Chapter 3

Winged Bull or House-Guardian

Winged Bull or House-Guardian.

Sacred books and ritual.—Along with the growth of the official religion went the growth and completion of the Chaldaean Bible and Prayer-book. The festivals of the gods were numerous; the ceremonies to be performed by the priests were more numerous still. The ceremonies were usually accompanied by the recitation of one or more hymns; these hymns were written in Sumerian, which had now become the sacred language of Chaldaea just as Latin is the sacred language of the Roman Church, and since Sumerian was no longer understood by the majority of the people they were provided with interlinear translations into Semitic Babylonian. From time to time the pronunciation of the old Sumerian words was indicated, for just as it was needful that the inspired words should be handed down without the slightest alteration, so also was it needful that they should be pronounced aright. An error even in pronunciation was supposed to invalidate the ceremony. Among the hymns is a collection of penitential psalms of which the following lines will give some idea:—

'O lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!O my god, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!O my goddess, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!

'O lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!

O my god, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!

O my goddess, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!

The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me;God in the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me.The goddess has been violent against me, and has put me to grief.

The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me;

God in the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me.

The goddess has been violent against me, and has put me to grief.

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.To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer.

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.

To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer.

O my god, seven times seven are my transgressions: forgive my sins!'

The Priests.—The existence of a hierarchy of gods, of a Bible, and of a Prayer-book implies the existence of a priesthood. The sorcerer of prehistoric times became the priest of later Babylonia. The priests were distinguished into several classes. At the head came the High-priest who was often the monarch; in Assyria indeed this was commonly the case. Subordinate to him were other high-priests, and under them again the 'anointers' (who cleansed the sacred vessels of the sanctuary), the priests of Istar and the 'elders.' By the side of them stood the 'prophets' (asipi) under a 'chief.' The prophets could predict the future and were consulted on matters of state. We hear of armies being accompanied by them into the field, and when Assur-bani-pal suppressed the revolt of the Babylonians 'by the command of the prophets,' he says, 'I purified their shrines and cleansed their chief places of prayer. The angry gods and wrathful goddesses I soothed with supplications and penitential psalms. I restored and established in peace their daily sacrifices which they had discontinued.'

The Temples.—The temples were provided with towers which served for the observation of the stars, and stood within large courts. In the shrine was a 'mercy-seat' whereon the god 'seated himself' on certain occasions. At Balawât near Nineveh the mercy-seat had the form of a coffer or ark, in which two written tables of stone were placed. In front of it stood the altar approached by steps. In the court was a 'sea' or large basin of water, which like that of Solomon was, in one case at all events, supported on bulls of bronze. The images of the gods were almost invariably of human form.

Astro-theology.—The prominence given to the study of astronomy had much to do with giving Babylonian religion an astral character. The stars were worshipped; Istar herself was originally the evening star, and most of the principal deities were identified with the planets and chief fixed stars. The importance of the stars for the regulation of the calendar, moreover, kept them constantly before the eyes of the priests. But whether Babylonian astrotheology was not really primitive or whether it went back to the pre-Semitic period we do not yet know.

Sacrifices and offerings.—Sacrifices were offered to the stars, as to the other divinities. Besides the sacrifices, offerings were also made of meal, dates, oil, and wine. The sacrifices and offerings must have been numerous since in the larger temples there was not only 'the daily sacrifice' but also constant services both by day and night. On the great festivals, moreover, there were services of a special character, as also when days of thanksgiving or humiliation were ordained. The sacrifices and offerings were provided partly by endowments, partly by voluntary gifts (sometimes calledkurbanni, the Hebrewkorban), partly by obligatory contributions, the most important of which were the 'tithes.'

The Sabbath.—Besides the festivals of the gods there was asabattuor 'Sabbath,' observed on the 9th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th day of the month, on which various kinds of work were forbidden to be done. Food even was not allowed to be cooked, or medicine to be taken. Thesabattuis described as 'a day of rest for the heart,' and a 'free-will offering' had to be made in the night of it.

