Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs by Archibald Henry Sayce (animal farm read TXT) 📖

destroyed. 540 550 10 gur , 2 Each 20 Arad-Bel.
pi , 29 gur is
qa , of worth 130
which 3 gur .
gur are
destroyed.

The cadastral survey for purposes of taxation went back to an early period of Babylonian history. It was already at work in the age of Sargon of Akkad. The survey of the district or principality of Lagas (now Tello) which was drawn up in that remote epoch of history is in our hands, and is interesting on account of its reference to a "governor" of the land of the Amorites, or Canaan, who bears the Canaanitish name of Urimelech. The survey states that the district in question contained 39,694 acres, 1,325
sar , as well as 17 large towns and 8 subdivisions.

Another cadastral survey from Lagas, but of the period of Khammurabi, which has recently been published by Dr. Scheil, tells us that the towns on the lower banks of "the canal of Lagas" had to pay the treasury each year 35{~VULGAR FRACTION FIVE SIXTHS~} shekels of silver according to the assessment of the tax-collector Sin-mustal. One of the towns was that of the Aramean tribe of Pekod. Another is called the town of the Brewers, and another is described as "the Copper-Foundry." Most of the towns were assessed at half a shekel, though there were some which had to pay a shekel and more. Among the latter was the town of Ninâ, which gave its name to the more famous Nineveh on the Tigris. The surveyor, it should be added, was an important personage in Babylonian society, and the contract tablets of the second Babylonian empire not unfrequently mention him.

Assyria, like Babylonia, has yielded us a good many deeds relating to the sale and lease of houses and landed estate. We can estimate from them the average value of house-property in Nineveh in the time of the second Assyrian empire, when the wealth of the Eastern world was being poured into it and the Assyrian kings were striving to divert the trade of Phoenicia into their own hands. Thus, in 694 B.C., a house with two doors was sold for 3 manehs 20 shekels, and two years subsequently another which adjoined it was purchased for 1 maneh "according to the royal standard." The contract for the sale is a good example of what an Assyrian deed of sale in such a case was like. "The nail-marks of Sar-ludari, Akhassuru, and Amat-Suhla, the wife of Bel-suri, the official, the son of the priest, and owner of the house which is sold. The house, which is in thorough repair, with its woodwork, doors, and court, situated in the city of Nineveh and adjoining the houses of Mannu-ki-akhi and Ilu-ittiya and the street Sipru , has been negotiated for by Zil-Assur, the Egyptian secretary. He has bought it for 1 maneh of silver according to the royal standard from Sar-ludari, Akhassuru, and Amat-Suhla, the wife of Bel-duri. The money has been paid in full, and the house received as bought. Withdrawal from the contract, lawsuits, and claims are hereby excluded. Whoever hereafter at any time, whether these men or others, shall bring an action and claims against Zil-Assur, shall be fined 10 manehs of silver. Witnessed by Susanqu-khatna-nis, Murmaza the official, Rasuh the sailor, Nebo-dur-uzur the champion, Murmaza the naval captain, Sin-sar-uzur, and Zidqa (Zedekiah). The sixteenth of Sivan during the year of office of Zaza, the governor of Arpad (692 B.C.)." It is noticeable that the first witness has a Syrian name.

One of the characteristics of the Assyrian deeds is that so few of the parties who appear in them are able to write their names. Nail-marks take the place of seals even in the case of persons who hold official positions and who are shown by the contracts to have been men of property. In this respect Assyria offers a striking contrast to Babylonia, where "the nail-mark" seldom makes its appearance. Closely connected with this inability to write is the absence of the seal-cylinder, which was part of the ordinary dress of the Babylonian gentleman. In the Assyrian contracts, on the other hand, it is conspicuous by its absence. The use of it in Assyria was an imitation of Babylonian manners, and was confined for the most part to the scribes and higher official class, who had received a literary education.

