the great bason of bronze for purificatory purposes, which was called "the deep," and corresponded with the "sea" of Solomon's temple. Like the latter, it sometimes stood on the heads of twelve bronze oxen, as we learn from a hymn in which the construction of one of these basons is described. They were supposed to represent the primeval "deep" out of which the world has arisen and on which it still floats.
The chapel found by Mr. Hormund Rassam at Balawt, near Nineveh, gives us some idea of what the inner shrine of a temple was like. At its north-west end was an altar approached by steps, while in front of the latter, and near the entrance, was a coffer or ark in which two small slabs of marble were deposited, twelve and one-half inches long by eight wide, on which the Assyrian King Assur-nazir-pal in a duplicate text records his erection of the sanctuary. It is not surprising that when the Nestorian workmen found the tablets, they believed that they had discovered the two tables of the Mosaic Law.
The temple sometimes enclosed a Bit-ili or Beth-el. This was originally an upright stone, consecrated by oil and believed to be animated by the divine spirit. The "Black Stone" in the kaaba of the temple of Mecca is a still surviving example of the veneration paid by the Semitic nations to sacred stones. Whether, however, the Beth-els of later Babylonian days were like the "Black Stone" of Mecca, really the consecrated stones which had once served as temples, we do not know; in any case they were anchored within the walls of the temples which had taken their place as the seats of the worship of the gods. Offerings were still made to them in the age of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors; thus we hear of 765 "measures" of grain which were paid as "dues to the Beth-el" by the serfs of one of the Babylonian temples. The "measure," it may be stated, was an old measure of capacity, retained among the peasantry, and only approximately exact. It was calculated to contain from 41 to 43 qas.
The offerings to the gods were divided into sacrifices and meal-offerings. The ox, sheep, lamb, kid, and dove were offered in sacrifice—fruit, vegetables, bread, wine, oil, and spices where no blood was required to be shed. There were also sin-offerings and heave-offerings, when the offering was first "lifted up" before the gods. A contract dated in the thirty-second year of Nebuchadnezzar tells something about the parts of the animals which were sacrificed, though unfortunately the meaning of many of the technical words used in it is still unknown: "Izkur-Merodach, the son of Imbriya, the son of Ilei-Merodach, of his own free will has given for the future to Nebo-balasu-iqbi, the son of Kuddinu, the son of Ilei-Merodach, the slaughterers of the oxen and sheep for the sacrifices of the king, the prescribed offerings, the peace-offerings (?) of the whole year—viz., the caul round the heart, the chine, the covering of the ribs, the …, the mouth of the stomach, and the …, as well as during the year 7,000 sin-offerings and 100 sheep before Iskhara, who dwells in the temple of Sa-turra in Babylon (not excepting the soft parts of the flesh, the trotters (?), the juicy meat, and the salted (?) flesh), and also the slaughterers of the oxen, sheep, birds, and lambs due on the 8th day of Nisan, (and) the heave-offering of an ox and a sheep before Pap-sukal of Bit-Kiduz-Kani, the temple of Nin-ip and the temple of Anu on the further bank of the New Town in Babylon." The 8th of Nisan, or March, was the first day of the festival of the New Year.
The hierarchy of priests was large. At its head was the patesi, or high-priest, who in the early days of Babylonian history was a civil as well as an ecclesiastical ruler. He lost his temporal power with the rise of the kings. But at first the King was also a patesi, and it is probable that in many cases at least it was the high-priest who made himself a king by subjecting to his authority the patesis or priestly rulers of other states. In Assyria the change of the high-priest into a king was accompanied by revolt from the supremacy of Babylonia.
With the establishment of a monarchy the high-priest lost more and more his old power and attributes, and tended to disappear altogether, or to become merely the vicegerent or representative of the King. The King himself, mindful of his sacerdotal origin, still claimed semi-priestly powers. But he now called himself a sangu or "chief priest" rather than a patesi; in fact, the latter name was retained only from antiquarian motives. The individual high-priest passed away, and was succeeded by the class of "chief priests." Under them were several subordinate classes of temple servants. There were, for instance, the en, or "elders," and the pasis, or "anointers," whose duty it was to anoint the images of the gods and the sacred vessels of the temple with oil, and who are sometimes included among the ramk, or "offerers of libations," as well. By the side of them stood asipu, or "prophet," who interpreted the will of heaven, and even accompanied the army on its march, deciding when it might attack the enemy with success, or when the gods refused to grant it victory. Next to the prophet came the makhkh or interpreter of dreams, as well as the bar, or "seer."
A very important class of temple-servants were the kal, or "eunuch-priests," the galli of the religions of Asia Minor. They were under a "chief kal," and were sometimes entitled "the servants of Istar." It was indeed to her worship that they were specially consecrated, like the ukhtu and kharimtu, or female hierodules. Erech, with its sanctuary of Anu and Istar, was the place where these latter were chiefly to be found; here they performed their dances in honor of the goddess and mourned over the death of Tammuz.