Monotheistic tendency.—Among the educated classes religious feeling seems to have been fervent, and at times the language used approaches that of monotheism. Thus in an early hymn to the Moon-god which was composed in the city of Ur, we read:—

'Father, long-suffering and full of forgiveness, whose hand upholds 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!'

'Father, long-suffering and full of forgiveness, whose hand upholds 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!'

So, again, Nebuchadrezzar prays as follows to Bel-Merodach:—

'O prince, thou art from everlasting, lord of all that exists, for the king whom thou lovest, whom thou callest by name, as it seems good to 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 to thee, since thou maintainest my life.'

The future life.—The mass of the people, however, were sunk in the grossest superstition, and the future to which they looked forward was sufficiently dreary. Hades lay beneath the earth, where the spirits of the dead flitted about like bats in darkness with dust only for their food. A happier lot was reserved for the few, and a prayer is made for an Assyrian king that after death he should ascend to 'the land of the silver sky.'

Cosmology.—In early Sumerian days the heaven was believed to rest on the peak of 'the mountain of the world,' in the far north-east, where the gods had their habitations (cf. Isa. xiv. 13), while an ocean or 'deep' encircled the earth which rested upon its surface. With the progress of knowledge truer ideas of geography came to prevail. The later cosmogony is represented in the first tablet of the Creation story where the old gods are resolved into cosmical elements. The 'deep' is said to have been 'the generator' of the heavens and the earth, 'Mummu-Tiamat' (the chaos of the sea) being 'the mother of them all.... At that time the gods had not appeared.... Then the [great] gods were created, Lakhmu and Lakhamu issued forth the first.' Next came the creation of An-sar and Ki-sar, 'the upper' and 'lower firmament,' who in their turn gave birth to Anu, Ea, and Bel. The struggle between Merodach, the god of light and order, with Tiamat, the dragon of darkness, chaos, and evil, occupied a prominent place in the Epic of the Creation. Along with Tiamat there were ranged in battle the evil creatures of night and destruction, most of whom had composite forms. The belief in them had been inherited from the age of Shamanism, and they were regarded as the products of a first and imperfect creation. Some of them came to symbolize the powers of darkness, others were transported to the skies, certain of the allies of Tiamat being the Zodiacal animals, while out of the skin of Tiamat Merodach constructed the heaven itself. In the Epic Tiamat is identified with the source of the fountains of the great deep.

CHAPTER V

BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN LITERATURE

Aids to the reading of the texts.—The origin of the cuneiform system of writing has been already described, as well as its chief peculiarities. We must now say something about the causes which have led to our being able to read an ordinary Assyrian text almost as easily as a page of the Old Testament.

(1) The 'determinatives' have already been mentioned which define so many words and names.

(2) The ideographs often prove a great assistance, as words of unknown meaning interchange with ideographs the signification of which is already known.

(3) The fact that the characters express syllables gives us the precise pronunciation of the words, and so enables us to read them with a certainty which is impossible in Hebrew or Phoenician where the vowels are not denoted in writing.

(4) Assyrian is a Semitic language, and the Semitic languages are as closely related to one another as are the Romanic languages (French, Italian, Spanish, &c.) in modern Europe. Consequently most of the words and grammatical forms found in Assyrian recur in one or other of the Semitic idioms.

(5) But above all, the Assyrian scribes themselves have provided us with the most abundant materials for interpreting the inscriptions.

