EVERYDAY LIFE IN

BABYLONIA

AND ASSYRIA

H. W. F. SAGGS

Drawings by Helen Nixon Fairfield

Preface

THE way of life with which this book deals flourished for 2000 years of the most formative period of human history, and it would require far more than the space available even touch upon every significant aspect of this subject. I have there,-e had to confine myself to a more modest task. What I have empted has been to give an introduction to the subject by a sketch Babylonian and Assyrian life at a few key-points, seen in the context of the historical setting.

I need hardly point out to my professional colleagues that this ok is not written for them; therefore, if, in using the original sources, I have chosen, for the sake of English idiom, to translate a singular by a plural, or to alter a tense, I trust they will not turn and rend me. My main purpose will be served if I succeed in convincing some of my readers, amongst the many now interested in ancient world, that Babylonian and Assyrian civilisation is not wholly alien to our own.

Although I have been able in many cases to suggest sources for illustrations, the credit and responsibility for the final selection and treatment of the illustrations belong, not to me as author, but to the talented artist, Mrs H. Fairfield, and to Mr P. Kemmis Betty.

H. W. F. SAGGS

Chapter I

A FORGOTTEN CIVILISATION

FOR over 2000 years one of the greatest of human achievements, the civilisation of Babylonia and Assyria, lay buried and almost forgotten beneath the soil of the land we now know as Iraq (earlier called Mesopotamia). There remained of it only certain accounts, of doubtful reliability, in Greek literature, together with some Biblical statements, perhaps biased, about the Assyrians, and more dubious traditions of a much earlier period in a land called Shinar. In Shinar, according to the Biblical account, had been built the tower of Babel; here too had lived the sole surviving family of the great Flood, whilst somewhere in this region, at the beginning of man's history, had been the mythical Garden of Eden.

Occasional travellers, attracted by the magic of the names of Babylon and Nineveh, had visited the great ancient mounds of Iraq from the time of the Crusades onwards. Some left accounts of their journeys and their speculations, and even brought back to Europe relics-inscribed bricks and the like-of the ancient cities. The vast ruins of Nineveh, standing across the Tigris from the city of Mosul, had probably never entirely lost their identification in local tradition, and even by European travellers they were recognised for what they were as early as the twelfth century A.D. The site of Babylon, however, remained longer in doubt, though travellers did not hesitate to identify one or other of the gigantic brick structures still standing in South Iraq with the ill-starred tower of Babel. The precise location of Babylon was not definitely known until the seventeenth century.

The first man to make a more scientific examination of the ancient mounds of Iraq was Claudius James Rich. Rich was a young Englishman, with no great advantages of birth, who at the age of twenty-one had risen by his own merits, in particular his linguistic ability, to be the Resident of the East India Company in Baghdad, a post of considerable responsibility and pomp. In 1811 he took the opportunity of paying a visit to Babylon, where in the course of a fruitful ten days he made a survey of the whole great site, and employed workmen to undertake some crude excavations. The resulting collection of inscribed bricks, cuneiform clay tablets and cylinder seals, together with Rich's Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon, published in 1812, may properly be taken to mark the beginning of the science of Assyriology. Rich made a second visit some years later, publishing a Second Memoir on Babylon (1818). There is a reference to the stir caused by these new discoveries in Byron's lines in Don Juan, where the poet speaks of

... some infidels, who don't

Because they can't, find out the very spot

Of that same Babel, or because they won't

(Though Claudius Rich, Esquire, some bricks has got,

and written lately two memoirs upon't).

At Rich's premature death from cholera in 1821 his collection of antiquities was sold to the British Museum, where the cuneiform material became the basis of the great Assyriological collection there, now recognised as one of the finest in the world.

Apart from a sounding at Babylon in 1827, after Rich's pioneer work there were no further excavations in Iraq until the 1840s, although travellers continued to visit and record their impressions of the ancient mounds (or tells) of the country.

The year 1840 marked the first arrival in Iraq of another young man who in the course of the next eleven years was to put the archaeological side of the new science of Assyriology on a sound foundation. The young man was Henry Austen Layard, ¹ then twenty-three. Layard, who had failed to make good in his uncle's highly respectable firm of solicitors, was on his way overland to an opening which had been promised for him in Ceylon. Deeply impressed by the ancient mounds of Iraq and fascinated by the life and society of the Near and Middle East in general, he lingered in that area as long as he could and finally abandoned his original intention, not without some anxiety as to his uncle's possible reactions. His knowledge of languages, the charm of his personality, his intelligence and industry, and his courage, endurance, and taste for adventure, had combined to give him considerable first-hand knowledge of Oriental politics, and he now had hopes of a career in the diplomatic service. In this, however, he was, through the stubbornness of the Foreign Office, for some years disappointed, even though he managed to be of considerable assistance privately to the British Ambassador in Constantinople. The latter, although unable to obtain early official status for Layard, did give him personal and financial support, and in 1845 encouraged him to undertake excavations at the mound of Nimrud, about twenty miles south of Mosul. Successfully overcoming both official obstruction and financial and practical difficulties, Layard opened up the hidden palaces of one of the Assyrian capitals, not (as he at first supposed) Nineveh, but Calah, mentioned in Genesis x 12. He returned to England and published an account of his work in 1849, when it at once created a nationwide sensation.

Layard was not quite first in the field of large-scale excavation in Iraq, for he had an eminent predecessor in the French Consul Paul Botta, who began excavations in 1842. Botta, described by a contemporary as 'a scientific man but a d--d bad consul', was a very good friend to Layard, who before 1845 received much stimulus towards archaeological research by the fact that Botta gave him free access to his own reports as they passed through Constantinople.

Whilst, like Layard, Botta carried out minor archaeological excavations at several places, the site of his principal work was Khorsabad, north-east of Mosul. Both these great pioneers also at different times dug at Kuyunjik, the site of Nineveh itself. All three sites--Khorsabad, Kuyunjik, and Nimrud--turned out to be ruins of capital cities of the period of Assyrian greatness between the ninth and seventh centuries B.C., which coincided largely with the period of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, well known from the Old Testament. It was the sidelights the new discoveries shed upon Biblical history, as well as the striking nature of many of the early finds themselves-colossal winged bulls and lions (4), now impressive features of the British Museum and the Louvre, together with vivid scenes carved in low relief on limestone friezes-which won the immediate interest of the general public of Great Britain and France. It was also the fact that all the main early finds came from Assyria that led to the new science being called 'Assyriology', a name still retained, although it is now recognised that Assyria formed only a part, and not even the most important part, of the whole civilisation concerned.

Winged bulls and limestone friezes, spectacular though they may be, would not by themselves have given us much insight into the civilisation of the people who left these things behind. Fortunately, along with these objects, there were, either carved on the bulls, lions or friezes, or impressed upon cylinders or tablets of clay, inscriptions in unknown characters built up from wedge-shaped (or 'cuneiform') strokes. It was the decipherment of this cuneiform script which ultimately opened up to the modern world the whole of Babylonian and Assyrian thought and life.

A few cuneiform inscriptions had been published long before the excavations of Botta and Layard, and work upon these had provided the key which was to unlock the new material. In the ruins of the palaces of the ancient Persian kings, particularly at Persepolis, are many well-preserved cuneiform inscriptions on stone. Portions of these were copied by a number of travellers as curiosities, but it was not until the late eighteenth century, when more careful and complete copies had been made, that it was noticed that these inscriptions from the Persian palaces contained three different systems of writing (8), and that one of them was the system found on the inscribed bricks from the region of Babylon.

There are basically three different ways in which languages can be committed to writing. The most primitive is to have one sign (called an 'ideogram' or 'logogram') for each word or idea. If such a system is to be of any widespread use, it will obviously require hundreds, if not thousands, of distinct signs. Chinese writing is an example of this. The second possible writing system is to have a separate sign, not for each word, but for each syllable. Since the number of possible syllables in a language is far less than the number of possible words, such a system will require far fewer signs. For ancient Near Eastern languages using this system of writing the number of syllabic signs needed was not less than a hundred. The third basic method of writing is the one we commonly use, the alphabetic system, in which the principal sounds occurring in a language are each given a separate symbol. The number of symbols will vary slightly from one alphabet to another, according to the sounds commonly occurring in a particular language and the efficiency with which these sounds are distinguished in writing, but almost always the number of symbols in an alphabet will be between twenty and fifty.

In the case of the three scripts from Persepolis, one of them proved to have less than fifty different signs, and so could reasonably be taken as alphabetic. Some of the texts thus taken as alphabetic were short inscriptions carved above the heads of reliefs of figures obviously representing kings, and this suggested that such inscriptions might contain a royal name and titles. A clue to the decipherment was that it was known from later Persian sources that the usual form of the title of the Persian kings was 'So-and-so, the Great King, King of Kings, son of So-and-so'. Working from such data, a German scholar, G. F. Grotefend, was able as early as 1802 to make considerable progress in the decipherment of the alphabetic cuneiform script, assigning correct values to nearly one-third of the alphabet. Between then and the 1830s a number of scholars worked on the script, with varying degrees of success, so that in later years there arose at one time a sharp controversy about who deserved the major credit for the final decipherment. Several scholars certainly took a share in it, but it is clear that a considerable part of the credit is due to yet another young Englishman, Henry Creswicke Rawlinson.

Rawlinson, a good classical scholar and a fine athlete, held an appointment in the East India Company, and in 1835, at the age of twenty-five, was posted to duties in Persia, about twenty miles from the famous Rock of Bisitun (or Behistun). The Rock of Bisitun, on the main ancient route from Babylon to Ecbatana (the ancient capital of the Medes) rises sheer almost 1700 feet, and on it, about 300 feet up, the ancient Persian king Darius 1 (522-486 B.C.) had a monument carved showing him overcoming his enemies (9). Accompanying the sculptures were carved inscriptions which (as we now know) were in three languages, Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian, in the three scripts already mentioned. Although many people had seen the sculptures and inscriptions from below, these details about the languages in which they were written were of course known to no one when Rawlinson arrived in Persia. He was already interested in the problem of decipherment, and saw in the inscriptions at Bisitun, far longer than the only ones to which scholars had had access up to that time, the most promising material for a complete solution. By climbing up the side of the cliff to a narrow ledge overhanging a drop of over a hundred feet, Rawlinson was able, in the course of several visits during 1836 and 1837, to copy about 200 lines of the particular inscription (now known to be in the language called Old Persian) which was written in the alphabetic script. Rawlinson had already arrived at some of the letters of the Old Persian alphabet by the same kind of method as that employed by Grotefend. The new material enabled Rawlinson to decipher virtually the whole alphabet, and by his knowledge of later languages related to Old Persian he was able by 1839 to give a substantially accurate summary of the meaning of the whole of the 200 lines. Thus the Old Persian script and language had been largely deciphered before 1840.

There still remained the even more difficult task, the decipherment of the scripts and languages of the Elamite and Akkadian versions of the trilingual texts. By 1846 Rawlinson and others had made substantial progress with Elamite, but little was known about Akkadian writing. The credit for the earliest substantial success in the decipherment of Akkadian cuneiform goes to an Irish parson named Edward Hincks. However, others, including Rawlinson, were not far behind, and by 1850 it was possible for these scholars to make out the general sense of Akkadian texts of an historical nature. None the less, the learned world was not fully convinced. For this reason, a test was made in 1856-7, four of the leading scholars, Hincks, Rawlinson, Oppert and Fox Talbot, being set to prepare independent translations of a long newly discovered text. When it was found that the result of the four substantially agreed, there could be no further doubt that the script and language of Akkadian had been deciphered.

The great difficulty in deciphering Akkadian lay not mainly in the language itself, but in the manner of writing it. The script, in its later form, was a mixture of two of the writing systems mentioned above, some of the signs being ideograms and others syllograms (i.e. signs denoting syllables). It was further complicated by the fact that some signs could be used either as ideograms or as syllograms, whilst some syllograms might denote several completely different syllables within the same text. Thus the one sign could (at one period and in a single text) be either the ideogram for 'day' or a syllable to be pronounced ud or tu or tam or par or likh or khish. To complicate matters further, several different signs might represent the same syllable: thus either or could occur for the syllable u in certain positions in a word.