Closely connected with the kal was a sort of monastic institution, which seems to have been attached to some of the Babylonian temples. The Zikari, who belonged to it, were forbidden to marry, and it is possible that they were eunuchs like the kal. They, too, were under a chief or president, and their main duty was to attend to the daily sacrifice and to minister to the higher order of priests. In this respect they resembled the Levites at Jerusalem; indeed they are frequently termed "servants" in the inscriptions, though they were neither serfs nor slaves. They could be dedicated to the service of the Sun-god from childhood. A parallel to the dedication of Samuel is to be found in a deed dated at Sippara on the 21st of Nisan, in the fifth year of Cambyses, in which "Ummu-dhabat, the daughter of Nebo-bel-uzur," whose father-in-law was the priest of the Sun-god, is stated to have brought her three sons to him, and to have made the following declaration before another priest of the same deity: "My sons have not yet entered the House of the Males (Zikari); I have hitherto lived with them; I have grown old with them since they were little, until they have been counted among men." Then she took them into the "House of the Males" and "gave" them to the service of the god. We learn from this and other documents that the Zikari lived together in a monastery or college within the walls of the temple, and that monthly rations of food were allotted to them from the temple revenues.
The ordinary priests were married, though the wife of a priest was not herself a priestess. There were priestesses, however, as well as female recluses, who, like the Zikari, were not allowed to marry and were devoted to the service of the Sun-god. They lived in the temple, but were able to hold property of their own, and even to carry on business with it. A portion of the profits, nevertheless, went to the treasury of the temple, out of whose revenues they were themselves supplied with food. From contracts of the time of Khammurabi we gather that many of them not only belonged to the leading families of Babylonia, but that they might be relations of the King.
Wholly distinct from these devotees of the Sun-god were the female hierodules or prostitutes of Istar, to whom reference has already been made. Distinct from them, again, were the prophetesses of Istar, who prophesied the future and interpreted the oracles of the goddess. One of their chief seats was the temple of Istar at Arbela, and a collection of the oracles delivered by them and their brother prophets to Esar-haddon has been preserved. It is thus that he is addressed in one of them: "Fear not, O Esar-haddon; the breath of inspiration which speaks to thee is spoken by me, and I conceal it not. Thine enemies shall melt away from before thy feet like the floods in Sivan. I am the mighty mistress, Istar of Arbela, who have put thine enemies to flight before thy feet. Where are the words which I speak unto thee, that thou hast not believed them? I am Istar of Arbela; thine enemies, the Ukkians, do I give unto thee. I am Istar of Arbela; in front of thee and at thy side do I march. Fear not, thou art in the midst of those that can heal thee; I am in the midst of thy host. I advance and I stand still!" It is probable that these prophetesses were not ordained to their office, but that it depended on their possession of the "spirit of inspiration." At all events, we find men as well as women acting as the mouth-pieces of Istar, and in one instance the woman describes herself as a native of a neighboring village "in the mountains."
The revenues of the temples and priesthood were derived partly from endowments, partly from compulsory or voluntary offerings. Among the compulsory offerings were the esr, or "tithes." These had to be paid by all classes of the population from the King downward, either in grain or in its equivalent in money. The "tithe" of Nabonidos, immediately after his accession, to the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara was as much as 5 manehs of gold, or 840. We may infer from this that it was paid on the amount of cash which he had found in the treasury of the palace and which was regarded as the private property of the King. Nine years later Belshazzar, the heir-apparent, offered two oxen and thirty-two sheep as a voluntary gift to the same temple, and at the beginning of the following year we find him paying a shekel and a quarter for a boat to convey three oxen and twenty-four sheep to the same sanctuary. Even at the moment when Cyrus was successfully invading the dominions of his father and Babylon had already been occupied for three weeks by the Persian army, Belshazzar was careful to pay the tithe due from his sister, and amounting to 47 shekels of silver, into the treasury of the Sun-god. As Sippara was in the hands of the enemy, and the Babylonian forces which Belshazzar commanded had been defeated and dispersed, the fact is very significant, and proves how thoroughly both invaders and invaded must have recognized the rights of the priesthood.
Tithe was also indirectly paid by the temple-serfs. Thus in the first year of Nergal-sharezer, out of 3,100 measures of grain, delivered by "the serfs of the Sun-god" to his temple at Sippara, 250 were exacted as "tithe." These serfs must be distinguished from the temple-slaves. They were attached to the soil, and could not be separated from it. When, therefore, a piece of land came into the possession of a temple by gift and endowment, they went along with it, but their actual persons could not be sold. The slave, on the other hand, was as much a chattel as the furniture of the temple, which could be bought and sold; he was usually a captive taken in war, more rarely a native who had been sold for debt. All the menial work of the temple was performed by him; the cultivation of the temple-lands, on the contrary, was left to the serfs.
It is doubtful whether the "butchers," or slaughterers of the animals required for sacrifice, or the "bakers" of the sacred cakes, were slaves or freemen. The expression used in regard to them in the contract of Izkur-Merodach quoted above is open to two interpretations, but it would naturally signify that they were regarded as slaves. We know, at all events, that many of the artisans employed in weaving curtains for the temples and clothing for the images of the gods belonged to the servile class, and the gorgeousness of the clothing and the frequency with which it was changed must have necessitated a large number of workmen. Many of the documents which have been bequeathed to us by the archives of the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara relate to the robes and head-dresses and other portions of the clothing of the images which stood there.
