The question now arises, To what race did the people of the Country of the Sea belong? Did they represent an advance-guard of the Kassite tribes, who eventually succeeded in establishing themselves as the Third Dynasty in Babylon? Or were they the Elamites who, when driven from Ur and Larsam, retreated southwards and maintained their independence on the shores of the Persian Gulf? Or did they represent some fresh wave of Semitic immigration'? That they were not Kassites is proved by the new chronicle which relates how the Country of the Sea was conquered by the Kassites, and how the dynasty founded by Iluma-ilu thus came to an end. There is nothing to show that they were Elamites, and if the Country of the Sea had been colonized by fresh Semitic tribes, so far from opposing their kindred in Babylon, most probably they would have proved to them a source of additional strength and support. In fact, there are indications that the people of the Country of the Sea are to be referred to an older stock than the Elamites, the Semites, or the Kassites. In the dynasty of the Country of the Sea there is no doubt that we may trace the last successful struggle of the ancient Sumerians to retain possession of the land which they had held for so many centuries before the invading Semites had disputed its possession with them.

Evidence of the Sumerian origin of the kings of the Country of the Sea may be traced in the names which several of them bear. Ishkibal, Grulkishar, Peshgal-daramash, A-dara-kalama, Akur-ul-ana, and Melam-kur-kura, the names of some of them, are all good Sumerian names, and Shushshi, the brother of Ishkibal, may also be taken as a Sumerian name. It is true that the first three kings of the dynasty, Iluma-ilu, Itti-ili-nibi, and Damki-ilishu, and the last king of the dynasty, Ea-gamil, bear Semitic Babylonian names, but there is evidence that at least one of these is merely a Semitic rendering of a Sumerian equivalent. Iluma-ilu, the founder of the dynasty, has left inscriptions in which his name is written in its correct Sumerian form as Dingir-a-an, and the fact that he and some of his successors either bore Semitic names or appear in the late list of kings with their Sumerian names translated into Babylonian form may be easily explained by supposing that the population of the Country of the Sea was mixed and that the Sumerian and Semitic tongues were to a great extent employed indiscriminately. This supposition is not inconsistent with the suggestion that the dynasty of the Country of the Sea was Sumerian, and that under it the Sumerians once more became the predominant race in Babylonia.

The new chronicle also relates how the dynasty of the Country of the Sea succumbed in its turn before the incursions of the Kassites. We know that already under the First Dynasty the Kassite tribes had begun to make incursions into Babylonia, for the ninth year of Samsu-iluna was named in the date-formulae after a Kassite invasion, which, as it was commemorated in this manner by the Babylonians, was probably successfully repulsed. Such invasions must have taken place from time to time during the period of supremacy attained by the Country of the Sea, and it was undoubtedly with a view to stopping such incursions—for the future that Ea-gamil—the last king of the Second Dynasty, decided to invade Elam and conquer the mountainous districts in which the Kassite tribes had built their strongholds. This Elamite campaign of Ea-gamil is recorded by the new chronicle, which relates how he was defeated and driven from the country by Ulam-Buriash, the brother of Bitiliash the Kassite. Ulam-Buriash did not rest content with repelling Ea-gamil's invasion of his land, but pursued him across the border and succeeded in conquering the Country of the Sea and in establishing there his own administration. The gradual conquest of the whole of Babylonia by the Kassites no doubt followed the conquest of the Country of the Sea, for the chronicle relates how the process of subjugation, begun by Ulam-Buriash, was continued by his nephew Agum, and we know from the lists of kings that Ea-gamil was the last king of the dynasty founded by Iluma-ilu. In this fashion the Second Dynasty was brought to an end, and the Sumerian element in the mixed population of Babylonia did not again succeed in gaining control of the government of the country.

It will be noticed that the account of the earliest Kassite rulers of Babylonia which is given by the new chronicle does not exactly tally with the names of the kings of the Third Dynasty as found upon the list of kings. On this document the first king of the dynasty is named Gandash, with whom we may probably identify Ulam-Buriash, the Kassite conqueror of the Country of the Sea; the second king is Agum, and the third is Bitiliashi. According to the new chronicle Agum was the son of Bitiliashi, and it would be improbable that he should have ruled in Babylonia before his father. But this difficulty is removed by supposing that the two names were transposed by some copyist. The different names assigned to the founder of the Kassite dynasty may be due to the existence of variant traditions, or Ulam-Buriash may have assumed another name on his conquest of Babylonia, a practice which was usual with the later kings of Assyria when they occupied the Babylonian throne.

The information supplied by the new chronicle with regard to the relations of the first three dynasties to one another is of the greatest possible interest to the student of early Babylonian history. We see that the Semitic empire founded at Babylon by Sumu-abu, and consolidated by Hammurabi, was not established on so firm a basis as has hitherto been believed. The later kings of the dynasty, after Elam had been conquered, had to defend their empire from encroachments on the south, and they eventually succumbed before the onslaught of the Sumerian element, which still remained in the population of Babylonia and had rallied in the Country of the Sea. This dynasty in its turn succumbed before the invasion of the Kassites from the mountains in the western districts of Elam, and, although the city of Babylon retained her position as the capital of the country throughout these changes of government, she was the capital of rulers of different races, who successively fought for and obtained the control of the fertile plains of Mesopotamia.

It is probable that the Kassite kings of the Third Dynasty exercised authority not only over Babylonia but also over the greater part of Elam, for a number of inscriptions of Kassite kings of Babylonia have been found by M. de Morgan at Susa. These inscriptions consist of grants of land written on roughly shaped stone stelae, a class which the Babylonians themselves called kudurru, while they have been frequently referred to by modern writers as "boundary-stones." This latter term is not very happily chosen, for it suggests that the actual monuments themselves were set up on the limits of a field or estate to mark its boundary. It is true that the inscription on a kudurru enumerates the exact position and size of the estate with which it is concerned, but the kudurru was never actually used to mark the boundary. It was preserved as a title-deed, in the house of the owner of the estate or possibly in the temple of his god, and formed his charter or title-deed to which he could appeal in case of any dispute arising as to his right of ownership. One of the kudurrus found by M. de Morgan records the grant of a number of estates near Babylon by Nazimaruttash, a king of the Third or Kassite Dynasty, to the god Marduk, that is to say they were assigned by the king to the service of E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk at Babylon.



Inscribed with a text of Nazimaruttash, a king of the Third or Kassite Dynasty, conferring certain estates near Babylon on the temple of Marduk and on a certain man named Kashakti- Shugab. The photograph is reproduced from M. de Morgan's Delegation en Perse, Mem., t. ii, pi, 18.

All the crops and produce from the land were granted for the supply of the temple, which was to enjoy the property without the payment of any tax or tribute. The text also records the gift of considerable tracts of land in the same district to a private individual named Kashakti-Shugab, who was to enjoy a similar freedom from taxation so far as the lands bestowed upon him were concerned.

This freedom from taxation is specially enacted by the document in the words: "Whensoever in the days that are to come the ruler of the country, or one of the governors, or directors, or wardens of these districts, shall make any claim with regard to these estates, or shall attempt to impose the payment of a tithe or tax upon them, may all the great gods whose names are commemorated, or whose arms are portrayed, or whose dwelling-places are represented, on this stone, curse him with an evil curse and blot out his name!"

Incidentally, this curse illustrates one of the most striking characteristics of the kudurrus, or "boundary-stones," viz. the carved figures of gods and representations of their emblems, which all of them bare in addition to the texts inscribed upon them. At one time it was thought that these symbols were to be connected with the signs of the zodiac and various constellations and stars, and it was suggested that they might have been intended to represent the relative positions of the heavenly bodies at the time the document was drawn up. But this text of Nazimaruttash and other similar documents that have recently been discovered prove that the presence of the figures and emblems of the gods upon the stones is to be explained on another and far more simple theory. They were placed there as guardians of the property to which the kudurru referred, and it was believed that the carving of their figures or emblems upon the stone would ensure their intervention in case of any attempted infringement of the rights and privileges which it was the object of the document to commemorate and preserve. A photographic reproduction of one side of the kudurru of Nazi-maruttash is shown in the accompanying illustration. There will be seen a representation of Gula or Bau, the mother of the gods, who is portrayed as seated on her throne and wearing the four-horned head-dress and a long robe that reaches to her feet. In the field are emblems of the Sun-god, the Moon-god, Ishtar, and other deities, and the representation of divine emblems and dwelling-places is continued on another face of the stone round the corner towards which Grula is looking. The other two faces of the document are taken up with the inscription.