The initial decipherment of Akkadian was thus no simple matter. However, once this had been achieved, further progress was merely a matter of perseverance and time. It was soon recognised that the writing system could not have been invented for Akkadian, and, as was expected by some of the pioneers, scholars found amongst the cuneiform inscriptions from Babylonia texts in another language, as different from Akkadian as Turkish is from English. This language, today known as Sumerian (from the race which originally spoke it) has only become well understood in the last forty years, and there is still much dispute about the details of the interpretation of Sumerian texts. Most Akkadian texts, on the other hand, can now be understood as well as the Hebrew of the Old Testament.

Whilst the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians had sometimes carved inscriptions on stone monuments, the usual writing materials consisted of lumps of clay, most commonly of a size to be held in the hand, but frequently larger (43). Layard's critics have alleged that at first he treated such pieces of inscribed clay as merely oddly decorated pottery, but certainly before he left Nimrud in June 1847 he knew what they were. Later, at Kuyunjik, Layard and his successors found, and brought back for the British Museum, the remains of several libraries of cuneiform clay tablets collected by Assyrian kings. The 25,000 fragments concerned still form the most important single collection of cuneiform material known: it is indeed so comprehensive that some Assyriologists, irreverently referred to by their colleagues as 'Kuyunjikologists', are able to make important contributions to research whilst virtually limiting their interests to this particular collection (6, 7).

Layard retired from archaeology in 1851, going into politics, but his work at Kuyunjik and elsewhere, on behalf of the British Museum, was carried on by others. The French had been active in excavation from the beginning, and Germany and America began major excavations in the late 1880s. Many other nations followed suit, and Assyriology, both in its archaeological aspects and in the study of cuneiform material, has become a field in which inter national co-operation is a reality. There is seldom a year in which there are not three or four expeditions to Iraq from different countries, and at the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, held annually, one may meet delegates from Great Britain, America, France, Germany (East and West), Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Russia, Turkey, Finland, Holland, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and Denmark, all joined by the desire to deepen knowledge of ancient Mesopotamian civilisation.

THE LAND AND RACES OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

Babylonia and Assyria covered approximately the region which today is known as Iraq, though some places important in the ancient civilisation are to be found in Turkey and Syria. Iraq is a land which depends for its life, and in part for its physical existence, upon its great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris. Without these rivers two-thirds of the country would be an and desert, whilst it its these rivers which have created, by their silt deposits, the whole region, a great alluvial plain, which extends from about 100 miles north of Baghdad down to the Persian Gulf. This alluvial soil can be, under the influence of the sun and adequate irrigation, of astonishingly high fertility, and it was in the alluvial plain that the ancient civilisation had its origin and flowering. East and north of the alluvial plain the land rises into chains of foothills, and finally into mountains of up to 10,000 feet on the borders of Persia and Turkey. To the west of the Euphrates the land merges into the Syrian and Arabian deserts.

It was the southern part of this land, roughly from the latitude of Baghdad, which in ancient times was Babylonia, the northern part being Assyria. The whole is sometimes referred to as Mesopotamia, from the Greek for 'between the rivers', though the Greeks themselves used this term of rather a rent area.

The story of Mesopotamian civilisation, and with it the story of our own civilisation, begins a little over 5000 years ago, in the hot swamps of South Iraq. A strange people, the Sumerians, whose ;precise origin is still unknown, had come (whether by land or sea we are not certain) from somewhere to the east or north-east to ,settle in the region around the head of the Persian Gulf. This region deficient in some of the basic materials of civilised existence, such as hard timber, stone, and metal ores, but is rich in three :hers, namely, sunshine, water, and mud. It was out of mud that the Sumerians built their civilisation, and it is mud, in the form of scribed clay tablets, which enables us to see back almost to the beginning of the 5000 years which separate us from the original Sumerian settlement.

South Iraq was not empty when the Sumerians arrived. There ready existed thriving villages, some of which became the basis 'later Sumerian cities. Archaeology shows that the newcomers opted much of the building, agricultural and irrigational technology of the people already there, though at the same time they introduced or invented other processes and techniques not previously found in the country. It has been suggested that the Sumerians arrived in the land as warlike nomadic shepherds, imposing themselves upon the settled peoples as a ruling caste. Other scholars think that the Sumerians were themselves peasant farmers, perhaps driven from a homeland in Central Asia by climatic changes. The evidence is scanty and ambiguous, and at present not sufficient for us to make a decision.

The characteristic form into which Sumerian society grew was, from early in the third millennium B.C., the walled city at the centre of a small city-state, with a number of dependent villages in the surrounding countryside. It should perhaps be emphasised that the basis of the Sumerian city was agriculture and not industry. The two most prominent features of the Sumerian city were its irrigation system and its main temple built on a terrace. This terrace-temple in course of time developed to become the stepped tower known as the ziggurrat (p. 88). The city temple might be of considerable splendour with stone foundations, but most of the human occupants of the city still lived in small mud huts.

In theory the city was the estate of the local deity, whose chief human representative was known as the En; this functionary could apparently be either a man or a woman. Originally control of the city-state had been in the hands of all free citizens, who arrived at decisions on major policy in public council. There are always some activities, however, which require on-the-spot decisions, and so the citizens came to appoint a man called the Ensi to direct and coordinate agricultural operations, whilst in times of crisis they would choose a king (Sumerian Lugal, literally 'Big Man') as military leader (5). Although both Ensi and Lugal were originally elected, once a man had been appointed there would be a strong tendency for his position to become permanent and hereditary, and also for the various leading positions in the city-state to be gathered Into one person. Thus the famous Gilgamesh of Erech (p. 45) was both En and Lugal, and a number of other Sumerian rulers were Lugal and Ensi. As a result the original democratic organisation gave way to a system of rulers and ruled.

Until recently it was generally believed that in the early Sumerian period the temple owned all the land of the city-state, but it has now been shown that the temple share amounted to perhaps no more than one-eighth of the whole. The rest of the land was originally owned by families or clans collectively, and could only be sold by agreement of all the prominent members of the family or clan. The buyers of such land would be members of what was Coming to be the ruling class or nobility, and these people would thereby come to own land as private property in addition to what they held as family property. Such land would be worked by poor landless freemen. By such means there developed a social order in which there were three principal classes, that is, the nobility, the ordinary freemen, and the dependent freemen generally called 'clients'. A fourth class was constituted by slaves, who were mainly

It has already been mentioned that the Sumerians were not the first inhabitants of what we now call Babylonia. Amongst their predecessors it is possible that one group was Semitic. If this was In fact so, this Semitic element would represent the first stage of a Movement of peoples which has been going on throughout history. The use of the term 'Semitic' here requires explanation. The word has an unfortunate modern history because of its misuse by the Hitler regime, and for that reason many people are nervous of using it at all, except as a term covering certain languages. In the latter sense it denotes a closely knit group of languages which include, amongst modern tongues, Hebrew and Arabic, and, amongst ancient ones, Akkadian and Aramaic. However, in the context of ancient history, it is also perfectly legitimate to use the term 'Semites' in a racial sense, of a community of peoples having single point of origin in prehistoric times. The ancient Semites (using the term as defined) were a people whose original home, as far as we know at present, was the interior of Arabia. From the end of the last Ice Age at about 8000 B.C. down to the present day Arabia (like much of the rest of the Near East) has suffered from relentless soil erosion, with the result that the desert area has extended and the population the land would support has become continually smaller. Throughout history the overflow from this population has been moving outwards to settle, usually in peaceful families, less commonly in larger warlike groups, on the more fertile fringes of the great desert.

One reason for guessing that there may have been Semites in South Iraq when the Sumerians first arrived is that some of the earliest Sumerian inscriptions contain words undoubtedly taken over from Semitic speech. Unfortunately, such evidence is not conclusive, because we do not know whether the period of contact between Sumerians and Semites which resulted in such borrowings was a matter of a few years or of centuries. The earliest certain movement of Semitic peoples into Iraq began in the second quarter of the third millennium (i.e. after 2750 B.C.), from which period there is evidence of a group, whom we know as the Akkadians, moving into northern Babylonia from the Jebel Sinjar area in East Syria.

The growing strength of the Semitic element in the population culminated in the coming into power of an Akkadian dynasty. In northern Babylonia the greatest Sumerian centre was the city of Kish, and the last King of Kish had as chief minister a man whom we know under the Semitic name of Sharrum-kin or Sargon, meaning 'true king', though this could hardly have been his original name. Sargon had founded a city called Agade (exact whereabouts still unknown), and when the King of Kish was overthrown by a Sumerian ruler from farther south, Sargon took over the reins of government and gained control of the whole of the land later known as Babylonia (2371 B.C.). Sargon's descendants reigned for over a century, and we refer to this dynasty as the Dynasty of Agade, or, using the Semitic spelling of the name, the Dynasty of Akkad. (This is the ultimate origin of the term 'Akkadian' already used in several different contexts.)

Sargon ultimately extended his conquests up the Euphrates to North Syria, and possibly even into Asia Minor. He also conquered Elam to the east of Babylonia, and gained control of northern Iraq, the area later known as Assyria. In one of the cities of Assyria there has been found a fine bronze mask which may have represented Sargon himself (13). Sargon's economic and political control of this unprecedently large area produced a marked rise in the standard of living of Babylonia, so that this period was remembered in tradition as a golden age.

The other great ruler of the Dynasty of Agade was the fourth, Sargon's grandson Naram-Sin. According to tradition, supported to some extent by archaeological evidence, Naram-Sin controlled an empire extending from Central Asia ,minor to the southern end of the Persian Gulf. Ultimately the dynasty collapsed before the combined pressures of peoples from the northern and eastern mountains, despite the vigorous action taken by Naram-Sin (II).

The achievements of the Agade dynasty were of lasting importance despite its relatively short duration (2371-2230 B.C.). Especially significant was the introduction of new administrative methods, in particular the attempt at centralised government from . This was destined to have far-reaching consequences for the future.

With the collapse of the central government of Agade, northern Babylonia was occupied by a mountain people called the Gutians, a savage race regarded with marked aversion in later tradition. However, the Gutians probably had little influence in southern Babylonia, which was still predominantly Sumerian both in race and culture, and from this time the cities of this area once again rose to prominence. Under the Dynasty of Akkad, Agade had been the Principal port of the country, but with this eliminated by the Gutian conquest, trade, and the wealth resulting from it, began to flow up the Persian Gulf into the southern cities. One of the cities which flourished at this time and about which we are particularly well informed is Lagash, under its ruler Gudea (12). This ruler's greatest achievement (from his own point of view) was the rebuilding of the temple of the city god, and he left a considerable number of inscriptions relating to this. These inscriptions give us valuable about the international trade of the time. From them we details learn that

Cedar beams from the Cedar-mountain [Lebanon] He had landed on the quayside ... ;

Gudea had... bitumen and gypsum

Broughtin... ships from the hills of Madga [Kirkuk?], ...

Gold dust was brought to the city-ruler from the Gold-land

[Armenia]....

Shining precious metal came to Gudea from abroad, Bright carnelian came from Melukhkha [the Indus valley?].

Politically, however, the most important feature of the new period was the return to prominence of the city of Ur. Already at an earlier period (around 2600 B.C.) Ur had been a leading centre of Sumerian civilisation, and it was in royal tombs of that period that Sir Leonard Woolley discovered the famous art treasures with which his name is associated (14-16). Now, at about 2100 B.C., Ur the capital of a Sumerian dynasty, known as the Third Dynasty of Ur, which governed the whole of Mesopotamia in an efficient bureaucracy. Wealth flowed into the capital by way of the Persian Gulf, and we have some of the actual trading documents, showing that the great temple of Ur exported textiles and oil to a distant port called Makkan, importing in exchange copper, beads and ivory.