The libraries.—The amount of Assyro-Babylonian literature already known is very large. If all the texts at present in the museums of Europe and America could be published, they would rival in extent the books of the Old Testament. Most of the texts are on tablets of clay and have come from the libraries of Nineveh and Babylonia. Every great Babylonian city had at least one library, and the Assyrian kings established other libraries in their own country in imitation of those of Babylonia. About two-thirds of the library of Nineveh, which was largely the creation of Assur-bani-pal, is now in the British Museum. Scribes were kept constantly at work there copying and re-editing old texts, and sometimes writing new ones. A considerable proportion of the texts was brought from Babylonia: a colophon attached to each tablet usually states from what library the text had originally come. The texts were carefully edited; when there was a lacuna in the original the scribe tells us so, and whether it was old or recent; also if the Babylonian character were one which he did not recognize he confesses that he could not read it. Besides the clay tablets, the libraries contained papyri which have now perished.

Varieties of literature.—The texts related to all the branches of knowledge studied at the time. Astronomy and astrology, mathematics, geography, medicine, law, history, religion, and mythology, private and public correspondence, mercantile transactions, political documents, the pseudo-science of omens, lists of beasts, birds, vegetables, and stones, are all represented in it, and last, but not least, philology. The necessity of translating and explaining the Sumerian texts doubtless gave philology so prominent a place. Under the head of philology come interlinear and parallel translations of Sumerian documents, together with commentaries and exercises, reading-books and grammars of the two languages, endless lists of characters with their phonetic values and significations, and numerous vocabularies partly bilingual, partly containing catalogues of Semitic synonyms. The decipherer thus has at his command a most elaborate system for learning the Assyrian and Sumerian languages compiled by the Assyrians themselves. Time after time the signification of a new word is given by its synonym or synonyms in the lexical lists, and words of uncertain meaning in Hebrew have more than once been settled by means of their Assyrian equivalents.

The texts autotypes.—The cuneiform texts further possess an advantage of which the student of the Old and New Testament Scriptures might well be envious. They are the autotypes of the scribes who wrote them for the libraries in the ruins of which they have been found. The texts have never passed through the hands of later copyists little acquainted with the language in which they were composed. The corruptions of the text, such as they are, go back to the scribes of Assur-bani-pal or Nebuchadrezzar, in some cases to the scribes even of the pre-Semitic period.

Part of an Assyrian Book

Part of an Assyrian Book.

Astronomy.—The great work on astronomy and astrology in seventy-two chapters or books was originally compiled for the library of Sargon of Accad. It contained chapters on the eclipses or conjunction of the sun and moon, on the planets, the fixed stars, and the comets, and proves that observations of the heavens had been made for a long while previous to its composition. The path of the sun through the signs of the Zodiac had already been mapped out: in fact the Zodiacal Signs owe their origin to the astronomers of Babylonia. At the time they were first named the vernal equinox began with Taurus.

Mathematics.—Among the mathematical treatises may be mentioned tables of cube and square roots from the library of Senkereh. The Babylonian system of notation resembled that of the Romans, but by an ingenious application of the sexagesimal system high numbers could be expressed in a very small number of figures.

Medicine and law.—The standard work on medicine was voluminous like that on astronomy. It contained a vast number of prescriptions for different diseases, which read very much like modern ones. Law occupied a large space in Babylonian and Assyrian life, and codes of law, which protected the slave as well as the woman, went back to Sumerian times. A considerable part of the law was based on cases which had already been decided by the judges. The judges were appointed by the king, and, at all events in a later age, were under a president. Important cases were heard before several judges at once; thus a case which was tried at Babylon inb.c.547 was heard before six judges and registered by their two clerks.

History and mythology.—Historical documents are numerous and include the lists of Assyrian eponyms, after whom the successive years were named, as well as of the dynasties of kings and the number of years each king reigned. Religious literature, however, was still more largely represented. As has been stated, a considerable portion of it consisted of hymns to the gods, psalms, and ritual texts. But there were also lists of the multitudinous deities and their temples, and more especially religious myths and legends. One of these described the visit of the goddess Istar to Hades in search of her dead husband Tammuz, the Sun-god, and told how she left some of her adornment at each of its seven gates, until at last she stood stripped and bare before the mistress of the Underworld, where the waters of life gush forth. In another the adventures of the first man Adapa are related, and how he was summoned to heaven to answer the charge of having broken the wings of the south-wind. We possess two fragments of this myth, the earlier part being written on a broken tablet which was found in the library of Nineveh, while the latter part of it has been found on one of the cuneiform documents discovered at Tel el-Amarna in Egypt, where it had been copied for Egyptian or Canaanite students some eight centuries before the library of Nineveh was in existence.