An interesting note is appended to the text inscribed upon the stone, beginning under the throne and feet of Marduk and continuing under the emblems of the gods upon the other side. This note relates the history of the document in the following words: "In those days Kashakti-Shugab, the son of Nusku-na'id, inscribed (this document) upon a memorial of clay, and he set it before his god. But in the reign of Marduk-aplu-iddina, king of hosts, the son of Melishikhu, King of Babylon, the wall fell upon this memorial and crushed it. Shu-khuli-Shugab, the son of Nibishiku, wrote a copy of the ancient text upon a new stone stele, and he set it (before the god)." It will be seen, therefore, that this actual stone that has been recovered was not the document drawn up in the reign of Nazimaruttash, but a copy made under Marduk-aplu-iddina, a later king of the Third Dynasty. The original deed was drawn up to preserve the rights of Kashakti-Shugab, who shared the grant of land with the temple of Marduk. His share was less than half that of the temple, but, as both were situated in the same district, he was careful to enumerate and describe the temple's share, to prevent any encroachment on his rights by the Babylonian priests.

It is probable that such grants of land were made to private individuals in return for special services which they had rendered to the king. Thus a broken kudurru among M. de Morgan's finds records the confirmation of a man's claims to certain property by Biti-liash II, the claims being based on a grant made to the man's ancestor by Kurigalzu for services rendered to the king during his war with Assyria. One of the finest specimens of this class of charters or title-deeds has been found at Susa, dating from the reign of Melishikhu, a king of the Third Dynasty. The document in question records a grant of certain property in the district of Bit-Pir-Shadu-rabu, near the cities Agade and Dur-Kurigalzu, made by Melishikhu to Marduk-aplu-iddina, his son, who succeeded him upon the throne of Babylon. The text first gives details with regard to the size and situation of the estates included in the grant of land, and it states the names of the high officials who were entrusted with the duty of measuring them. The remainder of the text defines and secures the privileges granted to Marduk-aplu-iddina together with the land, and, as it throws considerable light upon the system of land tenure at the period, an extract from it may here be translated:

"To prevent the encroachment on his land," the inscription runs, "thus hath he (i.e. the king) established his (Marduk-aplu-iddina's) charter. On his land taxes and tithes shall they not impose; ditches, limits, and boundaries shall they not displace; there shall be no plots, stratagems, or claims (with regard to his possession); for forced labour or public work for the prevention of floods, for the maintenance and repair of the royal canal under the protection of the towns of Bit-Sikkamidu and Damik-Adad, among the gangs levied in the towns of the district of Nina-Agade, they shall not call out the people of his estate; they are not liable to forced labour on the sluices of the royal canal, nor are they liable for building dams, nor for closing the canal, nor for digging out the bed thereof."



Inscribed with a text of Melishikhu, one of the kings of the Third or Kassite Dynasty of Babylon, recording a grant of certain property to Marduk-aplu-iddina, his son The photograph is reproduced from M. de Morgan's Delegation en Perse, Mem., t. ii, pi. 24.

"A cultivator of his lands, whether hired or belonging to the estate, and the men who receive his instructions (i.e. his overseers) shall no governor of Bit-Pir-Shadu-rabu cause to leave his lands, whether by the order of the king, or by the order of the governor, or by the order of whosoever may be at Bit-Pir-Shadu-rabu. On wood, grass, straw, corn, and every other sort of crop, on his carts and yoke, on his ass and man-servant, shall they make no levy. During the scarcity of water in the canal running between the Bati-Anzanim canal and the canal of the royal district, on the waters of his ditch for irrigation shall they make no levy; from the ditch of his reservoir shall they not draw water, neither shall they divert (his water for) irrigation, and other land shall they not irrigate nor water therewith. The grass of his lands shall they not mow; the beasts belonging to the king or to a governor, which may be assigned to the district of Bit-Pir-Shadu-rabu, shall they not drive within his boundary, nor shall they pasture them on his grass. He shall not be forced to build a road or a bridge, whether for the king, or for the governor who may be appointed in the district of Bit-Pir-Shadu-rabu, neither shall he be liable for any new form of forced labour, which in the days that are to come a king, or a governor appointed in the district of Bit-Pir-Shadu-rabu, shall institute and exact, nor for forced labour long fallen into disuse which may be revived anew. To prevent encroachment on his land the king hath fixed the privileges of his domain, and that which appertaineth unto it, and all that he hath granted unto him; and in the presence of Shamash, and Marduk, and Anunitu, and the great gods of heaven and earth, he hath inscribed them upon a stone, and he hath left it as an everlasting memorial with regard to his estate."

The whole of the text is too long to quote, and it will suffice to note here that Melishikhu proceeds to appeal to future kings to respect the land and privileges which he has granted to his son, Marduk-aplu-iddina, even as he himself has respected similar grants made by his predecessors on the throne; and the text ends with some very vivid curses against any one, whatever his station, who should make any encroachments on the privileges granted to Marduk-aplu-iddina, or should alter or do any harm to the memorial-stone itself. The emblems of the gods whom Melishikhu invokes to avenge any infringement of his grant are sculptured upon one side of the stone, for, as has already been remarked, it was believed that by carving them upon the memorial-stone their help in guarding the stone itself and its enactments was assured.

From the portion of the text inscribed upon the stone which has just been translated it is seen that the owner of land in Babylonia in the period of the Kassite kings, unless he was granted special exemption, was liable to furnish forced labour for public works to the state or to his district, to furnish grazing and pasture for the flocks and herds of the king or governor, and to pay various taxes and tithes on his land, his water for irrigation, and his crops. From the numerous documents of the First Dynasty of Babylon that have been recovered and published within the last few years we know that similar customs were prevalent at that period, so that it is clear that the successive conquests to which the country was subjected, and the establishment of different dynasties of foreign kings at Babylon, did not to any appreciable extent affect the life and customs of the inhabitants of the country or even the general character of its government and administration. Some documents of a commercial and legal nature, inscribed upon clay tablets during the reigns of the Kassite kings of Babylon, have been found at Nippur, but they have not yet been published, and the information we possess concerning the life of the people in this period is obtained indirectly from kudurrus or boundary-stones, such as those of Nazimaruttash and Melishikhu which have been already described. Of documents relating to the life of the people under the rule of the kings of the Country of the Sea we have none, and, with the exception of the unpublished chronicle which has been described earlier in this chapter, our information for this period is confined to one or two short votive inscriptions. But the case is very different with regard to the reigns of the Semitic kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon. Thousands of tablets relating to legal and commercial transactions during this period have been recovered, and more recently a most valuable series of royal letters, written by Hammurabi and other kings of his dynasty, has been brought to light.



The stele is inscribed with his great code of laws. The Sun- god is represented as seated on a throne in the form of a temple facade, and his feet are resting upon the mountains. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.

Moreover, the recently discovered code of laws drawn up by Hammurabi contains information of the greatest interest with regard to the conditions of life that were prevalent in Babylonia at that period. From these three sources it is possible to draw up a comparatively full account of early Babylonian life and customs.