This dynasty collapsed after about a century, leaving Babylonia in temporary chaos. The main factor in the collapse was a fresh movement of Semitic peoples, this time the group called the Amurru or Amorites.

Chapter II

KINGDOMS RISE AND FALL

A PEOPLE called the Amorites are well known to readers of the Old Testament, where the term is used for one of the main groups of inhabitants of Palestine before the final entry of the Hebrews under Joshua. These Biblical Amorites were descendants of settlers who had come in from the desert several centuries before. They had formed part of a great group of peoples, called in cuneiform sources the Amurra (singular, An-iurru), on the move in the Syrian desert and threatening all the fertile lands from Palestine to Iraq. 'Amurru' was probably originally the name of a particular tribe, but it came to be used of the whole of a certain wave of invaders from the Syrian desert.

The cuneiform sources give us our first hint of the movements of these Amurru in an inscription from the Dynasty of Akkad. It comes from a document which refers to the year in which Sharkalisharri [Naram-Sin's son and successor] defeated the Amurru in Basar, Basar being a mountain in the Syrian desert. References to these Amurru become more frequent during the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur. One passage shows the contempt of the city dwelling Sumerian for the savage desert dweller, who is described as 'the Amurru, . . . who eats raw meat, who has no house in his lifetime, and after he dies lies unburied'. Quickly, however, these Amurru ceased to be despised desert savages and became a threat to the security, and finally to the very existence, of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Some of the rulers of that dynasty built fortifications against these people. Such measures did not, however, succeed in holding back the mounting pressure, and the ancient cities, first of the Middle Euphrates and then of Babylonia proper, gradually fell under the domination of these people.

The presence of people of the Amurru group within the areas mentioned is shown in the first instance by the nature of the personal names, and afterwards, with the final collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur, by the rise in a number of cities of dynasties in which the personal names, god names and institutions are obviously of Amorite origin. Such dynasties may for convenience be called 'Amorite', although some regard the term as inaccurate when used in this sense. As might be expected in view of geography, it is on the Middle Euphrates that a dynasty of Amorite origin is first in evidence, the city concerned being Mari. In other cities, some of the earlier peaceful Amorite settlers actually became officials in the service of the Dynasty of Ur. One such was Ishbi-Erra, who was in charge of the city of Isin under the last King of Ur and who, after loyal to the end, subsequently founded a dynasty of his own.

The third Dynasty of Ur finally crumbled under the pressure of Amorite invaders, city after city ceasing to acknowledge the sovereignty of Ur. The final overthrow of the dynasty was, however, not the work of the Amorites, but of the Elamites (from southern Persia), who seized the opportunity to sack and occupy the capital, slaughtering the inhabitants and carrying away the King. This stunning blow, marking the final of the Sumerians as a political power, shows clear evidence in the relics of destruction found when the city was excavated. This disastrous event was long remembered in Babylonia.

With the breakdown of central control by Ur, dynasties arose in other cities, the two most prominent at first being Isin and Larsa. For this reason the century or so after the overthrow of Ur is often the Isin-Larsa period (2006-1894 B.C.). The Larsa dynasty increased its influence at the expense of Isin, but was finally itself overthrown (1763 B.C.) by the sixth ruler of the of Babylon, the great Hammurabi (1792-1750 B.C.).

The first Dynasty of Babylon (1894-1595 B.C.) is rightly thought of, particularly during the reign of Hammurabi, as one of the highlights of ancient civilisation. It was an age of material prosperity, and it is also fortunately one of the periods about which we are best informed. There are not only many thousands of business documents and letters from Babylon and other cities, but we also have the collection of laws promulgated by Hammurabi himself (82). Together these documents make it clear that the pre-eminence of Hammurabi amongst his contemporaries, which enabled him to raise Babylon to a cultural supremacy which it was never to lose, was not due solely to his military ability. It also owed much to his political insight and aptitude for diplomacy, and to his administrative ability and concern for social justice throughout his land.

It would be a mistake to think of Babylon as the only city-state of significance at this period. Farther north there was the kingdom of Assyria, where another prince of Amorite origin, Shamshi-Adad I, an older contemporary of Hammurabi, established himself as king in 1814 B.C., and exerted considerable influence upon the regions to the south and south-west. In the early part of his reign Hammurabi had another powerful contemporary in the King of Eshnunna, who controlled the cities along the Diyala and in the neighbourhood of modern Baghdad. There were other Amorite centres of power in North Syria. The situation is summed up in a letter from this period which says

There is no king who of himself alone is strongest. Ten or fifteen kings follow Hammurabi of Babylon, the same number follow RimSin of Larsa, the same number follow lbal-pi-El of Eshnunna, the same number follow Amut-pi-El of Qatanum [in Syria], and twenty kings follow Yarim-Lim of Yamkhad [in North Syria].

Another city-state of considerable importance until finally conquered by Hammurabi in 1761 B.C. was Mari, on the Middle Euphrates. It was a city of respectable antiquity, having been one of the outposts of Sumerian civilisation, and in the early second millennium B.C. was the capital of a kingdom extending over 200 miles along the river. In 1796 B.C. it experienced what must have been common in its history, a change of dynasty, when Shamshi-Adad of Assyria, benefiting by a palace revolution in Mari, placed his own son Yasmakh-Adad on the throne of Mari as his sub-king and representative. French archaeologists working before the war at Tell Hariri, the site of ancient Mari, had the good fortune to discover the royal archives from this period, and amongst them correspondence between Shamshi-Adad and the sub-kings who were his sons, as well as correspondence between the various rulers and their officials. Of less immediate human interest, but still very important for many details of life of the time, ere the business documents. These various classes of texts, together with the physical remains of the buildings, combine to give us a surprisingly detailed picture of life at the time, of which some account is given in Chapter III.

The way of life which crystallised at this period under the shadow of Hammurabi was, with minor changes, the general pattern in Babylonia until, with the Persian conquest of the country in 539 B.C. and the subsequent growth of Hellenistic (Greek) influence, Babylonian civilisation finally withered away. The actual political achievements of Hammurabi, in bringing all Babylonia, and some regions beyond, under the control of the city of Babylon, did not long survive him. In the reign of Hammurabi's successor the people of the marsh country of South Babylonia broke away, forming a separate and long-lasting dynasty, whilst the same ruler came into conflict with the Cassites, a non-Semitic people from the mountains north-east of Babylonia.

After this first evidence of Cassite pressure, the following century saw a gradual increase both of peaceful immigration of individual Cassites, and of organised movements of armed bands. This may be connected with pressure upon the Cassites themselves by a southward movement of Indo-European and other peoples farther north. Amongst these peoples two of the most prominent groups were the Hittites and the Hurrians. The names of both groups will be recognised in the Bible (the Hurrians under the form Horites), but it should be borne in mind that the people called Hittites and Horites in the Bible may have had only a very slender id distant link with the groups known as Hittites and Hurrians in the cuneiform documents. The Hittites, an Indo-European people whose language was closely related to Latin, had begun to pear in northern Anatolia (eastern Turkey) early in the second millennium and had established a powerful kingdom in Central Anatolia soon after 1700 B.C. The Hurrians, who were neither Indo-European nor Semitic, had been centred on the region around Lake Van since before the Agade period, but had begun pushing southwards on a large scale by the early second Millennium.

These various pressures made the collapse of the central government in Babylonia inevitable, though surprisingly the actual overthrow of the city of Babylon was at the hands of the most distant of the peoples mentioned, the Hittites from central Anatolia. In 1595 B.C. the Hittite ruler made a sudden attack southwards into Syria, and then moved down the Euphrates to plunder Babylon. Political developments in his capital made the Hittite king return as suddenly as he had come, but Babylon was left powerless to resist a further aggressor, and Cassite forces descended from the hills to take over control of the capital and to impose their government upon North Babylonia. This Cassite dynasty, which rapidly adopted much of the culture and institutions of their predecessors in the land, lasted about 400 years (1595-c. 1150 B.C.)(19).

We return to the Hurrians, whom we have seen were moving southwards during the first half of the second millennium B.C. Associated with them at this time was an aristocracy of the race which we know as Indo-European or Aryan. The Aryans derived ultimately from the steppes of Russia, one of the original homes of the wild horse. Because of this, the Aryans were always found in association with the horse, and it was the Aryan migrants of the second millennium who introduced the horse-drawn chariot as an instrument of war(20). This chariot-owning Aryan aristocracy, ruling over a population which was largely Hurrian, had succeeded, shortly before 1500 B.C., in establishing a powerful kingdom centred upon the Habur area. We know this kingdom as Mitanni.

The kingdom of Mitanni is, oddly enough, best known not from evidence found in the kingdom itself, but from documents discovered in the land of the Hittites, in Syria, and above all in Egypt. All of these documents point to the considerable, if temporary, importance of Mitanni. The sources from Egypt are of two kinds. One is the Egyptian hieroglyphic documents, which have references to armed conflict with Mitanni in the Syrian region, the area in which the two States came into competition. The other Egyptian source, surprisingly, consists of clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform. These tablets are the famous El Amarna letters (44), found in Central Egypt at the end of last century, and constituting part of the diplomatic archives of the Egyptian kings at a period around 1400 B.C. These documents include letters to the Pharaoh from various princes of Palestine and Syria, from the kings of the Hittite land, Assyria and Babylonia, and from the King of Mitanni. The material concerned with the other rulers cannot be dealt with here, but the part of the correspondence involving Mitanni clearly shows that at time Mitanni was on an equality with Egypt. These letters show that marriage alliances were made between Mitanni and Egypt, and give evidence of several instances in which Mitannian princesses were sent as brides for the King of Egypt. (It may be added that the Cassite ruler of Babylonia also made marriage alliances of this kind with Egypt.) Mitanni was so powerful at this period that its eastern neighbour Assyria was completely eclipsed and indeed at one time came actually a vassal of Mitanni. By 1350 B.C., however, Mitanni, torn by internal dynastic strife, had become so weak that was virtually a dependency of the Hittite ruler Shuppiluliuma. Assyria was now able to reassert its independence, and this period, during the reign of Ashur-uballit I (1365-1330 B.C.), marks the beginning of the emergence of Assyria as one of the great Powers of the ancient Near East.

The Assyrians of the period 1350-612 B.C. were one of the most important, as well as one of the most maligned, peoples of the ancient world. Situated in northern Mesopotamia on the open plains immediately south of the great mountain ranges of Armenia, the people of Assyria had borne the brunt of the pressure generated by Indo-European peoples on the move in the steppes of Russia. We have already seen that Assyria was for a time actually a vassal of Mitanni, and in the following centuries, up to about 1000 B.C., it was to be subject to constant pressure from Aramaean peoples the region to the west. The human response to this continual pressure was the development of a sturdy warlike people prepared to fight ruthlessly for their existence.

Assyrian political history from 1350 B.C. onwards shows a curious rhythm between periods of expansion and decline. First came a period of about a century in which Assyria secured itself from the threat of domination by Babylonia, and finally settled the Mitannian problem by turning what remained of that once powerful kingdom into the westernmost province of Assyria. It was during this period that Assyria first felt the pressure of a new wave of Aramaean peoples, called the Akhlamu, moving in from the west. At this time also, there arose in the mountains of Armenia a new tribal confederation, known as Uruatri or Urartu (the, Biblical Ararat), shortly to become a kingdom of considerable importance.