A considerable part of the property of a temple was in land. Sometimes this was managed by the priests themselves; sometimes its revenues were farmed, usually by a member of the priestly corporation; at other times it was let to wealthy "tenants." One of these, Nebo-sum-yukin by name, who was an official in the temple of Nebo at Borsippa, married his daughter Gigtum to Nergal-sharezer in the first year of the latter's reign.
The state religion of Assyria was a copy of that of Babylonia, with one important exception. The supreme god was the deified state. Assur was not a Baal any more than Yahveh was in Israel or Chemosh in Moab.
He was, consequently, no father of a family, with a wife and a son; he stood alone in jealous isolation, wifeless and childless. It is true that some learned scribe, steeped in Babylonian learning, now and then tried to find a Babylonian goddess with whom to mate him; but the attempt was merely a piece of theological pedantry which made no impression on the rulers and people of Nineveh. Assur was supreme over all other gods, as his representative, the Assyrian King, was supreme over the other kings of the earth, and he would brook no rival at his side. The tolerance of Babylonian religion was unknown in Assyria. It was "through trust in Assur" that the Assyrian armies went forth to conquer, and through his help that they gained their victories. The enemies of Assyria were his enemies, and it was to combat and overcome them that the Assyrian monarchs declare that they marched to war. Cyrus tells us that Bel-Merodach was wrathful because the images of other deities had been removed by Nabonidos from their ancient shrines in order to be gathered together in his temple of -Saggil at Babylon, but Assur bade his servants go forth to subdue the gods of other lands, and to compel their worshippers to transfer their allegiance to the god of Assyria. Those who believed not in him were his enemies, to be extirpated or punished.
It is true that the leading Babylonian divinities were acknowledged in Assyria by the side of Assur. But they were subordinate to him, and it is difficult to resist the impression that their recognition was mainly confined to the literary classes. Apart from the worship of Istar and the use of the names of certain gods in time-honored formul, it is doubtful whether even a knowledge of the Babylonian deities went much beyond the educated members of the Assyrian community. Nebo and Merodach and Anu were the gods of literature rather than of the popular cult.
But even in Babylonia the majority of the gods of the state religion was probably but little remembered by the mass of the people. Doubtless the local divinity was well known to the inhabitants of the place over which he presided and where his temple had stood from immemorial times. Every native of Ur was doubtless a devoted adorer of Sin, the Moon-god, and for the inhabitants of Babylon Bel-Merodach was the highest object of worship. But the real religion of the bulk of the population consisted in charms and magic. The Babylonian was intensely superstitious, the cultivated classes as much so as the lowest. Sorcery and divination were not only tolerated by the priests, they formed part of the religious system of the state. Prophets and diviners and interpreters of dreams served in the temples, and one of the sacred books of the priesthood was a collection of incantations and magical rites. Among the people generally the old Shamanistic faith had never been eradicated; it was but partially overlaid with the religious conceptions of the Semite, and sorcery and witchcraft flourished down to the latest days of Babylonian history.
The gods and goddesses were believed to utter oracles and predictions through the lips of inspired men and women. Figures of winged bulls and serpents were placed at the entrance of a building to prevent the demons of evil from passing through it. Before the gates of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar "set up mighty bulls of bronze and serpents which stood erect," and when Nabonidos restored the temple of the Moon-god at Harran two images of the primeval god, Lakhum, were similarly erected on either side of its eastern gate to "drive back" his "foes." These protecting genii were known as sdi and kurubi, the shdim and cherubim of the Old Testament. Sdi, however, was a generic term, including evil as well as beneficent genii, and the latter was more properly classed as the lamassi, or "colossal forms." The whole world was imagined to be filled with malevolent spirits ever on the watch to attack and torment mankind. The water that was drunk, the food that was eaten, might contain a demon, whom it would be necessary to exorcise. The diseases that afflict our bodies, the maladies that prey upon our spirits, were all due to the spirits of evil, and could be removed only by the proper incantations and charms. Madness and epilepsy were more especially the direct effect of demoniac possession. The magician alone knew how to cure them; and the priest taught that his knowledge had first been communicated to him by the god Ea through his interpreter, Merodach. Books were written containing the needful formul and ritual for counteracting the malevolence of the evil spirits and for healing the sick. Pure or "holy" water and the number seven were regarded as endowed with mysterious power in the performance of these magical rites; thus magical threads were ordered to be bound seven times round the limbs of the sick man, with phylacteries attached to them on which were inscribed "sentences from a holy book."
It was at night-time that the spirits of evil were more especially active. It was then that vampires escaped from the bodies of the dead or from the realm of Hades to suck the blood of the living, and that the nightmare lay upon the breast of its victim and sought to strangle him. At the head of these demons of the night was Lilat, the wife of Lil, "the ghost;" from the Babylonians she was borrowed by the Jews, and appears in the book of Isaiah under the name of Lilith.