CHAPTER VI—EARLY BABYLONIAN LIFE AND CUSTOMS

In tracing the ancient history of Mesopotamia and the surrounding countries it is possible to construct a narrative which has the appearance of being comparatively full and complete. With regard to Babylonia it may be shown how dynasty succeeded dynasty, and for long periods together the names of the kings have been recovered and the order of their succession fixed with certainty. But the number and importance of the original documents on which this connected narration is based vary enormously for different periods. Gaps occur in our knowledge of the sequence of events, which with some ingenuity may be bridged over by means of the native lists of kings and the genealogies furnished by the historical inscriptions. On the other hand, as if to make up for such parsimony, the excavations have yielded a wealth of material for illustrating the conditions of early Babylonian life which prevailed in such periods. The most fortunate of these periods, so far as the recovery of its records is concerned, is undoubtedly the period of the Semitic kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and in particular the reign of its greatest ruler, Hammurabi. When M. Maspero wrote his history, thousands of clay tablets, inscribed with legal and commercial documents and dated in the reigns of these early kings, had already been recovered, and the information they furnished was duly summarized by him.* But since that time two other sources of information have been made available which have largely increased our knowledge of the constitution of the early Babylonian state, its system of administration, and the conditions of life of the various classes of the population.

* Most of these tablets are preserved in the British Museum. The principal?works in which they have been published are Cuneiform Texts in the British Museum (1896, etc.), Strassmaier's Altbabylonischen Vertrage aus Warka, and Meissner's Beitrage zum altbabylonischen Privatrecht. A number of similar tablets of this period, preserved in the Pennsylvania Museum, will shortly be published by Dr. Ranke.

One of these new sources of information consists of a remarkable series of royal letters, written by kings of the First Dynasty, which has been recovered and is now preserved in the British Museum. The letters were addressed to the governors and high officials of various great cities in Babylonia, and they contain the king's orders with regard to details of the administration of the country which had been brought to his notice. The range of subjects with which they deal is enormous, and there is scarcely one of them which does not add to our knowledge of the period.* The other new source of information is the great code of laws, drawn up by Hammurabi for the guidance of his people and defining the duties and privileges of all classes of his subjects, the discovery of which at Susa has been described in a previous chapter. The laws are engraved on a great stele of diorite in no less than forty-nine columns of writing, of which forty-four are preserved,* and at the head of the stele is sculptured a representation of the king receiving them from Shamash, the Sun-god.

* See King, Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi, 3 vols. (1898-1900).

This code shows to what an extent the administration of law and justice had been developed in Babylonia in the time of the First Dynasty. From the contracts and letters of the period we already knew that regular judges and duly appointed courts of law were in existence, and the code itself was evidently intended by the king to give the royal sanction to a great body of legal decisions and enactments which already possessed the authority conferred by custom and tradition. The means by which such a code could have come into existence are illustrated by the system of procedure adopted in the courts at this period. After a case had been heard and judgment had been given, a summary of the case and of the evidence, together with the judgment, was drawn up and written out on tablets in due legal form and phraseology. A list of the witnesses was appended, and, after the tablet had been dated and sealed, it was stored away among the legal archives of the court, where it was ready for production in the event of any future appeal or case in which the recorded decision was involved. This procedure represents an advanced stage in the system of judicial administration, but the care which was taken for the preservation of the judgments given was evidently traditional, and would naturally give rise in course of time to the existence of a recognized code of laws.

Moreover, when once a judgment had been given and had been duly recorded it was irrevocable, and if any judge attempted to alter such a decision he was severely punished. For not only was he expelled from his judgment-seat, and debarred from exercising judicial functions in the future, but, if his judgment had involved the infliction of a penalty, he was obliged to pay twelve times the amount to the man he had condemned. Such an enactment must have occasionally given rise to hardship or injustice, but at least it must have had the effect of imbuing the judges with a sense of their responsibility and of instilling a respect for their decisions in the minds of the people. A further check upon injustice was provided by the custom of the elders of the city, who sat with the judge and assisted him in the carrying out of his duties; and it was always open to a man, if he believed that he could not get justice enforced, to make an appeal to the king. It is not our present purpose to give a technical discussion of the legal contents of the code, but rather to examine it with the object of ascertaining what light it throws upon ancient Babylonian life and customs, and the conditions under which the people lived.

The code gives a good deal of information with regard to the family life of the Babylonians, and, above all, proves the sanctity with which the marriage-tie was invested. The claims that were involved by marriage were not lightly undertaken. Any marriage, to be legally binding, had to be accompanied by a duly executed and attested marriage-contract. If a man had taken a woman to wife without having carried out this necessary preliminary, the woman was not regarded as his wife in the legal sense. On the other hand, when once such a marriage-contract had been drawn up, its inviolability was stringently secured. A case of proved adultery on the part of a man's wife was punished by the drowning of the guilty parties, though the husband of the woman, if he wished to save his wife, could do so by an appeal to the king. Similarly, death was the penalty for a man who ravished another man's betrothed wife while she was still living in her father's house, but in this case the girl's innocence and inexperience were taken into account, and no penalty was enforced against her and she was allowed to go free. Where the adultery of a wife was not proved, and only depended on the accusation of the husband, the woman could clear herself by swearing her own innocence; if, however, the accusation was not brought by the husband himself, but by others, the woman could clear herself by submitting to the ordeal by water; that is to say, she would plunge into the Euphrates; if the river carried her away and she were drowned, it was regarded as proof that the accusation was well founded; if, on the contrary, she survived and got safely to the bank, she was considered innocent and was forthwith allowed to return to her household completely vindicated.

It will have been seen that the duty of chastity on the part of a married woman was strictly enforced, but the husband's responsibility to properly maintain his wife was also recognized, and in the event of his desertion she could under certain circumstances become the wife of another man. Thus, if he left his city and fled from it of his own free will and deserted his wife, he could not reclaim her on his return, since he had not been forced to leave the city, but had done so because he hated it. This rule did not apply to the case of a man who was taken captive in battle. In such circumstances the wife's action was to be guided by the condition of her husband's affairs. If the captive husband possessed sufficient property on which his wife could be maintained during his captivity in a strange land, she had no reason nor excuse for seeking another marriage. If under these circumstances she became another man's wife, she was to be prosecuted at law, and, her action being the equivalent of adultery, she was to be drowned. But the case was regarded as altered if the captive husband had not sufficient means for the maintenance of his wife during his absence. The woman would then be thrown on her own resources, and if she became the wife of another man she incurred no blame. On the return of the captive he could reclaim his wife, but the children of the second marriage would remain with their own father. These regulations for the conduct of a woman, whose husband was captured in battle, give an intimate picture of the manner in which the constant wars of this early period affected the lives of those who took part in them.

Under the Babylonians at the period of the First Dynasty divorce was strictly regulated, though it was far easier for the man to obtain one than for the woman. If we may regard the copies of Sumerian laws, which have come down to us from the late Assyrian period, as parts of the code in use under the early Sumerians, we must conclude that at this earlier period the law was still more in favour of the husband, who could divorce his wife whenever he so desired, merely paying her half a mana as compensation. Under the Sumerians the wife could not obtain a divorce at all, and the penalty for denying her husband was death. These regulations were modified in favour of the woman in Hammurabi's code; for under its provisions, if a man divorced his wife or his concubine, he was obliged to make proper provision for her maintenance. Whether she were barren or had borne him children, he was obliged to return her marriage portion; and in the latter case she had the custody of the children, for whose maintenance and education he was obliged to furnish the necessary supplies. Moreover, at the man's death she and her children would inherit a share of his property. When there had been no marriage portion, a sum was fixed which the husband was obliged to pay to his divorced wife, according to his status. In cases where the wife was proved to have wasted her household and to have entirely failed in her duty, her husband could divorce her without paying any compensation, or could make her a slave in his house, and the extreme penalty for this offence was death. On the other hand, a woman could not be divorced because she had contracted a permanent disease; and, if she desired to divorce her husband and could prove that her past life had been seemly, she could do so, returning to her father's house and taking her marriage portion with her.

It is not necessary here to go very minutely into the regulations given by the code with regard to marriage portions, the rights of widows, the laws of inheritance, and the laws regulating the adoption and maintenance of children. The customs that already have been described with regard to marriage and divorce may serve to indicate the spirit in which the code is drawn up and the recognized status occupied by the wife in the Babylonian household. The extremely independent position enjoyed by women in the early Babylonian days is illustrated by the existence of a special class of women, to which constant reference is made in the contracts and letters of the period. When the existence of this class of women was first recognized from the references to them in the contract-tablets inscribed at the time of the First Dynasty, they were regarded as priestesses, but the regulations concerning them which occur in the code of Hammurabi prove that their duties were not strictly sacerdotal, but that they occupied the position of votaries. The majority of those referred to in the inscriptions of this period were vowed to the service of E-bab-bara, the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara, and of E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk at Babylon, but it is probable that all the great temples in the country had classes of female votaries attached to them. From the evidence at present available it may be concluded that the functions of these women bore no resemblance to that of the sacred prostitutes devoted to the service of the goddess Ishtar in the city of Erech. They seem to have occupied a position of great influence and independence in the community, and their duties and privileges were defined and safeguarded by special legislation.