This period of consolidation and expansion culminated in the capture by Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244-1208 B.C.) of Babylon. The significance of this was as if a King of Scotland in the Middle Ages had captured London. After this climax there was a sudden decline in the fortunes of Assyria. This was in part a direct consequence of the preceding period of expansion, in that repeated armed conflict with peoples to the north, east and south must have taken a serious toll of the cream of Assyrian manpower. Probably, however, a more important cause was the disturbed condition of the Near East as a whole. There was no longer a kingdom of Mitanni to wield political control in the Syrian area, whilst Egypt, which had frequently exercised suzerainty over Palestine and parts of Syria, was now quite unable to make its influence felt beyond its own boundaries. The Hittite Empire, which formerly had given political stability to Asia Minor and northern Syria, thereby protecting the trade routes, had, under the pressure of people migrating from Europe, rapidly crumbled away until by 1200 B.C. it was powerless. The disturbed situation throughout much of the Near at this time, with the trade routes insecure and the villages depopulated, is reflected in the Book of Judges, for example in 6-7: 'In the days of Shamgar.... caravans ceased and travellers kept to the byways. The peasantry ceased in Israel. . . .' This situation throughout the Near East was ultimately the result of a southward movement of peoples from Europe, of which the Greeks and probably the Biblical Philistines were a part. It was these people ultimately broke up the Hittite Empire, destroyed Egyptian authority in Syria and Palestine, and seriously weakened Egypt itself by a direct attempt at invasion, which was beaten off by a great sea battle in about 1190 B.C. In these circumstances Assyrian trade with the Mediterranean region and Asia Minor was disastrously affected, so that Assyria may have been unable to obtain adequate supplies of such basic materials as metals, for which Asia Minor was one of the chief sources. For a short period Assyria fell under the suzerainty of Babylonia, which by reason of its geographical position was largely screened from the trouble caused by the situation in Asia Minor and Syria.

Babylonia, though more favourably placed than Assyria, did not altogether escape the effects of the general dislocation throughout the Near East, and it was during this period that the Cassite dynasty was finally overthrown. From the consequent chaos there emerged a new dynasty, known as the Second Dynasty of Isin, of which the most important ruler was Nebuchadnezzar I (1124-1103 B.C.). This King succeeded in extending Babylonian control over the mountain regions east and north-east of his country.

The establishment of stable conditions in Babylonia and the securing of the trade routes from farther east had a cumulative on the whole of Mesopotamia, and the end of the twelfth century marks the beginning of a new period of Assyrian expansion under Ashur-resh-ishi (1133-1116 B.C.) and his son Tiglath-Pileser I (1115-1077 B.C.). The former threw off the political suzerainty of Babylonia, and took the offensive both against the Akhlamu to the west and the mountain tribes to the east, thus giving security over a considerably greater area and the possibility of economic prosperity. Tiglath-Pileser had to deal with a direct threat resulting from the southward movement of peoples already referred to. This occurred when a large body of Mushku (the people known in the Old Testament as Meshech and in Greek literature as the Phrygians) moved into the Assyrian province of Kummukh in South Asia Minor. Tiglath-Pileser penetrated into Asia Minor to drive off these invaders, and thereby ensured Assyrian security in the north-west. With his northern flank secured, he was now able to conduct an expedition to the coast of Syria, where he received tribute: this was probably another way of saying that the Phoenician cities agreed to trade in timber and other commodities. Tiglath-Pileser also made diplomatic contact with the King of Egypt, from whom he received a live crocodile as a gesture of good will. The increased material prosperity resulting from Tiglath-Pileser's success in opening and maintaining the trade routes across western Asia is reflected in a considerable amount of building activity in connection with the temples of Assyria.

Soon after the death of Tiglath-Pileser the pendulum swung once again, so that a long period of difficulty and stress followed a time of relative prosperity. The main cause of the setback on this occasion was the growing pressure of the Aramaeans, already mentioned. This time Babylonia was affected as much as, or even more than, Assyria, so that ultimately an Aramaean prince, Adadapal-iddinam (1067-1046 B.C.), was able to usurp the throne of Babylonia. The Assyrian ruler of the time, Ashur-bel-kala (10741057 B.C.) was not only unable to assist the legitimate Babylonian ruler, but was even driven to recognise the usurper and make a marriage alliance with him.

The pressure of the Aramaean racial movement had passed its peak by 1000 B.C., and during the following century Assyria made a slow recovery. This became marked during the reign of Adadnirari 11 (911-891 B.C.). Under him Assyria effected a military expansion, and was able to safeguard its boundaries to south and east, and to protect the trade routes to the west by establishing fortified posts along the Middle Euphrates and in the Habur region. The security achieved by Adad-nirari 11's policy is reflected in economic well-being, and in one inscription this King writes: 'I built administrative buildings throughout my land. I installed ploughs throughout the breadth of my land. I increased grain stores over those of former times.... I increased the number of horses broken to the yoke. . . .' River trade was of importance, and is reflected in the rebuilding of the quay wall of the capital Ashur on the Tigris. Agriculture flourished (21).

Adad-nirari II's successors (Tukulti-Ninurta 11, 890-884 B.C., Ashurnasirpal II, 883-859 B.C., and Shalmaneser III, 858-824 B.C.) successfully continued the policy of military and economic expansion, gradually extending the area controlled by Assyria until the whole region from the Mediterranean coast to the Zagros Mountains, and from Cilicia to Babylonia was either directly administered by Assyria or ruled by vassals accepting Assyrian overlordship. All the trade routes of the Near East, except those of Palestine, thus came into Assyrian hands.

It was during the reign of Shalmaneser III that Assyria first came into conflict with the kingdom of Israel, though the incident concerned is known only from the Assyrian records and not from the Bible. The clash occurred when the Syrian and Palestinian States formed a coalition to meet an Assyrian expedition to the Mediterranean in 853 B.C. According to the Assyrian records the coalition forces included "2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers of Akhabbu of the land of Sir'ala". Akhabbu of Sir'ala was unquestionably Ahab of Israel. Shalmaneser claimed a defeat of the western forces, a claim borne out by the fact that a monument of four years later shows an emissary of Jehu, Ahab's successor, paying tribute (25).

Assyrian contact with Syria from this time is reflected in the collections of ancient Near Eastern art in modern museums. As we learn from the Bible (I Kings x 18, xxii 39; Amos iii 15, vi 4), decoration in ivory was much appreciated in Palestine; and it seems that the Assyrian kings shared this taste. Syrian craftsmen Were famous for their skill in ivory carving, and so from this time onwards the Assyrian kings carried off such men to the cities of Assyria, where they were employed in beautifying the royal palaces. Great quantities of carved ivory have been found at Nimrud, the site of the ancient capital Calah (22, 83).

Towards the end of the reign of Shalmaneser III (23) there was a rebellion involving some of the principal Assyrian cities. The great ancient cities of Assyria and Babylonia had always claimed a degree of independence, and in times of crisis the kings were often forced to recognise this by exempting the citizens from certain forms of taxation and liability to forced labour. It is likely that the long period of growing Assyrian power since the time of Adad-nirari II had put the King in a strong position, in which he was able to whittle away the privileges of the ancient cities of Assyria. This was probably one of the factors which led to the insurrection. It was finally put down, and Shalmaneser was succeeded by his accepted heir, Shamshi-Adad V (823-811 B.C.). This King continued the policy of his predecessors, undertaking military action in the north and north-east to defend Assyrian interests against Urartu and the Medes (an Iranian 22 Carved ivory from Nimrud people who had recently migrated into North-West Persia). He also extended the area under his direct control to include the north-eastern edge of Babylonia, along the Diyala, and even intervened within Babylonia itself to impose submission upon some tribes called the Kaldu, whom we later know as Chaldaeans. These tribes, occupying the most southerly part of Babylonia, were virtually independent of the weak Babylonian King, and it may have been their interference with trade routes from the Persian Gulf region which led to Shamshi-Adad's action against them.

From about 800 B.C. Urartian influence began to expand, especially in the North Syrian area, at the expense of Assyria, and the following half century saw a drastic decline in the fortunes of Assyria. Conditions within the homeland became so bad that in 746 B.C. there was a revolt in the capital, Calah, the whole of the royal family being murdered.

The man who came to the throne, who was probably of royal descent though not of the family of his predecessor, was a certain Pul, who took as his throne name Tiglath-Pileser (27). Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 B.C.) was one of the most able of Assyrian kings. He undertook extensive administrative .reforms, reducing the power of provincial governors and at the same time increasing the efficiency of provincial administration (pp. 58-60). His reign saw a fresh extension of Assyrian influence to Babylon in the south and to Syria and Palestine in the west. His successor, Shalmaneser V (726-722 B.C.) maintained the same general policy; he is best known for his 27 Tiglath-Pileser III siege of Samaria, the capital of Israel, which culminated, in accordance with the usual Assyrian policy, in the deportation to Assyria of the best of the population of the land (2 Kings xvii 6).

The story of the remaining period of the Assyrian Empire is one of continual expansion up to just after 640 B. C., and then a dramatic collapse. The principal kings of this period (known as the Sargonid period after the first of them) were Sargon 11 (721-705 B.C.), Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.), Esarhaddon (680-669 B.C.), and Ashurbanipal (680-626 B.C.). The political events of individual reigns need not detain us, but it may be useful to say a word about the men themselves. Sargon seems to have had a taste for poetry, and some of his annals are written in an elegant verse form as against the dry prose of some other Assyrian kings. (It is not of course suggested that Sargon personally composed the annals in verse.) Sennacherib is generally thought of as a ruthless barbarian, not perhaps without justification, for he was one of the few conquerors of Babylon to sack that centre of culture. At the same time he was, like many other barbarians, very interested in technological progress. His boast was that he had invented a new method of metal casting, devised new irrigation equipment, and found new mineral resources. He was also proud of having laid out Nineveh as his new capital, with parks to beautify it and a new aqueduct(28) to give it a plentiful supply of good water. Of Esarhaddon little is known apart from his military and political achievements. In the political sphere he tried two new ideas, both of which had disastrous results. One was to attempt to incorporate Egypt into his Empire: this over-stretched Assyrian military resources and was one factor underlying the later collapse. The other new policy was to bequeath Babylonia to one son and Assyria and the rest of the Empire to another: the result here was that the two brothers, at first the best of friends, became personally involved in the old tensions between Assyria and Babylonia, so that civil war broke out. This, however, is to anticipate.

A word may be said here about the succession in Assyria. Although the kingship was normally treated as hereditary, it did not necessarily pass to the oldest son. Esarhaddon, for example, specifically emphasised that he was the chosen heir despite his being a younger son:

Of my big brothers I was their little brother. At the command of Ashur ... [and other gods], my father ... formally promoted me in the assembly of my brothers, (saying) thus: 'This is the son of my succession.' When he asked (the gods) Shamash and Adad by liverdivination, they answered him a definite 'Yes!', (saying) thus: 'He is your successor.' He therefore paid respect to their solemn word and he assembled the people of Assyria, small and great, (with) my brothers the seed of my father's house, and he made them swear their solemn oath before Ashur ... [and other gods], the gods of Assyria, the gods who dwell in heaven and earth, to protect my succession.

The accession of a king, if approved by the gods, was accompanied by various favourable signs. Esarhaddon said that when he ascended (after putting down an attempted usurpation), 'there blew the south wind, the breath of Ea, the wind whose blowing is good for the exercise of kingship; favourable signs appeared in the heavens and on the earth'.

The son to whom Esarhaddon bequeathed Assyria and the major part of the Empire was Ashurbanipal (26). This King prided him self on his literacy and tells us - 'I grasped the wisdom of Nabu [the scribal god], the whole of the scribal art of all the experts.' Some Assyriologists, with an elder-sisterly attitude to cuneiform studies, consider such a boast a presumption on the part of a mere Assyrian monarch, but we have no real evidence entitling us to dismiss Ashurbanipal's claim. Certainly he was keenly interested in cuneiform literature, for it was he who was mainly responsible for collecting one of the great libraries of Nineveh, the source of the thousands of Kuyunjik tablets (p. 10).