The Chaldaean epic and the Deluge.—One of the most famous of the legends is the Chaldaean account of the Deluge, which was discovered by George Smith in 1872. Its close resemblance to the Biblical account of the same event is well known. It embodied at least two earlier versions of the story, and in its present form is inserted as an episode in the great Epic of the Babylonian hero Gilgames. The Epic was composed by a certain Sin-liqi-unnini in twelve books, and was arranged on an astronomical principle, the subject of each book corresponding with the name of a Zodiacal sign. Thus the account of the Deluge is introduced into the eleventh book, which answers to Aquarius the eleventh sign of the Zodiac.

Gilgames, it was said, was the fated child of whom it had been prophesied that he would slay his grandfather. Though his mother had been confined in a tower, he was nevertheless born and conveyed to safety on the wings of an eagle. When grown to man's estate he saved Erech from the enemy and made it the seat of his dominion. He overthrew Khumbaba the tyrant of the forest of cedars, and found a friend and guide in the satyr Ea-bani. The goddess Istar wooed him in marriage, but he reproached her with the woes she had already brought on her hapless lovers and scorned her beauty. In revenge she besought Anu, her father, to create a winged bull, which should attack the hero. Gilgames, however, slew the bull and returned in triumph to Erech with his spoils. But misfortune fell upon him. Ea-bani was killed by the bite of a gad-fly, his soul rising up from the ground to the heaven of heroes, and Gilgames himself was smitten with a sore disease. To heal it he sailed beyond the mouth of the Euphrates and the river of death, and here conversed with Xisuthrus, the Chaldaean Noah, who, like Enoch, had been translated without seeing death. Xisuthrus told him the story of the Deluge, and instructed him how to cure his malady.

Epic of the Creation.—The Assyrian Epic of the Creation, the discovery of which was also due to George Smith, has already been alluded to. Its parallelism with the account of the Creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, was noticed from the first. The first tablet opens with a description of the deep or watery chaos, while the fifth tablet describes the appointment of the heavenly bodies for signs and for seasons, and in the seventh comes an account of the creation of the animals. The second and third tablets, however, and possibly the fourth, were occupied with the story of the struggle between Tiamat the dragon of darkness, and Merodach the Sun-god, which finds its echo in the Apocalypse (Rev. xii. 7-9). Out of the skin of Tiamat, Merodach formed the firmament which 'divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above it.' Other accounts of the Creation existed, which differed essentially from that of the Epic. Thus there was one that was written for the Library of Kutha and described an imperfect creation which foreshadowed as it were the present one. Mr. Pinches, again, has discovered a Sumerian legend of the origin of things which seems to have been current at Eridu. But in the Epic a considerable number of the older cosmological legends were embodied and combined, and a gloss of materialistic philosophy put upon them. It is this gloss which makes it difficult to believe that the Epic can be of much antiquity. The materials of which it is composed doubtless go back to an early period, but in its present form it belongs to an age when the deities of the old faith were resolved into philosophical abstractions and the forces of nature. At present, at all events, we have no reasons for thinking that it is earlier than the time of the Second Assyrian Empire.

Contract-Tablets

Contract-Tablets.

CHAPTER VI

SOCIAL LIFE

The Contract-tablets.—We have learnt a great deal about the social life of Babylonia and Assyria from the contract-tablets which have been found in enormous numbers in Babylonia. A few have also come from the library of Nineveh, relating for the most part to the sale and lease of house property. Some of them have Aramaic dockets attached to them, giving the names of the persons mentioned in the contract and the nature of its contents. These dockets serve to verify the method of cuneiform decipherment, and are an indication that in the time of Tiglath-pileser III and his successors Aramaic was the common language of trade.