Generally they lived together in a special building, or convent, attached to the temple, but they had considerable freedom and could leave the convent and also contract marriage. Their vows, however, while securing them special privileges, entailed corresponding responsibilities. Even when married a votary was still obliged to remain a virgin, and, should her husband desire to have children, she could not bear them herself, but must provide him with a maid or concubine. Also she had to maintain a high standard of moral conduct, for any breach of which severe penalties were enforced. Thus, if a votary who was not living in the convent opened a beer-shop, or should enter one for drink, she ran the risk of being put to death. But the privileges she enjoyed were also considerable, for even when unmarried she enjoyed the status of a married woman, and if any man slandered her he incurred the penalty of branding on the forehead. Moreover, a married votary, though she could not bear her husband children, was secured in her position as the permanent head of his household. The concubine she might give to her husband was always the wife's inferior, even after bearing him children, and should the former attempt to put herself on a level of equality with the votary, the latter might brand her as a slave and put her with the female slaves. If the concubine proved barren she could be sold. The votary could also possess property, and on taking her vows was provided with a portion by her father exactly as though she were being given in marriage. Her portion was vested in herself and did not become the property of the order of votaries, nor of the temple to which she was attached. The proceeds of her property were devoted to her own maintenance, and on her father's death her brothers looked after her interests, or she might farm the property out. Under certain circumstances she could inherit property and was not obliged to pay taxes on it, and such property she could bequeath at her own death; but upon her death her portion returned to her own family unless her father had assigned her the privilege of bequeathing it. That the social position enjoyed by a votary was considerable is proved by the fact that many women of good family, and even members of the royal house, took vows. The existence of the order and its high repute indicate a very advanced conception of the position of women among the early Babylonians.

From the code of Hammurabi we also gather considerable information with regard to the various classes of which the community was composed and to their relative social positions. For the purposes of legislation the community was divided into three main classes or sections, which corresponded to well-defined strata in the social system. The lowest of these classes consisted of the slaves, who must have formed a considerable portion of the population. The class next above them comprised the large body of free men, who were possessed of a certain amount of property but were poor and humble, as their name, muslikenu, implied. These we may refer to as the middle class. The highest, or upper class, in the Babylonian community embraced all the officers and ministers attached to the court, the higher officials and servants of the state, and the owners of considerable lands and estates. The differences which divided and marked off from one another the two great classes of free men in the population of Babylonia is well illustrated by the scale of payments as compensation for injury which they were obliged to make or were entitled to receive. Thus, if a member of the upper class were guilty of stealing an ox, or a sheep, or an ass, or a pig, or a boat, from a temple or a private house, he had to pay the owner thirty times its value as compensation, whereas if the thief were a member of the middle class he only had to pay ten times its price, but if he had no property and so could not pay compensation he was put to death. The penalty for manslaughter was less if the assailant was a man of the middle class, and such a man could also divorce his wife more cheaply, and was privileged to pay his doctor or surgeon a smaller fee for a successful operation.

But the privileges enjoyed by a man of the middle class were counterbalanced by a corresponding diminution of the value at which his life and limbs were assessed. Thus, if a doctor by carrying out an operation unskilfully caused the death of a member of the upper class, or inflicted a serious injury upon him, such as the loss of an eye, the punishment was the amputation of both hands, but no such penalty seems to have been exacted if the patient were a member of the middle class. If, however, the patient were a slave of a member of the middle class, in the event of death under the operation, the doctor had to give the owner another slave, and in the event of the slave losing his eye, he had to pay the owner half the slave's value. Penalties for assault were also regulated in accordance with the social position and standing of the parties to the quarrel. Thus, if one member of the upper class knocked out the eye or the tooth of one of his equals, his own eye or his own tooth was knocked out as a punishment, and if he broke the limb of one of the members of his own class, he had his corresponding limb broken; but if he knocked out the eye of a member of the middle class, or broke his limb, he suffered no punishment in his own person, but was fined one mana of silver, and for knocking out the tooth of such a man he was fined one-third of a mana. If two members of the same class were engaged in a quarrel, and one of them made a peculiarly improper assault upon the other, the assailant was only fined, the fine being larger if the quarrel was between members of the upper class. But if such an assault was made by one man upon another who was of higher rank than himself, the assailant was punished by being publicly beaten in the presence of the assembly, when he received sixty stripes from a scourge of ox-hide. These regulations show the privileges and responsibilities which pertained to the two classes of free men in the Babylonian community, and they indicate the relative social positions which they enjoyed.

Both classes of free men could own slaves, though it is obvious that they were more numerous in the households and on the estates of members of the upper class. The slave was the absolute property of his master and could be bought and sold and employed as a deposit for a debt, but, though slaves as a class had few rights of their own, in certain circumstances they could acquire them. Thus, if the owner of a female slave had begotten children by her he could not use her as the payment for a debt, and in the event of his having done so he was obliged to ransom her by paying the original amount of the debt in money. It was also possible for a male slave, whether owned by a member of the upper or of the middle class, to marry a free woman, and if he did so, his children were free and did not become the property of his master. Also, if the free woman whom the slave married brought with her a marriage portion from her father's house, this remained her own property on the slave's death, and supposing the couple had acquired other property during the time they lived together as man and wife, the owner of the slave could only claim half of such property, the other half being retained by the free woman for her own use and for that of her children.

Generally speaking, the lot of the slave was not a particularly hard one, for he was a recognized member of his owner's household, and, as a valuable piece of property, it was obviously to his owner's interest to keep him healthy and in good condition. In fact, the value of the slave is attested by the severity of the penalty imposed for abducting a male or female slave from the owner's house and removing him or her from the city; for a man guilty of this offence was put to death. The same penalty was imposed for harbouring and taking possession of a runaway slave, whereas a fixed reward was paid by the owner to any one by whom a runaway slave was captured and brought back. Special legislation was also devised with the object of rendering the theft of slaves difficult and their detection easy. Thus, if a brander put a mark upon a slave without the owner's consent, he was liable to have his hands cut off, and if he could prove that he did so through being deceived by another man, that man was put to death. For bad offences slaves were liable to severe punishments, such as cutting off the ear, which was the penalty for denying his master, and also for making an aggravated assault on a member of the upper class of free men. But it is clear that on the whole the slave was well looked after. He was also not condemned to remain perpetually a slave, for while still in his master's service it was possible for him, under certain conditions, to acquire property of his own, and if he did so he was able with his master's consent to purchase his freedom. If a slave were captured by the enemy and taken to a foreign land and sold, and were then brought back by his new owner to his own country, he could claim his liberty without having to pay any purchase-money to either of his masters.

The code of Hammurabi also contains detailed regulations concerning the duties of debtors and creditors, and it throws an interesting light on the commercial life of the Babylonians at this early period. For instance, it reveals the method by which a wealthy man, or a merchant, extended his business and obtained large profits by trading with other towns. This he did by employing agents who were under certain fixed obligations to him, but acted independently so far as their trading was concerned. From the merchant these agents would receive money or grain or wool or oil or any sort of goods wherewith to trade, and in return they paid a fixed share of their profits, retaining the remainder as the recompense for their own services. They were thus the earliest of commercial travellers. In order to prevent fraud between the merchant and the agent special regulations were framed for the dealings they had with one another. Thus, when the agent received from the merchant the money or goods to trade with, it was enacted that he should at the time of the transaction give a properly executed receipt for the amount he had received. Similarly, if the agent gave the merchant money in return for the goods he had received and in token of his good faith, the merchant had to give a receipt to the agent, and in reckoning their accounts after the agent's return from his journey, only such amounts as were specified in the receipts were to be regarded as legal obligations. If the agent forgot to obtain his proper receipt he did so at his own risk.