The civil war between Ashurbanipal and his brother in Babylon undoubtedly seriously weakened the Empire. None the less, when Ashurbanipal finally captured Babylon in 648 B.C., his position seemed superficially as strong as ever, so that between then and 639 B.C. he was able to undertake a series of campaigns to overrun Elam. There were, however, fresh factors in the world scene. In Iran, north of Elam, the Medes, a group of vigorous Iranian tribes (a branch of the Indo-European race) who had migrated into the area at about 900 B.C., were becoming a force to reckon with. Already at the time of Esarhaddon they had been of sufficient importance for that King to bind them by treaty to support his arrangement for the succession after his death, and by 650 B.C. they had consolidated themselves into a powerful kingdom which could, and ultimately did, successfully oppose Assyria. North of Assyria, the kingdom of Urartu had been knocked out by fresh hordes from Central Asia, who penetrated deep into Asia Minor. Although Ashurbanipal succeeded for a while in using them to his own advantage (as when he set them against a king on the coast of Asia Minor who was supporting the independence movement in Egypt), it was only a matter of time before some of these hordes turned against Assyria itself.

We know very little about Ashurbanipal's reign after 639 B.C. except that the situation for Assyria was becoming increasingly grave. When Ashurbanipal died in 626 B.C. a certain Nabopolassar, relying on support from the Chaldaean (Kaldu) tribes of Babylonia, assumed the kingship of that land, although Ashurbanipal's successors Ashur-etillu-ili and Sin-shar-ishkun seem to have retained partial authority in parts of the southern kingdom. However, Nabopolassar made an alliance with the Medes, and his complete success against Assyria was almost inevitable.

At the very end Assyria found an unexpected ally in Egypt, a Power which would not view favourably the eventual handing over of the trade routes of the Near East, hitherto controlled by Assyria, to the mercy of such upstart and unpredictable people as the Medes and Chaldaeans. The Egyptian support was, however, too late to restore the old order and Nineveh fell in 612 B.C., the remnant of the Assyrian forces, with their Egyptian allies, making a last stand at Carchemish in 605 B.C., only to meet with final defeat. The Assyrian Power was irrevocably at an end.

Nabopolassar died at this moment. His son and successor Nebuchadnezzar II had been his father's Commander-in-Chief, and was a general of great experience and ability. He grasped the remains of the Assyrian Empire, and extended his authority to the Egyptian border, his two attacks upon Jerusalem (597 and 587 B.C.), and the deportation of the Jews to Babylonia, being very well known. These were, in fact, simply incidents in Nebuchadnezzar's struggle to impose his authority over an area which the new Egyptian dynasty was coming to regard as its own sphere of influence. The Medes at the same time extended their realm to include the old kingdom of Urartu and much of Asia Minor.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire, as the empire founded by Nebuchadnezzar is usually called, suffered economically from the fact that the Medes now controlled the trade routes from farther east passing through the old kingdom of Urartu and Asia Minor to the west. It was in an attempt to rectify this that the Neo-Babylonian rulers tried to extend their authority in the south-west, so that they would benefit by the trade routes coming up from Arabia. We have seen that Nebuchadnezzar took steps to control the whole of Syria and Palestine, and later in his reign there is evidence that he unsuccessfully attempted an invasion of Egypt itself. His second successor, Neriglissar, was probably actuated by similar economic motives when he undertook a campaign into Asia Minor (just before 556 B.C.). It was, however, the last Neo-Babylonian King, Nabu-na'id (Nabonidus) (555-539 B.C.), who made the most determined endeavours to put the Empire on a sounder economic footing. Much of his reign was spent in western Arabia, where he established a chain of military colonies along what is known as the 'incense route' from Teima to Yathrib (modern Medina).

By the time of Nabu-na'id relations between Babylonia and the Medes had gravely deteriorated, and Nabu-na)id in the early years of his reign had looked with favour upon a certain prince who was in revolt against the Median King. This prince was Cyrus the Persian. Cyrus, however, once he had gained control of the Median Empire, proceeded upon an expansionist policy which quickly brought him into conflict with Babylonia. By brilliant generalship he succeeded in gaining control, in 547 B.C., of the whole of Asia Minor as far as the Greek settlements on the west coast, and then seized the eastern part of Assyria, which of course fell within the Babylonian sphere of influence. War broke out, and Cyrus invaded the Babylonian Empire over a wide front. Public opinion through-out the civilised world at this time is reflected in Isaiah xlv I and 4, where the Hebrew prophet hails Cyrus as the chosen one of the Lord. Nabu-na)id was much less happily placed. Even within Babylonia he was unpopular, in part from the economic difficulties which faced the country and in part from attempts he had made at religious reform, and when Cyrus finally marched upon Babylon, he already had many adherents within the city. Babylon fell to I him in 539 B.C.

The Persian Empire, into which Egypt was incorporated in 525 B.C., now exceeded in extent any which had gone before it, and of this Empire Babylonia and Assyria formed only one province. Babylonian and Assyrian culture had, however, a continuing influence, and amongst other things Persian art (30), civil administration and military science owed much to their Babylonian or Assyrian roots. Babylon was, if not the political, certainly the -administrative and cultural capital of the whole Persian Empire.

After 500 B.C. the Persian Empire came into collision with Greece, and conflict continued intermittently until in 331 B.C. the Macedonian Alexander the Great overthrew the Persian power at a battle near Arbela, proceeding afterwards to extend his authority to the borders of India. Had Alexander lived, it was his intention to establish a world empire with its capital at Babylon, but his premature death at Babylon in 323 B.C., at the age of thirty-two, left his territories to be divided up amongst his generals. The eastern provinces, including Babylonia and Assyria, eventually fell to Seleucus 1 (301-281 B.C.). Under the Seleucids Babylonia and Assyria came increasingly under Hellenistic cultural influence, and Akkadian, which had already 'been superseded by Aramaic as the language of everyday speech, was no longer even written, except for religious or astronomical purposes. The old culture of Babylonia and Assyria was dead, and the future lay with Palestine, Greece, and Rome.

Chapter III

LIFE AT AN AMORITE COURT

AT the end of 1933 French archaeologists began excavations Li at a site called Tell Hariri on the Middle Euphrates in eastern Syria, continuing there until the end of 1938 and resuming again after the war. The site was quickly proved to be that of the ancient city of Mari, already known from cuneiform documents from other places as the seat of an important dynasty. Large numbers of cuneiform tablets were found, the most important single find being that of an archive of about 13,000 tablets in 1936. Another remarkable discovery was the remains of a huge palace which, when excavated, proved to contain nearly 300 rooms and to cover some six acres, that is, as much as sixty or seventy good-class suburban houses with their gardens. The state of preservation of the walls was surprisingly good for a building 4000 years old, remaining in parts to a height of up to sixteen feet, with some of the doorways intact. The archaeologist in charge of the excavations was even able to write to the effect that many of the domestic installations of the palace, such as the kitchens, baths and pantries, could still have functioned almost without any repairs(31). On some of the plastered walls there were still to be seen the original mural paintings (32).

It is now clear that the palace was pillaged in the early second millennium (in fact by Hammurabi of Babylon, in about 1760 B.C.), and the cuneiform documents shed a flood of light on the life of the time. They give us information not only on the international scene just before the sack of the city, but also on the history of the occupants of the palace, providing us with a picture, often in considerable detail, of the private and public circumstances in which they lived.

One must imagine the city as lying within a strong defensive wall. From a distance the most conspicuous building, as in the majority of Mesopotamian cities, was the ziggurrat or great temple-tower, standing perhaps 150 feet above the plain, with a number of temples grouped at its foot. Not far off was the huge expanse of the great palace already referred to. This palace was of course not merely a royal residence, but was also an administrative centre from which all the work of what we should call the Civil Service and Foreign Service was directed. It is this that accounts for the presence within the palace of Mari of the thousands of letters and administrative and judicial documents. In contemporary English terms the royal palace of this period is to be thought of as Whitehall rather than Buckingham Palace. Even this does not cover all the functions of the palace of Mari. Part of it was a business centre, with warehouses where merchants could deposit their goods, and another section must have served as barracks for At least a part of the contingent of troops stationed permanently thin Mari. Mari was also a military depot, and it was probably thin the palace courtyards that equipment such as battering-ram and siege-towers were stored until required elsewhere. Palaces fulfilling functions similar to those of the palace of Mari existed, though on a smaller scale, in the other principal towns of the kingdom.

Naturally, part of the palace of Mari constituted the private quarters and the State apartments of the King himself. At the time we are imagining, this was Yasmakh-Adad, a younger son of Shamshi-Adad of Assyria. To judge by the correspondence which passed between him and his elder brother and his stern old father, Yasmakh-Adad seems to have been regarded as somewhat frivolous and lacking in a sense of responsibility. We certainly find him getting into a number of scrapes for bungling his official duties, but, as we shall see, there was so much for which he was responsible that an occasional slip-up was excusable. Despite any failings which his father and elder brother may have seen in him, there were strong ties of affection between the members of the family. Thus we find, in one letter, Shamshi-Adad strongly insisting that Yasmakh-Adad should come to his city for a fortnight's stay, whilst on many an occasion Yasmakh-Adad's older brother went out of his way to get him out of trouble.

There are hints in the letters passing between Yasmakh-Adad and his father and brother that he was fond of good company. If indeed this was so, Yasmakh-Adad had plenty of opportunity for indulging in his taste, as at any time the number of people in residence at his Court might run into hundreds. These included members of his own family, visiting ambassadors, permanent palace officials, ministers and administrators, officers of the garrison, and high officials from other towns temporarily in Mari. There were also ladies of various classes from wives to religious prostitutes, but these probably had their own quarters and did not mix with the men in the general business of the day.

Not much is known about the actual routine of the palace at this period. It seems clear that the King held a Court each morning, at which such officials and ambassadors as had business to transact would be present. Here the King would have read to him by his ministers letters sent from his father or brother or from foreign rulers or private persons. Probably many of the letters were read out publicly, though others were, from their contents, obviously for the King's ear alone. Sometimes a correspondent might provide his ambassador with a dummy letter full of trivialities to be read in public, leaving the ambassador to give the King's chief minister the genuine communication in a private interview on a suitable occasion. Another of the King's functions at his public audience would be the settlement of legal disputes. Serious lawsuits, which officials had considered too grave or too difficult for them to settle, would on these occasions be referred to the King for a decision.

Part of a typical royal day must have been taken up with religious ceremonies, since in ancient Mesopotamia the King always played an essential part in the State religion. Indeed, at some periods the King was actually considered divine, though not at this time. In the course of his religious duties the King might be required to visit one or other of the temples of Mari, or even of other towns in the kingdom, to officiate at rituals or to perform certain ceremonies. This could involve such things as slaughtering sheep for sacrifice, making reports to the gods on State affairs, receiving investiture from the gods, or simply paying respects to the images of the gods(46). (In speaking of gods, we include here goddesses.) The King would certainly also have to attend certain feasts of the gods, and possibly some of their daily meals. The use of the terms 'feasts' and 'meals' here is not to be taken as metaphorical: they were real meals with real food in large quantities set out on tables before the images of the gods. Who really ate the food we can only guess, but no doubt the priests after their families lived well.

At a later period the gods had four meals a day, two main meals and two snacks, and it is a reasonable assumption that they already did so at the period we are considering. As to what the humans in the palace did, we are not certain in this respect, but we do know that one of the daily meals was a formal dinner. The King partook of this in the company of visiting dignitaries and some of his own officials, and the number dining at the King's table might be anything from a dozen to a hundred. Whether the ladies of the Court were admitted to this is not altogether certain, but it seems likely that they took their meals separately. This is suggested by a ration list in which provisions are specified for 'the religious prostitutes, the harem women, the lady singers'.