Some of the Babylonian contract-tablets go back to the time of Khammurabi and his dynasty, and are in Sumerian. But the larger number are of much later date, and extend from the reign of Kandalanu, the predecessor of Nabopolassar, to that of Xerxes. For many years we have a continuous series of documents dated month by month in each year. A contract-tablet was often enclosed in an envelope of clay, on which its principal contents were inscribed. They were kept in large jars which answered to our modern safes.

Married Life.—From the contracts relating to matrimony we learn that polygamy was very rare, and that the wife enjoyed a considerable amount of independence. The dowry she brought with her on marriage had to be restored to her in case of divorce. Moreover the woman could act apart from her husband, entering into partnership, trading with her money and conducting law-suits in her own name. Inb.c.555 we find a father transferring all his property to his daughter, and reserving only the use of it during the rest of his life. On the other hand wives, like concubines, could sometimes be purchased, though in this case if the husband married again he stipulated that he would send his first wife back to her home along with a certain sum of money. Children could be adopted, and there was the utmost freedom as regards the devolution of property, which could be 'tied up' by will.

Burial.—The dead were buried after complete or partial cremation. With the exception of the kings they were interred in cemeteries outside the towns, tombs and tombstones being erected over them, with rivulets, which symbolized 'the water of life,' flowing at their side.

Slavery.—Slavery was an ancient institution, but the slave was protected by law as far back as the Sumerian period. In later times he could even appear as party to a suit, and could recover his freedom by manumission, by purchase, by proving that he had been unlawfully enslaved, or by his adoption into the family of a citizen. Slaves could be impressed into the royal service, so that in selling a slave it was usual to stipulate that the seller should be responsible for any trouble arising from such a cause. Poor parents sometimes sold their children into slavery, and the Sumerian law ordered a son who denied his father to be shorn and sold as a slave.

Lowness of Wages.—Few persons were so poor as not to be able to keep one slave at least. But the existence of slavery caused wages to be low, and lowered the character and position of the free labourer. Thus we find that a skilled labourer, like a coppersmith, received only sixqas(about 8-1/2 quarts) of flour for overlaying a chariot with a lining of copper, and that only 1s.6d.was paid for painting the stucco of a wall.

Property.—The tenure of a farm was of various kinds. Sometimes the property belonged half to the landlord, half to the tenant, the tenant doing all the work and handing the landlord's half of the produce to his agent. Sometimes while the tenant gave his work, the landlord provided him with carts, oxen, and other necessaries. At other times the tenant received only a third, a fourth, or even a tenth of the produce, besides paying a fixed rent of two-thirds of the dates gathered from the palms on the estate. The landlord could dismiss the tenant, who was also required to build the farm house if one did not already exist.

When house property or land was let or sold it was minutely described, and numerous witnesses to the deed of sale or lease were required. The length of the lease as well as the rent had to be stated, any transgression of the terms of the lease being punished with a severe fine. The tenant had to return the property in the state in which he found it. The rent of course depended on the size and value of the property, and could be paid half-yearly as well as three times a year. Houses, further, might be bought and sold through the intervention of an agent.

Taxes.—Taxation was probably heavy. In the time of Sennacherib, Nineveh had to pay the treasury 30 talents a year, while Carchemish was assessed at 100 talents. Taxes were also levied in kind, and there was anoctroiduty upon goods entering the town. The metal,—gold, silver, and bronze,—was measured out by weight, a coinage not making its appearance until late in Babylonian history, though, as in Egypt, rings of gold or silver, which took the place of coins, were used at an early time.

Prices.—The value of grain and dates necessarily varied from time to time. Under Nebuchadrezzar, the quart of sesame cost a little over a penny, in the twelfth year of Nabonidos it was a little less than 1-1/2d.In the seventh year of Nebuchadrezzar dates were about a halfpenny a quart, in his thirty-eighth year the quart was only 1/25 of a penny. In the reign of Cambyses a quart of corn cost 2-1/2d.