Dating from the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon.

Travelling at this period was attended with some risk, as it is in the East at the present day, and the caravan with which an agent travelled was liable to attack from brigands, or it might be captured by enemies of the country from which it set out. It was right that loss from this cause should not be borne by the agent, who by trading with the goods was risking his own life, but should fall upon the merchant who had merely advanced the goods and was safe in his own city. It is plain, however, that disputes frequently arose in consequence of the loss of goods through a caravan being attacked and robbed, for the code states clearly the responsibility of the merchant in the matter. If in the course of his journey an enemy had forced the agent to give up some of the goods he was carrying, on his return the agent had to specify the amount on oath, and he was then acquitted of all responsibility in the matter. If he attempted to cheat his employer by misappropriating the money or goods advanced to him, on being convicted of the offence before the elders of the city, he was obliged to repay the merchant three times the amount he had taken. On the other hand, if the merchant attempted to defraud his agent by denying that the due amount had been returned to him, he was obliged on conviction to pay the agent six times the amount as compensation. It will thus be seen that the law sought to protect the agent from the risk of being robbed by his more powerful employer.

The merchant sometimes furnished the agent with goods which he was to dispose of in the best markets he could find in the cities and towns along his route, and sometimes he would give the agent money with which to purchase goods in foreign cities for sale on his return. If the venture proved successful the merchant and his agent shared the profits between them, but if the agent made bad bargains he had to refund to the merchant the value of the goods he had received; if the merchant had not agreed to risk losing any profit, the amount to be refunded to him was fixed at double the value of the goods advanced.



This last enactment gives an indication of the immense profits which were obtained by both the merchant and the agent from this system of foreign trade, for it is clear that what was regarded fair profit for the merchant was double the value of the goods disposed of. The profits of a successful journey would also include a fair return to the agent for the trouble and time involved in his undertaking. Many of the contract tablets of this early period relate to such commercial journeys, which show that various bargains were made between the different parties interested, and sometimes such contracts, or partnerships, were entered into, not for a single journey only, but for long periods. We may therefore conclude that at the time of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and probably for long centuries before that period, the great trade-routes of the East were crowded with traffic. With the exception that donkeys and asses were employed for beasts of burden and were not supplemented by horses and camels until a much later period, a camping-ground in the desert on one of the great trade-routes must have presented a scene similar to that of a caravan camping in the desert at the present day.



The rough tracks beaten by the feet of men and beasts are the same to-day as they were in that remote period. We can imagine a body of these early travellers approaching a walled city at dusk and hastening their pace to get there before the gates were shut. Such a picture as that of the approach to the city of Samarra, with its mediaeval walls, may be taken as having had its counterpart in many a city of the early Babylonians. The caravan route leads through the desert to the city gate, and if we substitute two massive temple towers for the domes of the mosques that rise above the wall, little else in the picture need be changed.



A small caravan is here seen approaching the city at sunset before the gates are shut. Samarra was only founded in A. D. 834, by the Khalif el-Motasim, the son of Harun er-Rashid, but customs in the East do not change, and the photograph may be used to illustrate the approach of an early Babylonian caravan to a walled city of the period.

The houses, too, at this period must have resembled the structures of unburnt brick of the present day, with their flat mud tops, on which the inmates sleep at night during the hot season, supported on poles and brushwood. The code furnishes evidence that at that time, also, the houses were not particularly well built and were liable to fall, and, in the event of their doing so, it very justly fixes the responsibility upon the builder. It is clear from the penalties for bad workmanship enforced upon the builder that considerable abuses had existed in the trade before the time of Hammurabi, and it is not improbable that the enforcement of the penalties succeeded in stamping them out. Thus, if a builder built a house for a man, and his work was not sound and the house fell and crushed the owner so that he died, it was enacted that the builder himself should be put to death. If the fall of the house killed the owner's son, the builder's own son was to be put to death.



If one or more of the owner's slaves were killed, the builder had to restore him slave for slave. Any damage which the owner's goods might have suffered from the fall of the house was to be made good by the builder. In addition to these penalties the builder was obliged to rebuild the house, or any portion of it that had fallen through not being properly secured, at his own cost. On the other hand, due provisions were made for the payment of the builder for sound work; and as the houses of the period rarely, if ever, consisted of more than one story, the scale of payment was fixed by the area of ground covered by the building.



Situated on the right bank of the Tigris opposite the mounds which mark the site of the ancient city of Nineveh. The flat-roof ednouses which may be distinguished in the photograph are very similar in form and construction to those employed by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians.

From the code of Hammurabi we also gain considerable information with regard to agricultural pursuits in ancient Babylonia, for elaborate regulations are given concerning the landowner's duties and responsibilities, and his relations to his tenants. The usual practice in hiring land for cultivation was for the tenant to pay his rent in kind, by assigning a certain proportion of the crop, generally a third or a half, to the owner. If a tenant hired certain land for cultivation he was bound to till it and raise a crop, and should he neglect to do so he had to pay the owner what was reckoned as the average rent of the land, and he had also to break up the land and plough it before handing it back. As the rent of a field was usually reckoned at harvest, and its amount depended on the size of the crop, it was only fair that damage to the crop from flood or storm should not be made up by the tenant; thus it was enacted by the code that any loss from such a cause should be shared equally by the owner of the field and the farmer, though if the latter had already paid his rent at the time the damage occurred he could not make a claim for repayment.



Built on one of the mounds marking the site of the Assyrian city of Nineveh. The mosque in the photograph is built over the traditional site of the prophet Jonah's tomb. The flat- roofed houses of the modern dwellers on the mound can be well seen in the picture.

It is clear from the enactments of the code that disputes were frequent, not only between farmers and landowners, but also between farmers and shepherds. It is certain that the latter, in the attempt to find pasture for the flocks, often allowed their sheep to feed off the farmers' fields in the spring. This practice the code set itself to prevent by fixing a scale of compensation to be paid by any shepherd who caused his sheep to graze on cultivated land without the owner's consent. If the offence was committed in the early spring, when the crop was still small, the farmer was to harvest the crop and receive a considerable price in kind as compensation for the shepherd. But if it occurred later on in the spring, when the sheep had been brought in from the meadows and turned into the great common field at the city gate, the offence would less probably be due to accident and the damage to the crop would be greater. In these circumstances the shepherd had to take over the crop and pay the farmer very heavily for his loss.



From a stone slab in the British Museum.

The planting of gardens and orchards was encouraged, and a man was allowed to use a field for this purpose without paying a yearly rent. He might plant it and tend it for four years, and in the fifth year of his tenancy the original owner of the field took half of the garden in payment, while the other half the planter of the garden kept for himself. If a bare patch had been left in the garden it was to be reckoned in the planter's half. Regulations were framed to ensure the proper carrying out of the planting, for if the tenant neglected to do this during the first four years, he was still liable to plant the plot he had taken without receiving his half, and he had to pay the owner compensation in addition, which varied in amount according to the original condition of the land. If a man hired a garden, the rent he paid to the owner was fixed at two-thirds of its produce. Detailed regulations are also given in the code concerning the hire of cattle and asses, and the compensation to be paid to the owner for the loss or ill-treatment of his beasts. These are framed on the just principle that the hirer was responsible only for damage or loss which he could have reasonably prevented. Thus, if a lion killed a hired ox or ass in the open country, or if an ox was killed by lightning, the loss fell upon the owner and not on the man who hired the beast. But if the hirer killed the ox through carelessness or by beating it unmercifully, or if the beast broke its leg while in his charge, he had to restore another ox to the owner in place of the one he had hired. For lesser damages to the beast the hirer had to pay compensation on a fixed scale. Thus, if the ox had its eye knocked out during the period of its hire, the man who hired it had to pay to the owner half its value; while for a broken horn, the loss of the tail, or a torn muzzle, he paid a quarter of the value of the beast.