The demons were served by a priesthood of their own. These were the wizards and witches, and the sorcerers and sorceresses, with whom were associated the public prostitutes, who plied their calling under the shadow of night.
It was then that they lay in ambush for the unwary passenger, for whom they mixed deadly philters which poisoned the blood. They were devotees of Istar, but the Istar they worshipped was a wholly different goddess from the Istar of the official cult. She was a goddess of witchcraft and darkness, of whom it was said that she "seized" on her victim "at night," and was "the slayer of youths." She it was who was dreaded by the people like the witches and "street-walkers," who ministered before her, and against whom exorcisms of all kinds were employed. To guard against her and her agents, small images of Lugal-gira and Allamu, the teraphim of the Babylonians, were made and placed to the right and the left of the door that they might "tear out the hearts of the wicked" and "slay the witch." The Fire-god, moreover, was invoked that he might destroy the ministers of wickedness, and figures of the witch or wizard were moulded in wax and melted in the fire. As the wax dissolved, so, it was prayed, might "the wizard and witch run, melt, and dissolve."
The exorcisms had to be repeated by the victims of witchcraft. This is clear from the words which come at the end of each of them: "I, So-and-so, the son of So-and-so, whose god is So-and-so and goddess So-and-so, I turn to thee, I seek for thee, I kiss thy hands, I bow myself under thee. Consume the wizard and the witch; annihilate the lives of the sorcerer and the sorceress who have bewitched me. Then shall I live and gladden thy heart."
In strange contrast to these utterances of popular superstition are the hymns and prayers that were addressed by the cultivated Babylonian to the gods of the official creed. They were gods of light and healing, who punished, indeed, the sins of the wicked, but were ready to listen to the petitions of the penitent and to forgive them their transgressions. Bel-Merodach was "the merciful one who raises the dead to life," and Ea was ever on the watch to send aid to suffering humanity and foil the demons who warred against man. Here, for example, are some extracts from one of those penitential psalms whose authors seem to have sprung from Eridu and which formed part of the Babylonian Bible long before the age of Abraham:
The heart of my lord is wroth; may it be appeased! May the god whom I know not be appeased! May the goddess whom I know not be appeased! May both the god I know and the god I know not be appeased!… O lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!… The sin that I sinned I knew not, The transgression I committed I knew not.… The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me, God in the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me.… I sought for help, and none took my hand; I wept, and none stood at my side; I cried aloud, and there was none that heard me. I am in trouble and hiding; I dare not look up. To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer; The feet of my goddess I kiss and water with tears.… The sins I have sinned turn into a blessing; The transgressions I have committed let the wind carry away! Strip off my manifold wickednesses as a garment! O my god, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my sins! O my goddess, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my sins!
To the same early period belongs a hymn to the Moon-god, originally composed for the services in the temple of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, and afterward incorporated in the sacred books of the state religion. It is thus that the poet speaks of his god:
Father, long-suffering and full of forgiveness, whose hand upholdeth the life of all mankind!… First-born, omnipotent, whose heart is immensity, and there is none who may fathom it!… In heaven who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme! On earth, who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme! As for thee, thy will is made known in heaven, and the angels bow their faces. As for thee, thy will is made known upon earth, and the spirits below kiss the ground.
At times the language of the hymn rises to that of monotheism of a pure and exalted character. That a monotheistic school actually existed in one of the literary circles of Babylonia was long ago pointed out by Sir Henry Rawlinson. It arose at Erech, an early seat of Semitic influence, and endeavored to resolve the manifold deities of Chaldea into forms or manifestations of the "one god," Anu. It never made many converts, it is true; but the tendency toward monotheism continued among the educated part of the population, and when Babylon became the capital of the country its god, Merodach, became not only a Bel or "Lord," but the one supreme lord over all the other gods. Though the existence of the other gods was admitted, they fell, as it were, into a background of shadow, and the worshipper of Merodach, in his devotion to the god, almost forgot that they existed at all. The prayers of Nebuchadnezzar are a proof how narrow was the line which divided his faith from that of the monotheist. "To Merodach my lord," he says, "I prayed; I began to him my petition; the word of my heart sought him, and I said: O prince, thou that art from everlasting, lord of all that exists, for the king whom thou lovest, whom thou callest by name, as it seems good unto thee, thou guidest his name aright, thou watchest over him in the path of righteousness! I, the prince who obeys thee, am the work of thy hands; thou hast created me and hast entrusted to me the sovereignty over multitudes of men, according to thy goodness, O lord, which thou hast made to pass over them all. Let me love thy supreme lordship, let the fear of thy divinity exist in my heart, and give what seemeth good unto thee, since thou maintainest my life."
The man who could thus pray was not far from the kingdom of God.
APPENDIX: WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
In the preceding pages the equivalence of the qa in modern English measures has been given in accordance with the calculations of Dr. Oppert. Other scholars, however, would assign to it a different value, identifying it with the Hebrew qab and making it equal to about two litres. This, indeed, seems to have been its value in the age of Abraham, but in the later days of Babylonian history a different system certainly prevailed.
WEIGHTS.
