Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs

by A. H. Sayce

Even more precious materials than stone were used for decorative purposes. Gold and silver, bronze and ivory, lapis-lazuli and colored glass, ornamented the cornices and other parts of the interior of the palace. Gudea tells us that he had sent to the deserts which bordered on Egypt for gold-dust and acacia-wood, to Arabia for copper, and to Mount Amanus for beams of cedar. The elephant was still hunted on the banks of the Euphrates near the city of Carchemish, and lapis-lazuli was furnished by the mountains of Persia.

A garden was planted by the side of the house. The Babylonians were an agricultural people, and even the cities were full of the gardens attached to the houses of all who could afford to have them. Originally the garden was little more than a grove of palms. But herbs and vegetables soon began to be grown in it, and as habits of luxury increased, exotic trees and shrubs were transplanted to it and flowers were cultivated for the sake of their scent. Tiglath-pileser I. of Assyria tells us how he had “taken and planted in the gardens of his country cedars” and other trees “from the lands he had conquered, which none of the kings his predecessors had ever planted before,” and how he had “brought rare vines which did not exist in Assyria and had cultivated them in the land of Assyria.” At a later date Sennacherib laid out a [pg 095] pleasure-garden or “paradise” by the side of the palace he erected, filling it with cypresses and other trees as well as fragrant plants, and digging a lake in the midst of it by means of which it could be watered. One of the bas-reliefs in the palace of Assur-bani-pal represents the King and Queen dining in the royal garden under the shadow of its palms, while an attendant drives away the insects with a fan. The Assyrians did but imitate their Babylonian neighbors, and in the gardens of Nineveh we must see many copies of the gardens that had been laid out in Babylonia long ages before. The very word “paradise,” which in the Persian age came to signify a pleasure-park, was of Babylonian origin. It is given in the exercise-book of a Babylonian school-boy as the name of a mythical locality, and an etymological pun attempts to derive it from the name of the god Esu.

It was, of course, only the houses of the rich and noble which were artistically furnished or provided with a garden. The poorer classes lived in mud huts of conical form, which seldom contained more than one or two rooms. Air and light were admitted through the door or through small apertures in the walls. In the better class of houses, on the other hand, the windows were of large size, and were placed near the ceiling. The air was excluded by means of curtains which were drawn across them when the weather was cold or when it was necessary to keep out the sunlight. The houses, moreover, consisted of more than one story, the upper stories being approached by a flight of steps which were open to the air. They were usually built against one [pg 096] of the sides of a central court, around which the rooms were ranged, the rooms on the upper floors communicating with one another by means of a covered corridor, or else by doors leading from one chamber to the other. The apartments of the women were separate from those of the men, and the servants slept either on the ground-floor or in an outbuilding of their own.

The furniture, even of the palaces, was scanty from a modern point of view. The floor was covered with rugs, for the manufacture of which Babylonia was famous, and chairs, couches, and tables were placed here and there. The furniture was artistic in form; a seal-cylinder, of the age of Ur-Bau, King of Ur, the older contemporary of Gudea, represents a chair, the feet of which have been carved into the likeness of those of oxen. If we may judge from Egyptian analogies the material of which they were formed would have been ivory. The Assyrian furniture of later days doubtless followed older Babylonian models, and we can gain from it some idea of what they must have been like. The chairs were of various kinds. Some had backs and arms, some were mere stools. The seats of many were so high that a footstool was required by those who used them. The employment of the footstool must go back to a considerable antiquity, since we find some of the Tel-el-Amarna correspondents in the fourteenth century before our era comparing themselves to the footstool of the King. Chairs and stools alike were furnished with cushions which were covered with embroidered tapestries. So also were the couches and bedsteads used by the [pg 097] wealthier classes. The poor contented themselves with a single mattress laid upon the floor, and since everyone slept in the clothes he had worn during the day, rising in the morning was not a difficult task.

The tables had four legs, and the wood of which they were composed was often inlaid with ivory. Wood inlaid with ivory and other precious materials was also employed for the chairs and sofas. Tripods of bronze, moreover, stood in different parts of the room, and vases of water or wine were placed upon them. Fragments of some of them have been found in the ruins of Nineveh, and they are represented in early Babylonian seals. The feet of the tripod were artistically shaped to resemble the feet of oxen, the clinched human hand, or some similar design. At meals the tripod stood beside the table on which the dishes were laid. Those who eat sat on chairs in the earlier period, but in later times the fashion grew up, for the men at any rate, to recline on a couch. Assur-bani-pal, for example, is thus represented, while the Queen sits beside him on a lofty chair. Perhaps the difference in manners is an illustration of the greater conservatism of women who adhere to customs which have been discarded by the men.