Fines were also levied for carelessness in looking after cattle, though in cases of damage or injury, where carelessness could not be proved, the owner of a beast was not held responsible. A bull might go wild at any time and gore a man, however careful and conscientious the owner might be, and in these circumstances the injured man could not bring an action against the owner. But if a bull had already gored a man, and, although it was known to be vicious, the owner had not blunted its horns or shut it up, in the event of its goring and killing a free man, he had to pay half a mana of silver. One-third of a mana was the price paid for a slave who was killed. A landed proprietor who might hire farmers to cultivate his fields inflicted severe fines for acts of dishonesty with regard to the cattle, provender, or seed-corn committed to their charge. If a man stole the provender for the cattle he had to make it good, and he was also liable to the punishment of having his hands cut off. In the event of his being convicted of letting out the oxen for hire, or stealing the seed-corn so that he did not produce a crop, he had to pay very heavy compensation, and, if he could not pay, he was liable to be torn to pieces by the oxen in the field he should have cultivated.

In a dry land like Babylonia, where little rain falls and that in only one season of the year, the irrigation of his fields forms one of the most important duties of the agriculturist. The farmer leads the water to his fields along small irrigation-canals or channels above the level of the soil, their sides being formed of banks of earth. It is clear that similar methods were employed by the early Babylonians. One such channel might supply the fields of several farmers, and it was the duty of each man through whose land the channel flowed to keep its banks on his land in repair. If he omitted to strengthen his bank or dyke, and the water forced a breach and flooded his neighbour's field, he had to pay compensation in kind for any crop that was ruined; while if he could not pay, he and his goods were sold, and his neighbours, whose fields had been damaged through his carelessness, shared the money.

The land of Babylonian farmers was prepared for irrigation before it was sown by being divided into a number of small square or oblong tracts, each separated from the others by a low bank of earth, the seed being afterwards sown within the small squares or patches. Some of the banks running lengthwise through the field were made into small channels, the ends of which were carried up to the bank of the nearest main irrigation canal. No system of gates or sluices was employed, and when the farmer wished to water one of his fields he simply broke away the bank opposite one of his small channels and let the water flow into it. He would let the water run along this small channel until it reached the part of his land he wished to water. He then blocked the channel with a little earth, at the same time breaking down its bank so that the water flowed over one of the small squares and thoroughly soaked it. When this square was finished he filled up the bank and repeated the process for the next square, and so on until he had watered the necessary portion of the field. When this was finished he returned to the main channel and stopped the flow of the water by blocking up the hole he had made in the dyke. The whole process was, and to-day still is, extremely simple, but it needs care and vigilance, especially in the case of extensive irrigation when water is being carried into several parts of an estate at once. It will be obvious that any carelessness on the part of the irrigator in not shutting off the water in time may lead to extensive damage, not only to his own fields, but to those of his neighbours. In the early Babylonian period, if a farmer left the water running in his channel, and it flooded his neighbour's field and hurt his crop, he had to pay compensation according to the amount of damage done.

It was stated above that the irrigation-canals and little channels were made above the level of the soil so that the water could at any point be tapped and allowed to flow over the surrounding land; and in a flat country like Babylonia it will be obvious that some means had to be employed for raising the water from its natural level to the higher level of the land. As we should expect, reference is made in the Babylonian inscriptions to irrigation-machines, and, although their exact form and construction are not described, they must have been very similar to those employed at the present day. The modern inhabitants of Mesopotamia employ four sorts of contrivances for raising the water into their irrigation-channels; three of these are quite primitive, and are those most commonly employed. The method which gives the least trouble and which is used wherever the conditions allow is a primitive form of water-wheel. This can be used only in a river with a good current. The wheel is formed of rough boughs and branches nailed together, with spokes joining the outer rims to a roughly hewn axle. A row of rough earthenware cups or bottles are tied round the outer rim for picking up the water, and a few rough paddles are fixed so that they stick out beyond the rim. The wheel is then fixed in place near the bank of the river, its axle resting in pillars of rough masonry.



As the current turns the wheel, the bottles on the rim dip below the surface and are raised up full. At the top of the wheel is fixed a trough made by hollowing half the trunk of a date-palm, and into this the bottles pour their water, which is conducted from the trough by means of a small aqueduct into the irrigation-channel on the bank.

The convenience of the water-wheel will be obvious, for the water is raised without the labour of man or beast, and a constant supply is secured day and night so long as the current is strong enough to turn the wheel. The water can be cut off by blocking the wheel or tying it up. These wheels are most common on the Euphrates, and are usually set up where there is a slight drop in the river bed and the water runs swiftly over shallows. As the banks are very high, the wheels are necessarily huge contrivances in order to reach the level of the fields, and their very rough construction causes them to creak and groan as they turn with the current. In a convenient place in the river several of these are sometimes set up side by side, and the noise of their combined creakings can be heard from a great distance. Some idea of what one of these machines looks like can be obtained from the illustration. At Hit on the Euphrates a line of gigantic water-wheels is built across the river, and the noise they make is extraordinary.

Where there is no current to turn one of these wheels, or where the bank is too high, the water must be raised by the labour of man or beast. The commonest method, which is the one employed generally on the Tigris, is to raise it in skins, which are drawn up by horses, donkeys, or cattle. A recess with perpendicular sides is cut into the bank, and a wooden spindle on wooden struts is supported horizontally over the recess. A rope running over the spindle is fastened to the skin, while the funnel end of the skin is held up by a second rope, running over a lower spindle, until its mouth is opposite the trough into which the water is to be poured. The beasts which are employed for raising the skin are fastened to the ends of the ropes, and they get a good purchase for their pull by being driven down a short cutting or inclined plane in the bank. To get a constant flow of water, two skins are usually employed, and as one is drawn up full the other is let down empty.

The third primitive method of raising water, which is commoner in Egypt than in Mesopotamia at the present day, is the shadduf, and is worked by hand. It consists of a beam supported in the centre, at one end of which is tied a rope with a bucket or vessel for raising the water, and at the other end is fixed a counterweight.* On an Assyrian bas-relief found at Kuyunjik are representations of the shadduf in operation, two of them being used, the one above the other, to raise the water to successive levels. These were probably the contrivances usually employed by the early Babylonians for raising the water to the level of their fields, and the fact that they were light and easily removed must have made them tempting objects to the dishonest farmer. Hammurabi therefore fixed a scale of compensation to be paid to the owner by a detected thief, which varied according to the class and value of the machine he stole. The rivers and larger canals of Babylonia were used by the ancient inhabitants not only for the irrigation of their fields, but also as waterways for the transport of heavy materials. The recently published letters of Hammurabi and Abeshu' contain directions for the transportation of corn, dates, sesame seed, and wood, which were ordered to be brought in ships to Babylon, and the code of Hammurabi refers to the transportation by water of wool and oil. It is therefore clear that at this period considerable use was made of vessels of different size for conveying supplies in bulk by water. The method by which the size of such ships and barges was reckoned was based on the amount of grain they were capable of carrying, and this was measured by the gur, the largest measure of capacity. Thus mention is made in the inscriptions of vessels of five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, and seventy-five gur capacity. A boat-builder's fee for building a vessel of sixty gur was fixed at two shekels of silver, and it was proportionately less for boats of smaller capacity. To ensure that the boat-builder should not scamp his work, regulations were drawn up to fix on him the responsibility for unsound work. Thus if a boat-builder were employed to build a vessel, and he put faulty work into its construction so that it developed defects within a year of its being launched, he was obliged to strengthen and rebuild it at his own expense.

* The fourth class of machine for raising water employed in Mesopotamia at the present day consists of an endless chain of iron buckets running over a wheel. This is geared by means of rough wooden cogs to a horizontal wheel, the spindle of which has long poles fixed to it, to which horses or cattle are harnessed. The beasts go round in a circle and so turn the machine. The contrivance is not so primitive as the three described above, and the iron buckets are of European importation.