Land in Assyria was measured by homers rather than by feddans or acres as in Babylonia. In 674 B.C. an estate of 35 homers, in the town of Sairi, was sold for 5 manehs, any infringement of the contract being punished by a fine of 10 manehs of silver or one of gold, to be paid into the treasury of the temple of Istar. We learn incidentally from this that the value of gold to silver at the time was as one to ten. Five years previously 6 homers of land in another small Assyrian town had been let at an annual rent of 1 maneh of silver "according to the standard of Carchemish." In the reign of Assur-bani-pal a homer of corn-land was rented for six years for 10 shekels a year. The land was calculated to produce 9 qas of grain, and at the end of the first three years it was stipulated that there should be a rotation of crops. About the same time two fields, enclosing an area of 3{~VULGAR FRACTION TWO THIRDS~} homers, were leased by a certain Rimu-ana-Bel of Beth-Abimelech, whose father's name, Yatanael, shows that he was of Syrian origin. The steward of "the son of a king" took them for six years at an annual rent of 12 shekels. One of the fields contained a well, and yielded 15 qas of grain to each homer. It is stated in the contract that the fields had no mortgage upon them, and that the lessee had a right to the whole of the crop which they produced.

It was not in Assyria only that plots of ground could be leased and sold in accordance with the provisions of Assyrian law. Conquest had brought landed property into the hands of Assyrians in other parts of the Eastern world, and it could be put up to auction at Nineveh, where the proprietors lived. About 660 B.C., for instance, a considerable estate was thus sold in the oasis of Singara, in the centre of Mesopotamia. It lay within the precincts of the temple of Istar, and contained a grove of 1,000 young palms. It included, moreover, a field of 2 homers planted with terebinths, house-property extending over 6 homers, a house with a corn-field attached to it, and another house which stood in the grove of Yarkhu, the Moon-god. The whole was sold for 4 shekels of silver "according to the standard of Carchemish," and the penalty for any infringement of the contract was again to be the payment of a maneh of gold (£90) to the treasury of the goddess Istar. When one of the parties to the contract was of Aramean descent, it was usual to add an explanatory docket in Aramaic to the deed of sale. Indeed, this seems to have been sometimes done even where there were no Arameans in the case, so thoroughly had Aramaic become the common language of trade. Thus in the year of Sennacherib's office as eponym (687 B.C.) we hear of the sale of three shops in Nineveh on the part of a certain Dain-kurban, whose name is written in Aramaic letters on the outer envelope of the deed of sale. Thirty shekels were paid for them, and a fine of 10 manehs imposed upon anyone who should attempt to invalidate the sale. The shops seem to have been situated in the Syrian quarter of the city, as we are told that they were opposite the tenement of Nakharau, "the man of Nahor."

It will have been noticed how frequently it is stated that a "plantation" or grove of palms is attached to the house or field which is rented and sold. In Babylonia, in fact, an estate was not considered complete without its garden, which almost invariably included a clump of palms. The date-palm was the staple of the country. It was almost the only tree which grew there, and it grew in marvellous abundance. Stem, leaves, and fruit were all alike turned to use. The columns and roofing-beams of the temples and houses were made of its stem, which was also employed for bonding the brick walls of the cities. Its fibres were twisted into ropes, its leaves woven into baskets. The fruit it bore was utilized in many ways. Sometimes the dates were eaten fresh, at other times they were dried and exported to foreign lands; out of some of them wine was made, out of others a rich and luscious sugar. It was little wonder that the Babylonian regarded the palm as the best gift that Nature had bestowed upon him. Palm-land necessarily fetched a higher price than corn-land, and we may conclude, from a contract of the third year of Cyrus, that its valuation was seven and one-half times greater.

Trade partnerships were common, and even commercial companies were not unknown. The great banking and money-lending firm which was known in Babylonia under the name of its founder, Egibi, and from which so many of the contract-tablets have been derived, was an example of the latter. It lasted through several generations and seems to have been but little affected by the political revolutions and changes which took place at Babylon. It saw the rise and fall of the empire of Nebuchadnezzar, and flourished quite as much under the Persian as under the native kings.

As far back as the reign of Samsu-iluna we find women entering into partnership with men for business purposes on a footing of absolute equality. A certain Amat-Samas, for instance, a devotee of the Sun-god, did so with two men in order to trade with a maneh of silver which had been borrowed from the treasury of the god. It was stipulated in the deed which was indentured when the partnership was made that in case of disagreement the capital and interest accruing from it were to be divided in equal shares among the three partners.

In the later Babylonian period the contract was drawn up in much the same form, though with a little more detail. In the report of a trial dated the eighth day of Sebat or January, in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar II., we have the following