At the dinner distinguished guests wore a special robe given them by their royal host. This was what in current jargon we might call a 'status symbol', and there was heart-burning amongst those at Court who did not receive this honour. At present our information about what the guests ate at the royal dinner is distinctly one-sided. Lists of provisions for the royal meals have been found in the palace, and as they contain no meat courses, one might rashly conclude that the Court was vegetarian. In fact, however, we know that beef and mutton were eaten by people who could afford them, and probably the reason we have no mention of meat is that there was a separate butcher's department in the palace with its own accounts, which are still awaiting discovery. Fish was also eaten, some species being particularly sought after. Amongst other foodstuffs we hear about, four varieties of 'bread' are distinguished, of which the commonest was an unleavened bread in the form of thin crisp disks made from whole-meal barley flour. Another type was specifically described as 34 A goddess from Mari 'leavened bread', whilst the others were probably what we should refer to as pastries, since they contained such ingredients as sesame oil and something called 'honey'. The doubt about the latter term is that the same Akkadian word sometimes means honey from wild bees and sometimes date-syrup. Amongst vegetables in common use at this time were cucumbers, peas, beans, plants rather like cress, and garlic. There was a kind of truffle which was considered a great delicacy, and we have mention of baskets of them being sent to the King. The commonest fruit was, of course, the date, but grapes and figs are also commonly mentioned.

As to beverages, both beer and wine were available (35). The beer was produced locally, though wine had to be imported from the kingdoms to the north and north-east. In some of these kingdoms the rulers were very proud of their vintages.

On special occasions there would be a Court entertainment, of which no doubt a prominent feature would be music and overindulgence in liquor. The music was provided by specialty trained slave-girls. It is also likely that poets or minstrels recited traditional stories, of an improving or amusing nature, such as fables in which the date-palm and tamarisk, or the fox and dog, argued their respective merits. Several compositions which were probably put to this purpose have come down to us.

It is now time to turn from Yasmakh-Adad's relaxations to the serious business of his life.² His personal responsibility was considerable, covering a remarkably wide range of matters. Officials and private people would constantly be sending problems for the King to solve. A ship might have been wrecked on the Euphrates, so that the grain it was carrying for the palace had had to be beached. What was to be done about the grain and the crew? An ,ox intended for the palace had grown so fat and heavy that it could not stand, still less be driven to Mari. The official shouldered off the problem on to the King: 'Let my lord send instructions about this matter.' Another man wrote to say that the chariot with which the King had provided him had broken down in the course of his .journeys: could the writer please have a replacement. The King was informed that the wall of some town was falling down and there was no mason available to deal with it: could he please send either ,a mason to repair the wall or a doctor in case of accident. A lion had been caught, and, although no instructions had been received from the King, it was now on its way to the capital by ship, for fear it escaped. A palace official had died and left an orphan son without means of support: would the King be kind enough to make arrangements. A wife had either run away or been kidnapped and gone to another country: would the king please intercede with the foreign ruler for her return.

Other problems the King might receive to deal with were of a religious nature. Thus one official sends a message from the State god Dagan, who is seen on more than one occasion to have become rather impatient at neglect: 'Dagan has sent me a message, "Send to your lord, and in the coming month, on the fourteenth, let the pagrai sacrifice be performed."' The King was also constantly having to take account of omens reaching him. Religious functionaries were an important part of the personnel of any city or district, and amongst such people diviners (that is, priests who professed to foretell the future in matters affecting the State) were considered almost indispensable. Indeed, in one letter YasmakhAdad's brother points out to him that 'there can be no patum [a particular administrative district] without a diviner'. The actual procedure in divination was most commonly to dedicate and sacrifice a sheep and then examine its liver and lungs. The theory was that the gods would write their intentions on the sheep's organs by signs which could be interpreted by the learned(36). Omens so obtained were duly reported to the King and apparently taken seriously. A correspondent reports:

In the city of Sagaratim, at the monthly sacrifice and my lord's sacrifice, I examined the omens. The left side of the 'finger' [a projecting piece of the organ] was split, the middle 'finger' of the lungs was over to the left. It is a sign of fame. Let my lord be happy.

Omens had to be taken before a ruler or high official went on a journey, and there were also diviners on service with the army. Even the tactics of military units might be decided by the manner in which the diviners interpreted the omens. We have a letter specifically saying, in connection with arrangements , for the disposition of troops, 'The diviners shall weigh up the omens, and according to the appearance of favourable Omens 150 men shall go out or 150 men shall come in.' However, despite the importance attached to omens, kings were sometimes intelligent enough, or (from the point of view of the diviners) pigheaded enough, to disregard them and rely on their own judgement. We see this possibility recognised by an official who, in reporting the omens, told the King that they were not favourable for a certain military expedition and begged the King to pay serious heed to them. None the less, he accepted the fact that the King might please himself, and expressed himself willing to do his part whatever course was decided upon. Such independence of thought was however discouraged, and there existed cautionary tales in the form of legends about the unpleasant fate which befell kings of old, such as Naram-Sin of Agade, who had been foolish enough to act against the omens.

One of the biggest preoccupations of the King must have been his control of his officers and what we might call his Civil Service. It was necessary to have officials to administer the various towns and districts, to see to the collection of taxes (mostly in kind), to control irrigation, and to maintain order; and officers were also needed for the army. In the absence of currency issued by the State, there was no convenient way of providing for such officials except by the grant of land. Thus the King of Mari had to arrange for this. The way in which this distribution of estates was done was often a cause of complaint, and we frequently find kings appealed to by those who felt they had been hard-treated in this respect. A typical complaint from a disgruntled officer runs: 'Neither corn nor field has been appointed to me.... I cannot cultivate a field, I cannot eat rations with the soldiers of the fortress. I am starving. Let my lord appoint (something) for me.'

It was technically the King's task to appoint governors over the cities, but in practice the citizens could make their own nominations, which might well be accepted, especially if accompanied with a substantial present. We find this situation in the following letter:

To my lord Yasmakh-Adad say, thus says Tarim-Shakim [a high-ranking civil servant]: 'Baqqum, the Man [i.e. ruler] of the city Tizrakh, has gone to his fate [i.e. died]. Now the citizens of Tizrakh have come and they say "Set Kali-II (to serve) as Agent (over) us." Furthermore, he has delivered one mina of silver to the Palace (in consideration of) this being decreed. Now, therefore, I have dispatched Kali-11 before my lord. Let my lord set him to the sheikhdom of Tizrakh, and let him accept from him the one mina of silver as appropriate.'

Another of the many formal responsibilities of the King was the regulation of the calendar. Throughout Mesopotamian history the calendar used was based on a year consisting of twelve lunar months. Since the average period from one new moon to the next is twenty-nine and a half days, twelve lunar months amount to 354 days, which is eleven and a quarter days short of a solar year. Thus after three years the lunar calendar would be thirty-three and three-quarter days out from the solar year, and would need an extra month put in (or 'intercalated') to bring it more or less into line. It was the King's duty to arrange for this, though of course he did not work it out personally but was advised by his astronomers.

Probably the heaviest part of the King's duties concerned his relations with foreign rulers, with problems ranging from runaway wives to war. There were always foreign ambassadors at YasmakhAdad's Court, and he himself had ambassadors at the Courts of other rulers. Some such officials might be more or less permanently attached to a particular Court, whilst others would be special envoys entrusted with negotiations about particular matters, and passing from one Court to another as circumstances required. Naturally we have no record of the business transacted verbally between ambassadors and the King, and our sources are solely the written documents brought by the envoys.

Relations between friendly rulers mostly concerned either trade or military aid. Kings gave each other military assistance not only by direct alliance but also, in small-scale operations, by the loan of troops. Such loans would be intended only for a limited action during a particular emergency, and since in such cases the lender and borrower are inclined to differ as to when the emergency is over, this frequently led to friction. We thus find complaints of the following kind from a ruler who had lent troops in this way: 'Since the god has destroyed the enemy and the days of cold weather have arrived, why are you retaining the servants of your brother?' Clearly the winter was regarded as a close season for military operations.

Kings of this period often sent each other presents, sometimes as genuine gifts designed to establish or retain friendly relations. Thus we find the King of Carchemish sending the King of Mari a present of wine. It was the King of Carchemish who was so proud of his wine, and on another occasion we find him writing: 'If there is no good wine ... for you to drink, send me a message, and I will send you good wine.' At other times the sending of presents was a disguised form of trade, since a corresponding present was expected in return. If one of the kings was a mean man this was liable to lead to disappointment. Thus we find one disgruntled ruler, the petty King of the Syrian State of Qatna, who on one occasion thought he had made a bad bargain, and wrote to Ishme-Dagan, the brother of Yasmakh-Adad, to this effect:

This thing is unspeakable! But yet I must speak it so that I may relieve my heart [almost 'so that I may get it off my chest']. You desired from me, as your request, two horses, and I had them sent to you. Now you have had twenty minas of lead brought to me.... The price of a horse here with us ... is 600 (shekels) of silver [i.e. ten minas of silver]. But you have had only twenty minas of lead brought to me.

Since the price of lead was only one-fourteenth that of silver, there was some substance in the King of Qatna's complaint.

The merchants were important members of the community, and a king of this period would sometimes have to take up their case with a foreign ruler to protect their interests. Thus we find Yasmakh-Adad writing to the great Hammurabi of Babylon over a difficulty which had befallen one of the trading caravans from Mari. He writes:

To Hammurabi say, thus says Yasmakh-Adad. 'Previously your brother [i.e. the writer of the letter, Yasmakh-Adad himself) dispatched a caravan to the city of Tilmun. [Tilmun was well to the south of Babylonia, so such a caravan would have to pass through Hammurabi's territory.] In due course this caravan returned. It was held up by Ili-Ebukh [some official of Hammurabi] in (connection with) a claim over a well.... They brought that caravan to Babylon safely before you. . .

Yasmakh-Adad then goes on to say what he would like done about the caravan.

Farmers as well as merchants might need the attention of the King to their affairs. In a land like his with a marginal rainfall, pasturage in particular areas often failed and the King would have to make arrangements for pasturing the large flocks of sheep belonging to him or to the various towns or temples. Sometimes, when conditions were particularly bad, this might involve coming to an arrangement with a neighbouring ruler to allow the flocks to cross into better-provided territory. Even direct military action would sometimes be linked up with agriculture, since there were times when measures had to be taken to prevent raids upon the cultivated areas by nomadic peoples from the desert.

The security of the land as a whole was in the last resort the responsibility of the King, and it almost goes without saying that all the purely military affairs of his State were under his direct supervision. The King's responsibilities in this sphere of course involved measures against possible enemies from outside, as well as the maintenance of civil order within the State. For these purposes there existed a standing army of about 10,000 arranged in basic units of 200 men. A large proportion of this standing army, about 4000 men, was usually garrisoned in the capital. In case of major trouble the standing army could be augmented by the levying of troops either from the citizens of the towns or from tribesmen. As is often the case, conscription of this kind was not always very popular, and various vigorous means of persuasion sometimes had to be used. We find one of the more drastic methods suggested by an official writing to the King, on an occasion when the men of a certain area had been called up for military service but were very slow in putting in an appearance. The officer in charge of the matter wrote: 'If the King approves, let them kill one of the guilty men, and cut off his head, and let them take it round amongst those towns. . . , so that the people may be afraid and will quickly assemble.' However, conscripts were not always so reluctant. In another letter an official, reporting that two groups of conscripts had arrived, said that they had no sickness amongst them and nothing wrong at all. In fact, as the official put it: 'In this campaign . . . there were no worries or anything of that sort, only laughing and singing as though they were at home. Their morale is good.'

All kinds of details would come to the King about his armed forces, not only reports of broader issues such as actual engagements with the enemy, but even such items as the attempted murder of one officer by another. He would also of course receive intelligence reports about troop movements in neighbouring States, of which the following is an example:

To my lord Yasmakh-Adad say, thus says Warad-Sin. 'In the month of Tamkhiri, on the twenty-first day, in the evening, they brought a report from the town Yandikha in these terms, "The troops of the Man [i.e. ruler] of Eshnunna are grouping in force in the town Mankisu."

