Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs. A. H. Sayce

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СКАЧАТЬ one generation built upon the ruins of its predecessor. The houses and tombs were alike constructed of sun-dried bricks, which soon disintegrate and form a mound of dust. The age of a cemetery, like the age of a city, may accordingly be measured by the number of successive layers of building of which its mound or platform is composed. In Babylonia they are numerous, for the history of the country goes back to a remote past. Each city clustered round a temple, venerable for its antiquity as well as for its sanctity, and the cemetery which stood near it was consequently under the protection of its god. At Cutha the necropolis was so vast that Nergal, the god of the town, came to be known as the “lord of the dead.” But the cemeteries of other towns were also of enormous size. Western Asia had received its culture and the elements of its theology from Babylonia, and Babylonia consequently was a sacred land not only to the Babylonians themselves, but to [pg 066] all those who shared their civilization. The very soil was holy ground; Assyrians as well as Babylonians desired that their bodies should rest in it. Here they were in the charge, as it were, of Bel of Nippur or Merodach of Babylon, and within sight of the ancient sanctuaries in which those gods were worshipped. This explains in part the size of the cemeteries; the length of time during which they were used will explain the rest. As Dr. Peters says of each:4 “It is difficult to convey anything like a correct notion of the piles upon piles of human relics which there utterly astound the spectator. Excepting only the triangular space between the three principal ruins, the whole remainder of the platform, the whole space between the walls, and an unknown extent of desert beyond them, are everywhere filled with the bones and sepulchres of the dead. There is probably no other site in the world which can compare with Warka in this respect.”

      Babylonia is still a holy land to the people of Western Asia. The old feeling in regard to it still survives, and the bodies of the dead are still carried, sometimes for hundreds of miles, to be buried in its sacred soil. Mohammedan saints have taken the place of the old gods, and a Moslem chapel represents the temple of the past, but it is still to Babylonia that the corpse is borne, often covered by costly rugs which find their way in time to an American or European drawing-room. “The old order changes, giving place to new,” but the influence of Chaldean culture and religion is not yet past.

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Chapter IV. Slavery And The Free Laborer

       Table of Contents

      Slavery was part of the foundation upon which Babylonian society rested. But between slavery as it existed in the ancient oriental world and slavery in the Roman or modern world there was a great difference. The slave was often of the same race as his master, sometimes of the same nationality, speaking the same language and professing the same religion. He was regarded as one of the family, and was not infrequently adopted into it. He could become a free citizen and rise to the highest offices of state. Slavery was no bar to his promotion, nor did it imprint any stigma upon him. He was frequently a skilled artisan and even possessed literary knowledge. Between his habits and level of culture and those of his owners was no marked distinction, no prejudices to be overcome on account of his color, no conviction of his inferiority in race. He was brought up with the rest of the family to which he was considered to belong and was in hourly contact with them. Moreover, the large number of slaves had been captives in war. A reverse of fortune might consign their present masters to the same lot; history knew of instances in which master and slave had changed places [pg 068] with one another. There were some slaves, too, who were Babylonians by birth; the law allowed the parent to sell his child, the brother his sister, or the creditor his debtor under certain circumstances, and the old Sumerian legislation ordained that a son who denied his father should be shorn and sold as a slave. In times of famine or necessity a man even sold himself to be quit of a debt or to obtain the means of subsistence. A slave was always fed and clothed; the free laborer at times could get neither food nor clothing.

      There were three classes of slaves—those who were the property of a private individual, the serfs who were attached to the soil which they cultivated, and the temple slaves who had been dedicated to the service of the gods. Of the second class but few traces are found in Babylonia. Agriculture was carried on there either by free laborers, or by the slaves of the private land-owners. Where the land belonged to priests, it was of course usually the temple slaves who tilled it. What was the exact legal position of the Jews and other exiles who were transported to Babylonia by Nebuchadnezzar we do not know, but they were neither serfs nor slaves. The practice of transportation had been borrowed from Assyria, and under the Assyrian system the exiled population was treated as a colony. Israelites appear among the Assyrian officials in contracts of the second Assyrian empire, and Jewish names are found in the Babylonian contracts of the age of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors.

      The Babylonians were not a military people, and [pg 069] after the Kassite conquest their wars of aggression were not sufficiently numerous or extensive to provide them with a supply of captives who could be made into slaves. Slave-merchants are rarely, if ever, referred to in the Babylonian contract tablets, and the slaves must have been home-born, the children and descendants of those who had been slaves before them. In the age of Abraham it was doubtless different. Then the power of Babylonia extended throughout Western Asia, and the constant wars in the East and West must have filled the market with foreign captives. The white slaves brought from Kurdistan and the north were especially prized. Thus in the reign of Ammi-Zadok, the fourth successor of Khammurabi, some “white Kurdish slaves” were sold for 3 homers and 24⅔ qas of oil, which were valued at 20⅔ shekels, and in the time of his son Samsu-ditana “a white slave” from Suri or Northern Mesopotamia fetched as much as 20 shekels, or £3.

      The earliest code of Sumerian laws known to us takes the slave under its protection. It assumes the principle that the life of the slave is not absolutely at his master's disposal, and enacts that, if the slave is killed, beaten, maimed, or injured in health, the hand that has so offended shall pay each day a measure of wheat. This must mean that the payment shall be continued until the slave recovers from his ill-treatment. Light is thrown upon it by a later Babylonian law, according to which, if the services of a slave have been hired by a second person and the slave falls ill or is otherwise rendered incapable of [pg 070] work, the hirer is fined for as long a time as the illness or incapacity continues. The object of the law is clear. It was intended to prevent the slave from being overworked by one who had not, as it were, a family interest in him. It protected the slave and at the same time protected the master to whom he belonged.

      There are several instances of its application. Thus in the eighth year of Cyrus a slave named Nidinti was apprenticed for six years by his master and mistress to a certain Libludh in order that he might learn the trade of fulling. It was stipulated that he was to learn it thoroughly, and if at any time he was unable to work Libludh was to pay each day 3 qas (or about 4½ quarts) of wheat for his support. At the end of the period, when the trade had been learned, Libludh was to receive a cloth worth 4 shekels (12 s.) and hand over Nidinti to the service of the Sun-god of Sippara. In the same year another slave was apprenticed to the stone-cutter Quddâ, who was himself a slave and belonged to the heir-apparent, Cambyses. Quddâ undertook to teach his trade to the apprentice in four years, and if he failed to do so was to be fined 20 shekels. Six years earlier Qubtâ, the daughter of Iddina-Merodach, had given the slave of another person to a weaver for a period of five years, in order that he might be taught the art of weaving, at the same time agreeing to provide him with 1 qa (1⅗ quarts) of food each day and to pay his teacher something besides. If, however, he was incapacitated from learning, the weaver was required to pay a daily fine of half a “measure” of [pg 071] wheat, which we are told was the wage of the slave. Any infringement of the contract would be punished by a penalty of 20 manehs.

      The slave was able to apprentice himself without the intervention of his owners. Thus in the sixth year of Cyrus one slave apprenticed himself of his own accord to another in order to learn a trade. In this case also the penalty for not being taught the trade was half a “measure” of wheat each day, which is again stated to be the wage of the slave. The wage, however, СКАЧАТЬ