The hire of a boatman was fixed at six gur of corn to be paid him yearly, but it is clear that some of the larger vessels carried crews commanded by a chief boatman, or captain, whose pay was probably on a larger scale. If a man let his boat to a boatman, the latter was responsible for losing or sinking it, and he had to replace it. A boatman was also responsible for the safety of his vessel and of any goods, such as corn, wool, oil, or dates, which he had been hired to transport, and if they were sunk through his carelessness he had to make good the loss. If he succeeded in refloating the boat after it had been sunk, he was only under obligation to pay the owner half its value in compensation for the damage it had sustained. In the case of a collision between two vessels, if one was at anchor at the time, the owner of the other vessel had to pay compensation for the boat that was sunk and its cargo, the owner of the latter estimating on oath the value of what had been sunk. Boats were also employed as ferries, and they must have resembled the primitive form of ferry-boat in use at the present day, which is heavily built of huge timbers, and employed for transporting beasts as well as men across a river.



Employed for ferrying caravans across the river.

There is evidence that under the Assyrians rafts floated on inflated skins were employed for the transport of heavy goods, and these have survived in the keleks of the present day. They are specially adapted for the transportation of heavy materials, for they are carried down by the current, and are kept in the course by means of huge sweeps or oars. Being formed only of logs of wood and skins, they are not costly, for wood is plentiful in the upper reaches of the rivers. At the end of their journey, after the goods are landed, they are broken up. The wood is sold at a profit, and the skins, after being deflated, are packed on to donkeys to return by caravan.



It is not improbable that such rafts were employed on the Tigris and the Euphrates from the earliest periods of Chaldaean history, though boats would have been used on the canals and more sluggish waterways.

In the preceding pages we have given a sketch of the more striking aspects of early Babylonian life, on which light has been thrown by recently discovered documents belonging to the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon. We have seen that, in the code of laws drawn up by Hammurabi, regulations were framed for settling disputes and fixing responsibilities under almost every condition and circumstance which might arise among the inhabitants of the country at that time; and the question naturally arises as to how far the code of laws was in actual operation.



It is conceivable that the king may have held admirable convictions, but have been possessed of little power to carry them out and to see that his regulations were enforced. Luckily, we have not to depend on conjecture for settling the question, for Hammurabi's own letters which are now preserved in the British Museum afford abundant evidence of the active control which the king exercised over every department of his administration and in every province of his empire. In the earlier periods of history, when each city lived independently of its neighbours and had its own system of government, the need for close and frequent communication between them was not pressing, but this became apparent as soon as they were welded together and formed parts of an extended empire. Thus in the time of Sargon of Agade, about 3800 B.C., an extensive system of royal convoys was established between the principal cities. At Telloh the late M. de Sarzec came across numbers of lumps of clay bearing the seal impressions of Sargon and of his son Naram-Sin, which had been used as seals and labels upon packages sent from Agade to Shirpurla. In the time of Dungi, King of Ur, there was a constant interchange of officials between the various cities of Babylonia and Elam, and during the more recent diggings at Telloh there have been found vouchers for the supply of food for their sustenance when stopping at Shirpurla in the course of their journeys. In the case of Hammurabi we have recovered some of the actual letters sent by the king himself to Sin-idinnam, his local governor in the city of Larsam, and from them we gain considerable insight into the principles which guided him in the administration of his empire.

The letters themselves, in their general characteristics, resembled the contract tablets of the period which have been already described. They were written on small clay tablets oblong in shape, and as they were only three or four inches long they could easily be carried about the person of the messenger into whose charge they were delivered. After the tablet was written it was enclosed in a thin envelope of clay, having been first powdered with dry clay to prevent its sticking to the envelope. The name of the person for whom the letter was intended was written on the outside of the envelope, and both it and the tablet were baked hard to ensure that they should not be broken on their travels. The recipient of the letter, on its being delivered to him, broke the outer envelope by tapping it sharply, and it then fell away in pieces, leaving the letter and its message exposed. The envelopes were very similar to those in which the contract tablets of the period were enclosed, of which illustrations have already been given, their only difference being that the text of the tablet was not repeated on the envelope, as was the case with the former class of documents.

The royal letters that have been recovered throw little light on military affairs and the prosecution of campaigns, for, being addressed to governors of cities and civil officials, most of them deal with matters affecting the internal administration of the empire. One letter indeed contains directions concerning the movements of two hundred and forty soldiers of "the King's Company" who had been stationed in Assyria, and another letter mentions certain troops who were quartered in the city of Ur. A third deals with the supply of clothing and oil for a section of the Babylonian army, and troops are also mentioned as having formed the escort for certain goddesses captured from the Elamites; while directions are sent to others engaged in a campaign upon the Elamite frontier. The letter which contains directions for the safe escort of the captured Elamite goddesses, and the one ordering the return of these same goddesses to their own shrines, show that foreign deities, even when captured from an enemy, were treated by the Babylonians with the same respect and reverence that was shown by them to their own gods and goddesses. Hammurabi gave directions in the first letter for the conveyance of the goddesses to Babylon with all due pomp and ceremony, sheep being supplied for sacrifice upon the journey, and their usual rites being performed by their own temple-women and priestesses. The king's voluntary restoration of the goddesses to their own country may have been due to the fact that, after their transference to Babylon, the army of the Babylonians suffered defeat in Elam. This misfortune would naturally have been ascribed by the king and the priests to the anger of the Elamite goddesses at being detained in a foreign land, and Hammurabi probably arrived at his decision that they should be escorted back in the hope of once more securing victory for the Babylonian arms.

The care which the king exercised for the due worship of his own gods and the proper supply of their temples is well illustrated from the letters that have been recovered, for he superintended the collection of the temple revenues, and the herdsmen and shepherds attached to the service of the gods sent their reports directly to him. He also took care that the observances of religious rites and ceremonies were duly carried out, and on one occasion he postponed the hearing of a lawsuit concerning the title to certain property which was in dispute, as it would have interfered with the proper observance of a festival in the city of Ur. The plaintiff in the suit was the chief of the temple bakers, and it was his duty to superintend the preparation of certain offerings for the occasion. In order that he should not have to leave his duties, the king put off the hearing of the case until after the festival had been duly celebrated. The king also exercised a strict control over the priests themselves, and received reports from the chief priests concerning their own subordinates, and it is probable that the royal sanction was obtained for all the principal appointments. The guild of soothsayers was an important religious class at this time, and they also were under the king's direct control. A letter written by Ammiditana, one of the later kings of the First Dynasty, to three high officials of the city of Sippar, contains directions with regard to certain duties to be carried out by the soothsayers attached to the service of the city, and indicates the nature of their functions. Ammiditana wrote to the officials in question, stating that there was a scarcity of corn in the city of Shagga, and he therefore ordered them to send a supply thither. But before the corn was brought into the city they were told to consult the soothsayers, who were to divine the future and ascertain whether the omens were favourable. If they proved to be so, the corn was to be brought in. We may conjecture that the king took this precaution, as he feared the scarcity of corn in Shagga was due to the anger of some local deity or spirit, and that, if this were the case, the bringing in of the corn would only lead to fresh troubles. This danger it was the duty of the soothsayers to prevent.

Another class of the priesthood, which we may infer was under the king's direct control, was the astrologers, whose duty it probably was to make reports to the king of the conjunctions of the heavenly bodies, with a view to ascertaining whether they portended good or evil to the state. No astrological reports written in this early period have been recovered, but at a later period under the Assyrian empire the astrologers reported regularly to the king on such matters, and it is probable that the practice was one long established. One of Hammurabi's letters proves that the king regulated the calendar, and it is legitimate to suppose that he sought the advice of his astrologers as to the times when intercalary months were to be inserted. The letter dealing with the calendar was written to inform Sin-idinnam, the governor of Larsam, that an intercalary month was to be inserted. "Since the year (i.e. the calendar) hath a deficiency," he writes, "let the month which is now beginning be registered as a second Elul," and the king adds that this insertion of an extra month will not justify any postponement in the payment of the regular tribute due from the city of Larsam, which had to be paid a month earlier than usual to make up for the month that was inserted. The intercalation of additional months was due to the fact that the Babylonian months were lunar, so that the calendar had to be corrected at intervals to make it correspond to the solar year.