360 se ("grains") 1 shekel 60 shekels 1 maneh (mana) 60 manehs 1 talent
The silver maneh was equivalent to 9, the shekel being 3s., while the gold maneh was ten times its value. The maneh was originally a weight more than one kind of which was in use: (1) The heavy maneh of 990 grammes; (2) the light maneh of 495 grammes; (3) the gold maneh (for weighing gold) of 410 grammes; and (4) the silver maneh of 546 grammes. At Sippara, however, the heavy maneh weighed 787 grammes; the light maneh, 482 grammes; and the gold maneh, 392 grammes; while the standard maneh fixed by Dungi weighed 980 grammes. The maneh of Carchemis contained 561 grammes.
MEASURES OF CAPACITY.
1 qa (Heb. qab) 1.66 litres 1 pi or ardeb (Heb. 36 qas homer) 1 bar (Heb. se'ah) 60 qas 1 homer in Assyria 60 qas 1 gur (Heb. kor) 180 qas
In the Abrahamic age other systems were in use in Babylonia according to which the gur sometimes contained 360 qas and sometimes 300 qas.
The tonnage of ships was reckoned by the gur.
MEASURES OF LENGTH.
1 uban or 16.6 millimetres finger-breadth (divided into 180 parts) 30 finger-breadths 1 ammat or cubit (498 mm.) 2 cubits 1 great cubit (996 mm.) 6 great cubits 1 qanu or reed 2 reeds 1 gar 60 gars 1 soss or stade 30 sosses 1 kasbu or parasang (21 kilometres) 2 kasbus 1 great kasbu
SUPERFICIAL MEASURES.
In the Abrahamic age 180 se were probably equivalent to 1 gin, 60 gin to one sar or "garden," 1,800 sar to 1 feddn (padnu) or "acre." The latter was called bur-gan in Sumerian, or "10 acres," to distinguish it from a smaller acre, which contained only 180 sar.
Time was reckoned by the kasbu or "double hour," and in early times the weight was divided into three watches of 2 kasbus or 4 hours each. The months were originally lunar, and consisted of 30 days, an intercalary month being inserted in the calendar every six years. The zodiac was divided into 360 degrees.
Mathematics were based upon a sexagesimal system, sixty, called the soss, being the unit. The ner was equivalent to 10 sosses and the sar to 6 ners.
INDEX
Adoption, by the Sun-god, 36; its prevalence in Babylon, 37; concerning slaves, 38 ff.; a way to citizenship, 41
Ainsworth, on coast-line formation, 2
Allat, goddess of under-world, 242; in temples, 247
Amen, used in hymns, 245
Amorites, the, women, 18, 191; colonies, 187 ff.; position of, 189; freedom of worship, 191-193; country, 220
Apprentices, case of slaves, 71
Arad-Samas, position of his two wives, 27
Aramaic, taught in schools, 56
Architecture, features of Babylonian, 9, 10; use of bricks, 90, 137; character of, 91; plans of houses, 92; foundations, 92; decorations, 93, 94; dwellings of poor, 95; stair-cases, 95
Army. See under "State"
Artists, position of, 166
Ashtoreth. See Istar
Assur, worship of, 256
Assyrians, compared with Babylonians, 8; in regard to women, 18; slave law among, 78; slave contract, 79, 80; features of architecture, 93; gardens of, 95; land, 123; contracts, 124; land measurements, 125; money interest, 156; coinage, 157; medicine, 164; military character of government, 172; taxes, 175; army, 181; navy, 183; letters, 217; religion, 255
Astrology, 60; letters relating to, 219
Baal worship, 233-234
Babylonia, its importance and situation, 1; the increase of land, 2; and its culture, 6; various nationalities, 7; Chaldean associations, ibid.; Kassite influence, 7, 8; the inhabitants, 9; trade, ibid., 107; architecture, 9; writing, 10; mode of burial, 10, 11; cosmogony, 11; fertility, 11, 12; features of family life, 13 ff.; dowry and divorce, 20 ff.; polygamy, 27; matrimony, 29; inheritance, 31; adoption, 36 ff.; citizenship, 41; names, 45 ff.; literature, 52-54; burial, 62-66; slavery, 67 ff.; labourers, 82 ff., 148; manners and customs, 90 ff.; manufactures, 107 ff.; house property, 118-120; land, 120 ff.; money-lending, 157 ff.; bankers, 151; barristers, 161; government, 168 ff.; army, 177 ff.; law, 95 ff.; letter-writing, 208 ff.; religion, 231 ff.
Balawt, description of shrine at, 247
Bankers, firms of, 127; and money-lending, 151 ff.