Though a serious matter, such a report would by no means imply that war was inevitable, since difficulties between States were more often than not smoothed over by diplomatic exchanges. The most frequent use of the army was not in war between States, but in actions to deal with raids by the semi-nomadic tribesmen who still roamed the desert around the fringes of the settled lands. As a protection against such raids garrisons were posted at points along the border and in strategically sited towns. To raise a general alarm in the event of a serious attack at any point there was a special system. This involved a series of fire-beacons spaced across the country, whereby in emergency a warning could be rapidly flashed to the capital from the danger-point.

So far we have considered only that part of the life of Mari which was primarily related to the King. It may be useful to supplement the picture by what we know of other aspects of the life of the time.

We have very little evidence about the total population of Mari, but it is unlikely to have been more than 100,000 and may have been substantially less. It is well known that in Babylon at this time there was a fairly clear-cut division of the population into three classes, the awilum or full citizen, the mushkenum or second class citizen, and the slave, who was not a citizen at all but a chattel. How far this system was reflected in Mari is uncertain. There were certainly slaves in Mari, and there were certainly noble families which seem to have occupied a privileged position, but on the whole the division between full and second-class citizens seems to have been less evident than at Babylon. The population certainly included people ranging from members of ancient families who had been in Mari since Sumerian times to recent immigrants from the desert, but whether such differences in origin were in general reflected in differences of status we do not know.

The State of Mari as a whole had a predominantly agricultural basis, but there were certain industries carried on in the towns particularly at the capital itself, where there was considerable specialisation. Amongst other things, the capital was noted for the superior quality of the chariots made there. Census lists and other documents refer to people by their trades, and we find men described as boatman, carpenter, leather-worker, fisherman, potter or mason. Amongst other professions and trades known at this time are those of metal-workers, weavers, fullers, gem-cutters, jewellers, painters, and perfume-makers. An analysis of the lists mentioned indicates that about one-fifth of the population consisted of craftsmen, the remainder (apart of course from officials) being labourers. Not only grown men and women but also children of both sexes had to take their part in the work of the nation.

Workers were sometimes paid wholly in the form of rations of corn, wool, clothing, wine or oil, that is, their actual primary necessities. Alternatively they might be paid wholly or partly in silver, though not of course in coins, which were not invented until 1000 years later. Where payment was in kind, the actual amounts of the daily rations of the various commodities can sometimes be calculated. Thus we find, for example, 'I gur 15 qa for two men who for forty-three days dwelt in the house of the perfume-maker', which works out at about two-and-a-half pints of oil each a day. If this seems excessive, it should be remembered that this took the place both of edible fats and butter in the diet, and of soap and hair-cream amongst toilet accessories.

One of the industries carried on at Mari was tool production, and the city must have had a good name for this as raw materials were sent there from other places to be worked up. These tools were made of copper or bronze. Other objects made from these metals at this time included, to mention only a few things, swords, ploughshares, parts of chariots, pots and pans (though only as luxury goods for wealthy people), bangles, fish-hooks, needles, mirrors, braziers, tweezers, and knives. The precious metals gold and silver had long been known, but were too soft for anything except ornaments or valuable vessels, which were usually destined for the temples or the King. Gold at this time was worth four times as much as silver. Another metal used at the time, and for which Mari served as a centre of distribution, was known in Akkadian as anakum, which was either tin or lead. Iron is occasionally mentioned, and has even been found in excavations, but in only very small quantities, and was possibly used as jewellery, or more probably as amulets with magical properties. The technological advances which made possible the large-scale production of good quality iron had not yet been achieved. The rarity of iron is confirmed by the fact that a text of this period shows that the value of the metal was still twice that of gold.

One important industry within the kingdom of Mari had its main centre away from the capital. This was the production of bitumen, from the famous bitumen lake near Hit, at the southern end of the kingdom. The substance was produced in a liquid and a solid form, corresponding roughly to tar and pitch. It was important as a building material throughout the whole of Babylonia, being used as a damp course, as a mortar, and (mixed with ground limestone or similar materials) for surfacing floors or pavements.

Outside the towns, the great majority of the population was engaged in some form of farming, either the cultivation of the soil or the rearing of flocks of sheep or goats. Along the Middle Euphrates the cultivation of most crops is impossible without irrigation, and the irrigation system was perhaps the most vital part of the economy of the kingdom of Mari. This was well recognised, and we find a governor specifically pointing out to his King that 'if the waters are interrupted, the land of my lord will starve'. The same official even felt free to refuse the King's summons to the capital, on the plea that he was needed to supervise irrigation works.

Indications are that the irrigated area extended to a depth of three or four miles along the right (south) bank of the Euphrates for most of the two hundred or so miles of the kingdom of Mari. There was a whole network of canals, with special officials to supervise them, and in time of necessity all the able-bodied men of a district, townsmen as well as villagers, could be called out to work on them, either to clear them of rushes and water-weeds or to dig out sections where silt had accumulated or to build up and consolidate the banks against floods.

The staple crops of the kingdom were barley and sesame (p. 68). The details of agricultural operations depended upon the type of land, particularly upon whether it was virgin soil or an established field, but in general work began in July or August and involved two or three main stages. The first was deep ploughing, if this was considered necessary. Then came some form of harrowing or other process (such as rolling or hoeing) to break up the surface clods; more than one of these operations might be necessary. Finally, by December at the latest, came the sowing. This was done by means of a seeder plough, a special implement with a funnel which permitted the seed to be dropped directly into the furrow as it was cut(37).

The rainfall in the Mari area is just under six inches a year, falling mostly between December and February. This would be sufficient to make the seed germinate, but irrigation was essential to keep the crop growing. The barley would be ready for harvesting in May, when all available labour, including children, would be called out to deal with it.

The ploughs mentioned above were at this period drawn by oxen, which were more important as draught animals than as food, though they were eaten. It was oxen (not, as used to be thought, asses) which drew the carts present in the famous Royal Tombs of Ur (c. 2600 B.C.). Cows were milked, though they were of less importance in this respect than goats.

The other principal beast of burden at this time was the ass, which usually carried its load as a pack, though it might be used to draw a cart or as a riding beast. The horse, though it had by this time been introduced to the Near East from farther north, was still something of a novelty, and old-fashioned people considered it not quite the thing for a king to be seen riding one. The animal of highest economic importance in the kingdom of Mari (and indeed throughout Babylonia) was, however, the sheep, closely followed by the goat. These, provided their shepherds could save them from being driven off by nomadic raiders, could, then as now, usually pick up a living from patches of vegetation scattered about the desert, though when these failed, as they sometimes did, special Government arrangements might have to be made for grazing grounds elsewhere or the provision of fodder. Sheep and goats together provided the main source of meat, as well as the raw material for clothing and textiles. It is also a reasonable assumption, judging by the situation elsewhere in the Near East, that their milk was an important source of food, though there seems to be no specific evidence for this from Mari.

Chapter IV

THE SCRIBE IN BABYLONIAN SOCIETY

WITHOUT doubt, the most important man in the ancient society of Mesopotamia was the scribe. Kings might extend their sway over hitherto unknown regions, merchants might organise the importation of rare commodities from distant lands, the irrigation officials might set the labourers to utilise the bountiful waters of the rivers and to bring fertility to the soil, but without the scribe to record and transmit, to pass on the detailed orders of the administrators, to provide the astronomical data for controlling the calendar, to calculate the labour force necessary for digging a canal or the supplies required by an army, the co-ordination and continuity of all these activities could never have been achieved. Ancient Mesopotamian civilisation was above all a literate civilisation.

Writing began, so far as we know at present, in Sumer (southernmost Mesopotamia) at about 3000 B.C., the earliest examples we possess consisting of pictures drawn on lumps of clay(43). These earliest examples of writing already show, in the view of some experts, a certain development from what must have been the original form of the pictures, and there is the possibility that there may have been an even earlier stage of writing, of which we have no direct trace. This could have been used either in Sumer itself on some material, such as palm leaves, which has perished, or in the still unidentified earlier home of the Sumerians.

We cannot yet read the earliest writing discovered, and so cannot be sure beyond doubt what language it was intended to represent. The archaeological evidence gives, however, good reason to suppose that it was a form of the language we call Sumerian.

Despite the difficulties involved in dealing with a dead language apparently unconnected with any other known tongue, considerable advances have been made in the understanding of Sumerian during the past forty years. It was a language of the type which we call 'agglutinative' (meaning 'gluing together'), that is, instead of inflecting its roots like most of the languages we are familiar with, it kept all its roots unchanged and glued bits on to alter the sense. The earliest writing simply used pictures to represent whatever was to be noted down. This was quite straightforward as long as a storekeeper simply wanted to make a note such as 'five pigs', which might be represented as something like

but to draw pictures of verbs would generally be more difficult. The Sumerian inventors of writing often got over the difficulty by drawing some concrete object to suggest the idea of the verb. Thus, since a leg is used for either walking or standing, the picture of a leg could be used for the verbs 'to walk' and 'to stand'.

The picture of a head, with the mouth emphasised and a piece of bread alongside it, clearly represented the idea 'to eat'. A bird sitting on an egg was one way of indicating the idea 'to give birth'.

A class of words that a scribe would very often have to write, from the earliest invention of writing, would be personal names, which would obviously need to be entered in connection with temple receipts and ration issues. If a person delivering produce to the temple stores had a good straightforward name, which constituted a short sentence in Sumerian, there may have been no difficulty, since the elements of his name could be written with the ordinary Sumerian pictograms. Other names, however, especially if they were non-Sumerian, might well be meaningless to the scribe and so would prove impossible to write in pictograms. The only way the scribe could get round the difficulty was to divide the name up into syllables and represent each syllable by the Sumerian pictogram sounding most like that syllable. The principle was rather like taking a name such as 'Digby', which has no meaning in modern English, and representing it by pictures denoting 'dig' and 'bee'. This device was rather easier to apply widely with Sumerian than it would be with English, since most Sumerian words were of a single syllable.

A Sumerian writing sign used in this way with reference only to its sound and with no thought of the object it originally represented is known by us as a 'syllogram'. The same sign could of course be a pictogram or syllogram according to how it was used. Actually the Sumerian scribes very rapidly simplified the forms of their original pictograms so that soon most of them were no longer recognisable as pictures at all (39). At this stage the word 'pictogram' is no longer appropriate, so the term 'ideogram' or logogram' is used instead. The principle remains, however, and the same sign could be an ideogram or syllogram according to how the scribe used it.

As the idea developed of using writing for more complicated matters than simple lists, the system of using syllograms was developed to give greater precision in other directions. At first, a written sentence was only a very crude approximation to the spoken sentence, since all the little elements of speech with such meanings as 'of', 'to', 'with', 'from', and so on, could not be shown. To take an example, the ideogram for 'king' was pronounced LUGALA (or possibly just LUGAL), and in actual Sumerian speech 'of the king' and 'to the king' would have been respectively LUGAL-AK and LUGALA-RA (or something very close to these forms). In the earliest writing these suffixes would have been ignored, and whether the scribe wanted to indicate 'of the king', 'to the king', or any of the other forms mentioned, he would simply have written the ideogram LUGALA and left it to the reader of the document to decide from the general situation which form was meant. (We know from our practice of omitting corresponding words in telegrams that this does not make writing unintelligible, though it certainly limits its scope.) As long as only simple things were written in Sumerian the original system caused no difficulty, but as attempts were made to write down more complicated matters, ambiguity might arise. The Sumerians, having already invented the conception of the syllogram in connection with personal names, overcame the difficulty by using the same principle. Let us suppose a Sumerian scribe wished to represent, without any possibility of ambiguity, 'to the king', LUGALA-RA. No sign yet existed for RA meaning 'to', but there was a verb RA meaning 'to hit', which had an ideogram. By using the ideogram RA 'to hit' but ignoring its original meaning and thinking only of its sound, the scribe could easily represent LUGALA-RA 'to the king'. (Once this system had become established, LUGALA-RA could not be mistaken for a sentence meaning 'the king hit', since in living Sumerian speech the latter would have several other elements, which would now have to be written out if such a sentence were intended.)