Vases of stone and earthenware, of bronze, gold, and silver, were plentifully in use. A vase of silver mounted on a bronze pedestal with four feet, which was dedicated to his god by one of the high-priests of Lagas, has been found at Tello, and stone bowls, inscribed with the name of Gudea, and closely resembling similar bowls from the early Egyptian tombs, have also been disinterred there. A vase of Egyptian [pg 098] alabaster, discovered by the French excavators in Babylonia, but subsequently lost in the Tigris, bore upon it an inscription stating it to have been part of the spoil obtained by Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon of Akkad, from his conquest of the Sinaitic peninsula. In Assyrian days the vases were frequently of porcelain or glass; when these were first introduced is still unknown. Various articles of furniture are mentioned in the later contracts. Under Nabonidos, 7 shekels, or 21 shillings, were given for a copper kettle and cup, the kettle weighing 16 manehs (or 42 pounds troy) and the cup 2 manehs (5 pounds 7 ounces troy). These were left, it may be noted, in the safe-keeping of a slave, and were bought by a lady. At a later date, in the third year of Cambyses, as much as 4 manehs 9 shekels, or £36 7s., were paid for a large copper jug and qulla, which was probably of the same form as the qullas of modern Egypt. The female slave who seems to have started an inn in the sixth year of Cambyses provided herself with five bedsteads, ten chairs, three dishes, one wardrobe (?), three shears, one iron shovel, one syphon, one wine-decanter, one chain (?), one brazier, and other objects which cannot as yet be identified. The brazier was probably a Babylonian invention. At all events we find it used in Judah after contact with Assyria had introduced the habits of the farther East among the Jews (Jer. xxxvi. 22), like the gnomon or sun-dial of Ahaz (Is. xxxviii. 8), which was also of Babylonian origin (Herod., ii., 109). The gnomon seems to have consisted of a column, the shadow of which was thrown on a flight of twelve steps representing [pg 099] the twelve double hours into which the diurnal revolutions of the earth were divided and which thus indicated the time of day.

What the chairs, tables, footstools, and couches were like may be seen from the Assyrian bas-reliefs. They were highly artistic in design and character, and were of various shapes. The tables or stands sometimes had the form of camp-stools, sometimes were three-legged, but more usually they were furnished with four legs, which occasionally were placed on a sort of platform or stand. At times they were provided with shelves. Special stands with shelves were also made for holding vases, though large jars were often made to stand on tripods.

If we may judge from the old lists of clothing that have come down to us, the Babylonians must have been fond of variety in dress. The names of an immense number of different kinds of dress are given, and the monuments show that fashions changed from time to time. Thus the earliest remains of Chaldean art exhibit three successive changes in the head-dress, and similar changes are to be noticed in the dress of the Assyrian kings as it is represented in the bas-reliefs.

To the last, however, the principal constituents of Babylonian dress remained the same. There were a hat or head-dress, a tunic or shirt, and a long robe which reached to the ankles, to which in cold weather was added a cloak. The hat or cap was made of some thick substance like felt and was sometimes quilted. The Babylonian King Merodach-nadin-akhi (1100 B.C.) is represented in a square cap which is [pg 100] ornamented with a row of feathers; below these is a band of rosettes. The Assyrian King generally wore a lofty tiara; this was a survival of the tiara of the early Babylonians. Above his head was carried a parasol to protect him from the sun; but the use of the parasol was confined to the upper classes, if not to the royal family alone.

The tunic was of linen, or more often of wool, which was manufactured in Babylonia on a large scale. It reached half-way down the knees and was fastened round the waist by a girdle. Under it a second tunic or vest was sometimes worn in cold weather. Drawers were seldom used, though in the time of the second Assyrian empire the cavalry and heavy-armed bowmen wore tightly fitting drawers of plaited leather, but the custom was probably introduced from the north. A bilingual vocabulary, however, gives a Sumerian word for this article of dress, which may therefore have been occasionally adopted in pre-Semitic days.