The prices of other things were higher. In the reign of Darius a lady sold 200 sheep for £135, in that of Nebuchadrezzar an ox, sacrificed in the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara, cost £2. We hear of asses sold for £7 10s., and £2, and of five casks of wine purchased for £1 10s.

Usury.—Deeds of partnership are common; so also are deeds relating to money-lending. The usurer, in fact, was a prominent person in the trading community of Babylonia. Under Nebuchadrezzar and his successors the usual rate of interest was 20 per cent., the interest being paid each month, though we also hear of 13-1/3 per cent. In concluding a bargain, it was usually stipulated that if the money were not paid by a specified date, interest should be paid upon it until it was paid in full.

The Army.—By the side of the commercial class stood a numerous body of military and civil officials. At the head of the Assyrian army was the Tartan (turtannu) or Commander-in-chief, and under him came a large staff of officers. The army itself was highly organized. In addition to the infantry and cavalry there were numerous chariots, in one of which the king rode when he commanded in person. In the time of Tiglath-pileser III, saddles, leathern drawers, and high boots were introduced for the cavalry, and a corps of slingers and pioneers was created by Sennacherib. The infantry were divided into heavy-armed and light-armed, many of the heavy-armed wearing coats of mail formed of metal scales sewn to a leather shirt. Helmets were largely used, as well as shields. The army carried with it on the march various engines for attacking the walls of a town—battering-rams, ladders, crow-bars, and the like—as well as tents. The royal tent was accompanied by a cooking and a dining-tent, and was elaborately furnished. We learn from the contract-tablets, that in the reign of Nabonidos, rather more than 2-1/2 bushels of wheat were furnished to each of the bowmen, while 54qas(75 quarts) of beer were provided on a particular day, 'for the troops which had marched from Babylon.'

Navy.—A fleet was kept in Babylonia, and the king had a State-barge on the Euphrates. The Assyrians, however, were not a naval people, and the biremes, employed by Sennacherib when he attacked the Chaldaean colony in the Persian Gulf, were built and manned by Phoenicians.

The Bureaucracy.—The prefects or satraps of the Assyrian provinces and subject cities were appointed by the king, like the military officers, and were responsible to him. A certain number of them were eligible for the post oflimmu, or eponym, after whom the year was named—an honour which they shared with the monarch. The office does not appear to have existed in Babylonia.

Among the tablets which have come from the library of Nineveh are some which contain long lists of Assyrian officials. They were a very numerous body, but we need mention only the Rab-shakeh (Rab-saki), 'chief of the princes,' or Vizier, the Rab-saris (Rab-sa-resi) or 'chief of the nobles,' and the Rab-mag (Rab-mugi) or 'chief physician.' The identification of the two last is due to Mr. Pinches.

The priests and judges have already been alluded to, as also the clerks or scribes, many of whom, at least in Babylonia, were also priests. Poets and musicians were attached to the court, and we hear of a grant of land being made to a court-poet, in Babylonia, for some verses in which he had doubtless flattered the king. Society, in short, was highly organized, and the principle of a subdivision of labour was fully understood.

In one important respect, however, the basis upon which society rested in Babylonia and in Assyria was different. The government of Babylonia was theocratic, that of Assyria was military. While Assyria with its bureaucratic centralization is an anticipation of imperial Rome, Babylonia with its theocratic constitution is an anticipation of papal Rome. The king was the adopted son of Bel, and his right to rule was based on the fact that Bel, the true lord and ruler of the State, had delegated to him his power.

APPENDIX

Assyrian Measures of Length.

Measures of Capacity[6].

Measures of Weight and Coinage.

The silver shekel was worth about 3s.

The Months of the Year.

Babylonian Kings.

Assyrian Kings.

High Priests of Assur.

Kings of Assyria.

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