Barbers, position of, 105
Beating the bounds, custom of, 121
Bedwin, as shepherds, 82; wages of, 86
Beer-houses, 113
Bel, "The Illumination of Bel," 60
Bel-Katsir, a plea set aside, 28; his adoption, 37
Bel-Merodach and sonship, 36, 168, 169; hymns and prayers, 260
Berachiel, his action for adoption, 38, 39
Berossus, origin of Babylon, 1
Bethels in shrines, 248
Bitumen, use of, 90; prices of, 147
"Black Stone" of Mecca, 248
Borsippa, University at, 54; "The Epic of the Creation," 55
Branding in the sole, 44
Brick-makers, importance of, 137, 138
Burial, method of Babylonian, 10, 62 ff.; place of, 62; cemeteries, 62; rites of, 63; tombs, 64
Canaanitish Women, legal status, 19
Cape of Good Hope, 45
Carchemish, importance of, 156; maneh of, 159
Carpenters, 134
Cemeteries, 62
Chaldea, the origin of, 7
Chariots for army, 178
Circumcision, 47
Clay-tablets, use of, 51
Colonies of Amorites, 187
Concubines, allowed, 25; purchaseable, 26
Cosmetics, wide use of, 105
Cosmological beliefs, 243
Cremation, practised, 62
Cuneiform writing, 49; use of clay, 50, 209; chapters, 52; origin, 209
Custom-house, place of, 111
Customs: manner of building, 90 ff.; furniture, 96 ff.; dress, 99 ff.; the cylinder, 102; beards, 104, 105; cosmetics, 105
Cylinder, worn on arm, 102; designs on, 103; patterns of, 103
Death, belief about, 242
Divorce, among Babylonians, 20-25; position of divorced wives, 28; instances, 196, 197
Doctors. See under "Medicine"
Dowry and divorce, 19 ff.; penalties, 26; reasons of divorce, ibid.
Dress, many varieties of, 99; priest's, 101; poor person's, 101; women's, 102; seal cylinder, 102
Duty, on sheep, 111; levy of, 113
Ea, the god of Eridu, 3, 260; founder of law, 195; the spirit, 232; the temple of, 236; Semitic influence, 237
Ebers Papyrus on medicine, 163
Eclipses mentioned, 219
Education: a curious procedure, 44; naming, ibid.; schooling, 47 ff.; bodily exercises, 48; cuneiform writing, 47; writing materials, 50, 51; books, 52; kinds of literature, 52; school buildings, 54; class education, 55; dead languages taught, 56; philology, 57; history, 58; other studies, 59
Egibi, the banker, 127, 152
Egyptian influence on religion, 233
El-lil, the god of Nippur, 3
Eridu, a seaport of primitive Chaldea, 2; a great centre, 3, 4; its god, 3; its origin, 4; its temple, 236
Exorcisms, form of, 260
Family life among Semites, 13; equality of sexes, 14
Farmers, tenure, 84, 85
Fasts and feasts prescribed, 246
Footstool, 96
Furniture, scanty but artistic, 96
Gardens, largely used, 94, 127
Gem-cutting, art of, 103
Gods and goddesses, relation of king to, 169 ff.
Grain, varying prices of, 142, 145; as exchange, 144; store-house, 206
Gudea, priest-king of Lagas, 90; works of, 93, 94; a vase of, 97; dress, 102; deification of, 169
Guilds for traders, 141
Hades, belief about, 242
Herodotus, quoted on Babylonian fertility, 11; on prostitution, 30
History, the favourite study, 58
Hit, bitumen procured from, 90
"House of Cereals," the, 206
House-property, value of, 114; lease of, 115; payment for, 116; a lawsuit, 118-120
Hymns, Sumerian origin, 244; Amen, 245; hymns and prayers to Bel, 260
Ideograph, or picture-writing, 236
Inheritance, laws of, 31; private ownership, 32; testaments, ibid.; the will of Sennacherib, 35; the theory of adoption, 36; disputes, 42
Iron, general use of, 136
Irrigation, necessity of, 88
Istar, the goddess, significant changes, 13, 14; the priestesses of, 16, 17; land of temple of, 126; independence of, 239; as Ashtoreth, 240; story of, ibid.; prophetesses of, 252; the Istar of witchcraft, 259
Ivory, large trade in, 136
Jews, position of, in Babylonia, 68; colonists, 190
Judges, appointment of, 197; trials before, 199
Juries, existence of, 198
Kassites, their dynasty, 7; effect of conquest in Babylonia, 171
Khalut, battle of, 53
Khunnatu, 72
Khammurabi, letters of, 210 ff.
Ki-makh, or cemetery, 62
King. See under "State"
Labourers, classes of, 82; farmers, 84; wages, 85, 86, 148-150; songs of, 87
Land, value of, 120 ff.; rent of, 121; in Assyria, 123 ff.
Law, the study of, 59; early origin, 195; judges, 197; case of foreigners, 198; trials, 199; careful procedure, 201; punishments, 205; bail, 206; prisons, ibid.