From the description already given of the code of laws drawn up by Hammurabi it will have been seen that the king attempted to incorporate and arrange a set of regulations which should settle any dispute likely to arise with regard to the duties and privileges of all classes of his subjects. That this code was not a dead letter, but was actively administered, is abundantly proved by many of the letters of Hammurabi which have been recovered. From these we learn that the king took a very active part in the administration of justice in the country, and that he exercised a strict supervision, not only over the cases decided in the capital, but also over those which were tried in the other great cities and towns of Babylonia. Any private citizen was entitled to make a direct appeal to the king for justice, if he thought he could not obtain it in his local court, and it is clear from Hammurabi's letters that he always listened to such an appeal and gave it adequate consideration. The king was anxious to stamp out all corruption on the part of those who were invested with authority, and he had no mercy on any of his officers who were convicted of taking bribes. On one occasion when he had been informed of a case of bribery in the city of Dur-gurgurri, he at once ordered the governor of the district in which Dur-gurgurri lay to investigate the charge and send to Babylon those who were proved to be guilty, that they might be punished. He also ordered that the bribe should be confiscated and despatched to Babylon under seal, a wise provision which must have tended to discourage those who were inclined to tamper with the course of justice, while at the same time it enriched the state. It is probable that the king tried all cases of appeal in person when it was possible to do so. But if the litigants lived at a considerable distance from Babylon, he gave directions to his local officials on the spot to try the case. When he was convinced of the justice of any claim, he would decide the case himself and send instructions to the local authorities to see that his decision was duly carried out. It is certain that many disputes arose at this period in consequence of the extortions of money-lenders. These men frequently laid claim in a fraudulent manner to fields and estates which they had received in pledge as security for seed-corn advanced by them. In cases where fraud was proved Hammurabi had no mercy, and summoned the money-lender to Babylon to receive punishment, however wealthy and powerful he might be.

A subject frequently referred to in Hammurabi's letters is the collection of revenues, and it is clear that an elaborate system was in force throughout the country for the levying and payment of tribute to the state by the principal cities of Babylonia, as well as for the collection of rent and revenue from the royal estates and from the lands which were set apart for the supply of the great temples. Collectors of both secular and religious tribute sent reports directly to the king, and if there was any deficit in the supply which was expected from a collector he had to make it up himself; but the king was always ready to listen to and investigate a complaint and to enforce the payment of tribute or taxes so that the loss should not fall upon the collector. Thus, in one of his letters Hammurabi informs the governor of Larsam that a collector named Sheb-Sin had reported to him, saying "Enubi-Marduk hath laid hands upon the money for the temple of Bit-il-kittim (i.e. the great temple of the Sun-god at Larsam) which is due from the city of Dur-gurgurri and from the (region round about the) Tigris, and he hath not rendered the full sum; and Gimil-Marduk hath laid hands upon the money for the temple of Bit-il-kittim which is due from the city.of Rakhabu and from the region round about that city, and he hath not (paid) the full amount. But the palace hath exacted the full sum from me." It is probable that both Enubi-Marduk and Gimil-Marduk were money-lenders, for we know from another letter that the former had laid claim to certain property on which he had held a mortgage, although the mortgage had been redeemed. In the present case they had probably lent money or seed-corn to certain cultivators of land near Dur-gurgurri and Rakhabu and along the Tigris, and in settlement of their claims they had seized the crops and had, moreover, refused to pay to the king's officer the proportion of the crops that was due to the state as taxes upon the land. The governor of Larsam, the principal city in the district, had rightly, as the representative of the palace (i.e. the king), caused the tax-collector to make up the deficiency, but Hammurabi, on receiving the subordinate officer's complaint, referred the matter back to the governor. The end of the letter is wanting, but we may infer that Hammurabi condemned the defaulting money-lenders to pay the taxes due, and fined them in addition, or ordered them to be sent to the capital for punishment.

On another occasion Sheb-Sin himself and a second tax-collector named Sin-mushtal appear to have been in fault and to have evaded coming to Babylon when summoned thither by the king. It had been their duty to collect large quantities of sesame seed as well as taxes paid in money. When first summoned, they had made the excuse that it was the time of harvest and they would come after the harvest was over. But as they did not then make their appearance, Hammurabi wrote an urgent letter insisting that they should be despatched with the full amount of the taxes due, in the company of a trustworthy officer who would see that they duly arrived at the capital.

Tribute on flocks and herds was also levied by the king, and collectors or assessors of the revenue were stationed in each district, whose duty it was to report any deficit in the revenue accounts. The owners of flocks and herds were bound to bring the young cattle and lambs that were due as tribute to the central city of the district in which they dwelt, and they were then collected into large bodies and added to the royal flocks and herds; but, if the owners attempted to hold back any that were due as tribute, they were afterwards forced to incur the extra expense and trouble of driving the beasts to Babylon. The flocks and herds owned by the king and the great temples were probably enormous, and yielded a considerable revenue in themselves apart from the tribute and taxes due from private owners. Shepherds and herdsmen were placed in charge of them, and they were divided into groups under chief shepherds, who arranged the districts in which the herds and flocks were to be grazed, distributing them when possible along the banks and in the neighbourhood of rivers and canals which would afford good pasturage and a plentiful supply of water. The king received reports from the chief shepherds and herdsmen, and it was the duty of the governors of the chief cities and districts of Babylonia to make tours of inspection and see that due care was taken of the royal flocks and sheep. The sheep-shearing for all the flocks that were pastured near the capital took place in Babylon, and the king used to send out summonses to his chief shepherds to inform them of the day when the shearing would take place; and it is probable that the governors of the other great cities sent out similar orders to the shepherds of flocks under their charge. Royal and priestly flocks were often under the same chief officer, a fact which shows the very strict control the king exercised over the temple revenues.

The interests of the agricultural population were strictly looked after by the king, who secured a proper supply of water for purposes of irrigation by seeing that the canals and waterways were kept in a proper state of repair and cleaned out at regular intervals. There is also evidence that nearly every king of the First Dynasty of Babylon cut new canals, and extended the system of irrigation and transportation which had been handed down to him from his fathers. The draining of the marshes and the proper repair of the canals could only be carried out by careful and continuous supervision, and it was the duty of the local governors to see that the inhabitants of villages and owners of land situated on the banks of a canal should keep it in proper order. When this duty had been neglected complaints were often sent to the king, who gave orders to the local governor to remedy the defect. Thus on one occasion it had been ordered that a canal at Erech which had silted up should be deepened, but the dredging had not been carried out thoroughly, so that the bed of the canal soon silted up again and boats were prevented from entering the city. In these circumstances Hammurabi gave pressing orders that the obstruction was to be removed and the canal made navigable within three days.

Damage was often done to the banks of canals by floods which followed the winter rains, and a letter of Abeshu' gives an interesting account of a sudden rise of the water in the Irnina canal so that it overflowed its banks. The king was building a palace at the city of Kar-Irnina, which was supplied by the Irnina canal, and every year it was possible to put so much work into the building. But one year, when little more than a third of the year's work was done, the building operations were stopped by flood, the canal having overflowed its banks so that the water rose right up to the wall of the town. In return for the duty of keeping the canals in order, the villagers along the banks had the privilege of fishing in its waters in the portion which was in their charge, and any poaching by other villagers in this part of the stream was strictly forbidden. On one occasion, in the reign of Samsu-iluna, Hammurabi's son and successor, the fishermen of the district of Rabim went down in their boats to the district of Shakanim and caught fish there contrary to the law. So the inhabitants of Shakanim complained of this poaching to the king, who sent a palace official to the authorities of Sippar, near which city the districts in question lay, with orders to inquire into the matter and take steps to prevent all such poaching for the future.

The regulation of transportation on the canals was also under the royal jurisdiction. The method of reckoning the size of ships has already been described, and there is evidence that the king possessed numerous vessels of all sizes for the carrying of grain, wool, and dates, as well as for the wood and stone employed in his building operations. Each ship seems to have had its own crew, under the command of a captain, and it is probable that officials who regulated the transportation from the centres where they were stationed were placed in charge of separate sections of the rivers and of the canals.