In the long run, the most important consequence of the use of syllograms was the possibility which it provided of accurately representing languages other than Sumerian. The principal language concerned here was the Semitic language which we call Akkadian. By 2500 B.C. there was a strong Semitic element in Mesopotamia, and it was a great convenience to be able to represent in writing the language of the people concerned. For simple or conventional statements, writing in ideograms would do as well for Akkadian as for Sumerian. Writing purely by ideograms could, however, become very ambiguous for more complicated statements in Akkadian, and so syllabic writing often proved essential. In consequence of the use of the syllabic principle, Akkadian was being written by 2400 B.C., and was used for quite extensive inscriptions a century later. By the Old Babylonian period (the beginning of the second millennium), Akkadian could be written in syllabic cuneiform so conveniently that we find not only law-codes, business documents, literary works and religious compositions written in it, but also thousands of official and private letters.

Writing had begun as a means of recording economic data (receipts and issues of goods by the temple authorities) but it soon began to prove a suitable instrument for other purposes. Just as many people in our own culture collect and classify stamps or match-box labels, so also the Sumerian scribes had a passion for collecting, but what they collected and put into systematic order was data about their own civilisation, in particular their religion, their languages and their economy. Students learnt the use of cuneiform writing by copying such lists. As early as the second quarter of the third millennium the scribes were already writing catalogues of the names of gods, and of more mundane things such as animals and household objects. This process was continued and developed, ultimately giving what are in fact extensive dictionaries ,of Sumerian and Akkadian, which have proved of the greatest value to modern Assyriologists in increasing their understanding of those languages.

it may seem strange, but the scribes did not begin to use writing to any considerable extent for what we would call 'literature' until 1000 years after writing had first been invented. This is, however, not as odd as it at first appears. Ancient literature was something to be recited and heard, not something to be read silently. A comparison with music may make the ancient attitude clear. Music can be reduced to a score and read by anyone who has received an adequate training; but most of us would take the view that a musical composition cannot be said to have been realised unless actually played by performers. The same attitude was held by early peoples in relation to literature: it only had real existence when recited (perhaps with accompanying mime) before an audience. As long as Sumerian culture was fully living, its literature was transmitted orally from a competent reciter (perhaps employed in the Court or the temple) to his students; there was no need to write down such compositions.

Just after 2000 B.C., however, Sumerian literary compositions -suddenly begin to appear in large numbers, so that about 5000 Sumerian literary tablets or fragments of tablets are now known. Our knowledge of Sumerian literature depends almost entirely on the products of this period. The reason for the changed situation is largely that the Sumerian language was rapidly becoming extinct. As a result, the literary tradition could no longer be transmitted ,orally as previously, and could only be reliably preserved in written form. The tendency to commit texts to writing was reinforced by the need of students to make a special study of a language which was vital to their cultural tradition, but which was no longer learnt at their mother's knee and automatically used in the business of everyday life.

For the purpose of training scribes in Sumerian there were schools. There must have been schools of some kind throughout most of the third millennium, since some of the earliest examples of writing yet found have amongst them lists of signs apparently drawn up for scribal practice. It is, however, in the first quarter of the second millennium B.C. that we have our most extensive information about scribal schools. This information comes in the form of texts written in Sumerian by people trained in those very schools, giving a detailed account of what went on in them. In the recovery and translation of these texts two modern scholars, S. N. Kramer of Philadelphia and C. J. Gadd of the British Museum and London University, stand out, and what follows is based almost entirely on their research.

It is clear in the first place that education was not in practice available to all, but was largely a privilege restricted to the children (probably only sons, though daughters were not necessarily excluded) of the wealthy and influential, who could afford to maintain their children non-productively for a long period. The examination of the parentage of several hundred scribes shows that they were all sons of such men as governors, senior civil servants, priests or scribes. An occasional poor boy or orphan might be lucky enough to be sent to school if he were adopted by a wealthy man.

It has sometimes been assumed that schools were necessarily attached to temples. This may well have been the case in some places and at some periods, but it was certainly not so for the period just after 2000 B.C. This is quite clear, because at this time such literary documents as we have all come from houses, not from temples. A number of buildings have been found which their excavators claimed, from their layout or the presence of school tablets near by, might have been school rooms. The most convincing of the buildings for which such claims have been made are two rooms, complete with benches, found at Mari(40).

The school was known as 'the tablet house'. We do not at present know at exactly what age formal education began. An ancient tablet refers to it as 'early youth', but except that this would probably mean at an age less than about ten, this is not very revealing. The pupil was, at least in his early years, a day boy. He lived at home, got up at sunrise, collected his lunch from his mother, and hurried off to school. If he happened to arrive late he was duly caned, and the same fate awaited him for any misdemeanour during school hours, or for failure to perform his exercises adequately. At school education consisted of copying out texts, and probably learning them off by heart. All this appears from an actual contemporary document. The document begins with the question: 'Son of the tablet house, where did you go in your early days?' The student replies:

I went to the tablet house; ...

I read out my tablet, ate my lunch,

Prepared my (fresh) tablet, inscribed it (and) finished it...

When the tablet house was dismissed, I went home.

I entered (my) house. My father was sitting there.

I read over my tablet to him and he was pleased...

The Sumerian document gives some idea of the staffing of the school. At the top was the Headmaster, whose Sumerian titles meant literally 'the Expert' or 'the Father of the Tablet House'. Assisting him there was apparently a form-master, as well as specialists in particular subjects, such as Sumerian and mathematics. There seems also to have been a system of what might be called prefects or pupil-teachers, senior students called 'Big Brothers' who were responsible for knocking a certain amount of sense and Sumerian into the heads of their juniors. However, by the time the new pupil reached the middle school, and had begun to get hold of the rudiments of the scribal art, he would no longer stand in quite such awe of his 'Big Brother', and would begin to show that he had a will of his own. One of the texts amusingly shows how insubordination of this kind could cause such a disturbance that it finally called down the heavy hand of the Headmaster.

An interesting detail of school life which Professor Kramer has very recently discovered is the amount of time which the students had off each month. In a tablet from Ur a student says

The reckoning of my monthly stay in the tablet house is (as follows):

My days of freedom are three per month,

Its festivals are three days per month.

Within it, twenty-four days per month

(Is the time of) my living in the tablet house. They are long days.

The school curriculum was long and rigorous, beginning, as we have seen, in 'early youth' (at eight or nine?) and going on to maturity. The first thing the student had to do was to become proficient in Sumerian. This involved copying out and memorising the long lists of names, technical terms, legal phrases, and so on, which had grown up in the course of the third millennium B.C. There were also texts dealing with Sumerian grammar, and others which served as dictionaries, giving Sumerian words with the Akkadian equivalents. The study of these also involved copying and memorising. Mathematics was an important part of the curriculum, for a scribe would have to know how to survey a field, or keep accounts, or calculate the number of bricks needed for a temple, or the supplies for an army.

There exists one fragment of a text which some people think is a record of a student's examination, though unfortunately its broken condition leaves the exact sense in doubt. If it is to be taken in this way, it seems that the student was first asked to write out an exercise and afterwards to inscribe his name in the special archaic script employed for inscriptions cut in stone. With this successfully achieved the student was told 'You are a scribe', and was warned against conceit. It seems likely that this particular examination was one which the student had to take before he was allowed to proceed to more advanced work. The student, having made adequate progress in the fundamentals of his craft and being now regarded as a junior scribe, could go on to study works of Sumerian literature, and might possibly even attempt to produce original compositions.

Not all scribes, of course, acquired the same degree of competence. Some might be able to do no more than write out contracts or letters, which normally employed largely syllabic writings and would be relatively easy for a Babylonian or Assyrian trained to write in cuneiform. At the other end of the scribal scale would c the men able to deal with difficult religious texts, some of whom produced texts which, either from the extensive use of rare ideograms, or the employment of a difficult style or rare words, have not yet been fully elucidated by modern experts.

Once qualified, scribes (as a class) had a wide range of possible professions awaiting them, though the actual choice open to any particular scribe was very much limited, and would probably be largely settled by his family connections. Indeed, it was regarded decreed by the god Enlil that a man should follow his father's profession. Probably all classes of priests received an initial training as scribes, though as the qualifications for the priesthood were more rigorous than those for scribal training, not every category of priesthood was open to every scribe. Diviners, for example, had to be of good birth and good physique, as indeed did anyone with any office in the temple, even in the first millennium B.C. Broken teeth, a squint or a limp or any such disability would disqualify a man for such offices.

Amongst the men at the top of the scribal profession were the high-ranking priests who presided at the great temple festivals: there are known a number of the rituals which they made use of in the course of their duties, and these texts, largely written in ideograms which served to make the understanding of them more difficult to anyone who had not been trained in this type of text generally contain a final note to the effect that only the initiated shall be allowed to see it.

Since so many commercial transactions required an accompanying written document, most scribes must have been concerned mainly with activities of this kind. One may probably think of some of them as sitting in the market-place ready to assist in any business transactions taking place. Others were in government or temple service. Any official of importance, whether serving the temples or the King, would have one or more scribes on his staff, accompanying him and ready to take down memoranda, or to do the necessary calculations in connection with assessments of taxes, ration issues and so on. A Babylonian official without a scribe was as handicapped as a modern business executive when his private secretary goes sick. In a letter of the sixth century we find a temple official, writing from some outlying part of the temple estates to the central administration, saying, 'As to the 200 hired men for whom I am responsible, though I brought the silver and wool (for their wages), I could not issue it to them without a scribe. The scribe and the (account) list are there with you.' Since this official had managed to have the letter written from which we have quoted, we have to conclude either that officials sometimes wrote their own letters, or that there was a strict division of function between different classes of scribes, so that one available for correspondence could not be expected to work out calculations of ration issues for which another man was responsible.

Scribes also accompanied military expeditions. Commanders would need scribes to write dispatches home, and we have in fact many letters actually written from a battlefield, including one which is specifically said to have been 42 Scribes written during the very engagement when the great gate of Babylon was being forced, during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III. Scribes were also needed by the army both as quartermasters for the issue of rations and equipment and as accountants for the listing of booty. Several bas-reliefs show scribes noting down the claims of Assyrian warriors as to their prowess in battle and the number of their victims (42); some of these bas-reliefs make it appear that one of the scribes is writing on a clay tablet, whilst another is using some material, either parchment or papyrus, in scroll form. Another writing medium sometimes used for cuneiform script consisted of ivory boards with a coating of wax soft enough to take the impression of a stylus; a series of such boards might be hinged together(41).

Another profession which required some scribal training was that of medicine. Doctors had to be literate, as there were collections of medical documents on clay tablets which were obviously their textbooks. The copies known to us mostly date from after 1000 B.C. but they can be shown to go back to originals from the Old Babylonian period (early second millennium). These medical documents were made up mainly of lists of symptoms and prescriptions. The symptoms are listed in the form 'If a man has a pain in his belly' (or some other part of his body), and the text then goes into details of the patient's trouble. The kind of things that might be mentioned were whether the man's skin felt hot or cold, nether his pulse was rapid or his veins swollen, whether there was any inflammation or redness or whether the patient had a cough or a headache or felt dizzy. There then followed a note on the appropriate treatment. Various herbs or minerals might be used, and could be administered in various ways. They might be mixed with something such as beer and then swallowed, or applied in the form of a lotion or an ointment or even as an enema.

Details of such surgery as the Babylonian and Assyrian doctors were capable of performing seem never to have been committed to writing by the scribes, and we know very little about this.

An important part of the curriculum in the scribal schools was mathematics, and it was in the Old Babylonian period, the period at which we are best acquainted with the scribal schools, that Babylonian mathematics reached a pinnacle of achievement which was not to be attained again until another millennium and a half had passed.

The Sumerians had, at the very beginning of writing, already