Layard, his discovery of a lens, 51
Letter-writing no modern invention, 208; material used, 209; cuneiform writing and its advantages, 210; early examples, 211 ff.; Assyrian, 216 ff.; private letters, 225; sealing, 228; noticeable features, 229, 230
Literature, place of, 52; poetry, 165
Maneh. See "money-lending"
Marriage ceremonies among Babylonians, 29; among Israelites, 30; permitted degrees, 31
Medicine, early use, 162; Egyptian influence, 163; court physicians, 164; in Assyria, 164; doctors' letters, 218
Metals, use of, 131; where found, 132; method of working, 132; copper, 133; prices for, 147
Money-lending, a lucrative profession, 151; a coin currency, 152; repayments, 153; rate of interest, 153, 154; securities, 155; Assyrian interest, 156; standard of coins, 158; fixed values, 160
Monotheism in hymns, 262
Moon-god, temple of, 2; cult of, 257; hymn to, 261
Murasu, the firm of, 161
Music and its cultivation, 166
Naming a child, 44; and a god, 45; reasons for changes, 46
Nebo-akhi-iddin, contract of, 75
Nebuchadnezzar's army, 181
Nergal, the Lord of the Dead, 65
Nidinti, case of the slave in, 70
Nineveh, letters in library at, 216
Nippur, excavations at, 3; its god, ibid.; its origin, 4; the temple, 236
Nubl, a law case, 15; her slave, 71; apprenticing a slave, 141
Oannes. See "Ea"
Oracles, in writing, 48
Palms, high prices, 127
Paradise, origin of, 95
Partnerships, frequent, 127; with women, 128; form of deeds of, 128, 129; terms of, 129
Peters, Dr., quoted, 66
Philology cultivated, 57, 58
Phoenicians, 183
Physical exercises, 48, 52
Pilasters, use of, 91
Poets, position of, 165
Polygamy, among Babylonians, restricted, 27; but possible, 27, 28
Porcelain, trade in, 137
Portents, the study of, 59, 60
Postal system established, 104; extensive use, 228
Priest, dress of, 101; classes of, 249; eunuch-priests, 250; marriage, 252
Prisons, 206
Professions: bankers, 151; barristers, 161; doctors, 162; poets, 165; musicians, 165, 166; artists, 166
Property, a legal point relating to, 23; a woman's power, ibid.; disputes, 42; temple prop, 255
Prostitution in Babylonia, 30, 252
Punishments, legal. See "Law"
Qubt, and her slave, 70
Qudd, and his slave, 70
Rab-mugi, or court-physician, 164
Rab-saris, office of, 176
Rab-shakeh, or vizier, knowledge of language, 57; office of, 176
Religion, letters relating to, 223; popular superstition, 231, 257; twofold influence in official creed, ibid.; Sumerian and Semitic conceptions compared, 232; Shamanism, 235; ideograph, 236; the centres and their influence, 236, 237; Semitic influence, 237 ff.; Istar, 239; Tammuz, 240; the origin of things, 241; various beliefs, 242; Hades, 242; cosmological, 243; sacred books, 244; hymns, 244, 260; numerous services, 245; temples, 246; sacrifices, 248; hierarchy, 249; temple revenues, 253, 255; witchcraft, 259; exorcisms, 260; monotheism, 263
Rimanni-Bel, a slave's adoption cancelled, 40
Sabbath, origin of word, 245; customs, ibid.
Sacred books, 244
Sacrifices, various kinds, 248
Sandals used, 100, 101
Sargon, his empire, 5, 6; a tradition of, 83; houses in time of, 92; dress, 101; survey of land, 122; carpenters' trade under, 134
Satraps, or governors, 176
Schools, 47 ff.; buildings, 54; dead languages taught, 56; subjects of study, 56 ff.
Scribes, the position of, 161
Semites, connection with Sumerians, 4 ff.; influence on religion, 231, 237; Semitic conception of deity, 233; the goddess, 238
Sennacherib's will, 35; garden, 94, 95
Shamanism of the Sumerians, 235
Sheep, largely kept, 109; a contract, 111; duty, ibid.; market, 112
Shekel, 158
Ships, character of, 185
Sippara, situation of, 113; letters found at, 214
Slaves, position of, 67, 68; classes of, 68; price of, 69, 70, 75; law regarding, 69; apprentices, 71; privileges, 71; restrictions, 74; emancipation of, 77, 78; in Assyria, 78, 79
Songs of peasants, 87, 88
Spelling, correctness of, 230
State: theocratic character, 168; relation of sovereign to God, 169-171; the Western Empire, 171, 172; contrasts in Assyria, 172; aristocracy, 173, 174; taxes, 175; officials, 176-177; divisions of army, 177-182; chariots, 178; developments, 180; Assyrian army, q.v.; under Nebuchadnezzar, 181; navy, 183; merchant boats, 184; character of ships, 185; Amorite colonies, 187; immunities, 194
Stables, letters relating to, 222
Stars, worship of, 62
Stela of the Vultures, 105
Stone used for decoration, 93
Stone-cutters, perfect work of, 135
Streets, character of, 112, 113
Stucco, largely used, 92
Sumerians, race influence, 4; influence on Semites, ibid.; marriage law, 25; marriage ceremony, 29; dictionaries, 50; language taught, 56; law for slaves, 69, 81, 82; text-book on farming, 84; beardless, 104; law as to barbers, 105; weights, 158; deification of Sumerian kings, 170; code of law, 195; influence on religion, 231; Sumerian conception of a god, 232; no moral nature, 234; Shamanism, 235; Tammuz, 240; hymns, 244
Sun, belief about, 242
Superstition, popular, 231, 257
Surveyors, importance of, 123
Tables, fashion of, 97
Tablets of Tel-el-Amarna, 7; the use of clay, 10
Talent, 158
Tammuz, worship of, 240, 251
Tapestries, 107
Taxes, nature of, 175; immunity from, 194
Tel-el-Amarna tablets, quoted, 7, 19; ladies' letters, 48, 215; other letters, 209; points of letter-writing, 229
Temples, construction of, 246; temple ministers, 251; revenues of, 253
Tiglath-pileser, his gardens, 94
Tithes paid, 253
Tombs. See "Burial"
Trades, 107 ff.; woollen, 108; partnerships, 127; carpenters, 135; stonecutters, 135; iron-smith, 136; ivory carvers, 136; porcelain-makers, 137; brick-makers, 137; vintners, 139
Tsarp, an Assyrian prefectess, 18
Tylos, island of, 108
Ubaru, contract of, 85
Under-world, belief in an, 64
Ur of the Chaldees, foundation of the town, 2; its moon-god, 2; its connection with Nippur, 3; a custom with daughters, 14; comparative prices, 147, 148; hymn used at, 261
Ustanni, an interesting contract, 73
Vases, plentiful and various, 97
Weights. See Appendix
Will, an example of a, 32; an heiress, 34; the document of Sennacherib, 35; disputes, 42
Wine, manufacture of, 139, 140; letters relating to, 221
Women: family, legal and religious status in Babylonia, 14 ff.; in Assyria, 18; in Canaan, 19; divorce, 20; dowries, 20; traders, 24; a superior slave, ibid.; concubines, 26; testatory rights, 29; legal forms of matrimony, 29; prostitutes, 30; adoption, 37; dress, 102; as trade partners, 128
Wool, manufacture of, 107 ff.; looms, 108
Writing materials, 50, 51. See also "Letter-writing"
Yahveh, name known in Babylonia, 227
FOOTNOTES
1 Researches in Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldea (1838), p. 131 sqq.
2 In certain cases the wife seems to have had the power of claiming alimony from her husband, though we do not know what were the circumstances which were held sufficient to justify the claim. Thus, in the third year of Nabonidos, "Nahid-Merodach, the son of Samas-baladhu-iqbi, voluntarily granted his wife Rama and his son Arad-Bunene four qas of food and three qas of beer daily, as well as fifteen manehs of wool, one pi of sesame, one pi of salt, and sixty qas of sweetmeats each year," with the provision that the grant should never be cancelled or willed away. The son, however, is included in the gift, and it is possible, therefore, that Rama was little more than a concubine.
3 A similar case, in which, however, it is a testatrix who hands over her property to her son during her lifetime, is recorded in a deed dated at Babylon the 10th day of Sivn, in the second year of Nabonidos. The deed is as follows: "Guga, the daughter of Zakir, the son of a native of Isin, has voluntarily sealed and delivered to her eldest son, Ea-zir-ibni, her dowry, consisting of one maneh which is in the keeping of Nebo-akhi-iddin, the son of Sula, the son of Egibi; 35 shekels which have been mortgaged to Tabnea, the son of Nebo-yusallim, the son of Sin-sadunu, and 20 shekels which are due from Tasmetum-ramat, the daughter of Arad-Bel, the son of Egibi, as well as a field producing 48 qas of seed on the canal of Kish. As regards the maneh and 56 shekels belonging to Guga, which, in the absence of her eldest son, Ea-zir-ibni, she has divided between her younger sons, Nebo-akhi-bullidh, Nergal-ina-esi-edher, Itti-Samas-baladhu, and Ninip-pir-utsur, Ea-zir-ibni shall have no claim to them. Guga has delivered to Ea-zir-ibni, her eldest son, one maneh, now in the hands of Nebo-akhi-iddin, 55 shekels in the hands of Tabnea, 50 shekels in the hands of Tasmetum-ramat, and a field bearing 48 qas of seed. As long as Guga lives, Ea-zir-ibni shall give his mother Guga, as interest upon the property, food and clothing. Guga shall alienate none of it out of affection or will it away. Ea-zir-ibni shall not be disturbed in his possession." The names of three witnesses are attached to the deed, which was "sealed in the presence of Bab, the daughter of Nebo-zir-lisir, the son of Egibi."
4 Journal of the American Oriental Society, xviii., p. 167.
5 We hear, however, of a "little girl of six years of age" being sold for 17 shekels in the thirteenth year of Nabonidos, but she was doubtless an orphan.
6 Xxiii. 14.
7 See above, p. 23 f.
8 Schliemann, Ilios, pp. 471, 472. Mr. Head shows that the maneh in question is identical with the Babylonian silver maneh of 8,656 grains troy, or 561 grammes, though the latter is now more usually fixed at 546 grammes.
9 In the Assyrian texts the term for "prison" is bit kili, of which kisukku is also given as a synonym.
10 Our learned author has been misled in this paragraph by the utterly erroneous copy and translation of Father Scheil. The letter reads "To Sin-iddinnam from Hammurabi. The goddesses of Emutbalim which are assigned to thee, the troops under the command of Tnuhsamar will bring to thee in safety. When they reach thee, with the troops which thou hast destroy the people, and the goddesses to their dwellings let them bring in safety."—CR.
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