With the rise of Semitic supremacy, however, there is a great change. Naram-Sin, in the bas-relief of Diarbekr, wears beard and whiskers and mustache like the Assyrians of a later day, and like them also his hair is artificially curled, though to a lesser extent. The same long beard also distinguishes Khammurabi in a piece of sculpture in which he is entitled “the king of the land of the Amorites.” The gods, too, now assume a mustache as well as a beard and take upon them a Semitic character.
The use of cosmetics must have become widely spread, and many of the small stone vases in which they were kept and which have been found on the sites of Babylonian cities were doubtless intended for the hair-dresser. The oil that was poured upon the hair made it bright and shining and it was worn long whether it grew on the head or on the face. The Babylonians had long been known as “the people of the black heads,” perhaps in contrast to the fairer inhabitants of the Kurdish mountains to the north, [pg 106] and the black hair, frizzled and curled, was now allowed to be visible. The working classes bound it with a simple fillet; the wealthier members of society protected it with caps and tiaras. But all alike were proud of it; the days were past when a beardless race had held rule in Western Asia.
Chapter VI. Trades, Houses, And Land; Wages And Prices
Babylonia, as we have seen, was essentially an industrial country. In spite of its agricultural basis and the vast army of slaves with which it was filled, it was essentially a land of trades and manufactures. Its manufacturing fame was remembered into classical days. One of the rooms in the palace of Nero was hung with Babylonian tapestries, which had cost four millions of sesterces, or more than £32,000, and Cato, it is said, sold a Babylonian mantle because it was too costly and splendid for a Roman to wear. The wool of which the cloths and rugs of Babylonia were made was derived from the flocks which fed on the banks of the Euphrates, and a large body of artisans was employed in weaving it into tapestries and curtains, robes and carpets. They were woven in bright and vari-colored patterns; the figures of men and animals were depicted upon them and the bas-relief or fresco could be replaced upon the wall by a picture in tapestry. The dyes were mainly vegetable, though the kermes or cochineal-insect, out of which the precious scarlet dye was extracted, was brought from the neighborhood of the Indus. So at least Ktesias states in the age of the Persian empire; and [pg 108] since teak was found by Mr. Taylor among the ruins of Ur, it is probable that intercourse with the western coast of India went back to an early date. Indeed an old bilingual list of clothing gives sindhu as the name of a material which is explained to be “vegetable wool;” in this we must see the cotton which in the classical epoch was imported from the island of Tylos, in the Persian Gulf, but which, as its name declares, must have originally been “the Indian” plant.
The looms and weavers of Babylonia are, as is natural, repeatedly referred to in the contracts, many of which, moreover, relate to the sale and purchase of wool. One of them even shows us Belshazzar, the son and heir-apparent of the King Nabonidos, as a wool-merchant on a considerable scale. “The sum of 20 manehs for wool,” it says, “the property of Belshazzar, the son of the king, which has been handed over to Iddin-Merodach, the son of Basa, the son of Nur-Sin, through the agency of Nebo-zabit, the servant of the house of Belshazzar, the son of the king, and the secretaries of the son of the king. In the month Adar (February) of the eleventh year (of Nabonidos) the debtor shall pay the money, 20 manehs. The house of —— the Persian and all the property of Iddin-Merodach in town and country shall be the security of Belshazzar, the son of the king, until he shall pay in full the money aforesaid. The money which shall (meanwhile) accrue upon (the wool) he shall pay as interest.” Then follow the names of five witnesses and a priest, as well as the date and the place of registration. This was Babylon, and the [pg 109] priest, Bel-akhi-iddin, who helped to witness the deed was a brother of Nabonidos and consequently the uncle of Belshazzar.
The weight of the wool that was sold is unfortunately not stated. But considering that 20 manehs, or £180, was paid for it, there must have been a considerable amount of it. In the reign of Cambyses the amount of wool needed for the robe of the image of the Sun-goddess  was as much as 5 manehs 5 shekels in weight. Wealthy land-owners kept large flocks of sheep, chiefly for the sake of their wool. Their prices varied greatly. Thus in the fourth year of Nabonidos, 6 shekels, or 18s., were given for a sheep, while in the thirteenth year of the same King, 18 sheep fetched only 35 shekels, or less than 6s., each. In the first year of Cyrus, 6 lambs were sold for 8¼ shekels, and 5 other lambs for 7¼ shekels, while 1 sheep cost only one shekel and a quarter; in his sixth year the price of a single sheep had risen to 4 shekels (12s.). Under Cambyses we find sheep selling for 7 and 7¼ shekels apiece. In the eighth year of Nabonidos, 100 sheep were sold for 50 shekels after they had been slaughtered; it is clear, therefore, that the dead animal was considered less valuable than the living one.
On the other hand, sheep cost a good deal to feed when the grazing season was over, and they had to be fed “in the stall.” A document dated in the seventh year of Cyrus states that 32 sheep required each day 1 pi 28 qas (or about 95 quarts) of grain, while 160 full-grown animals consumed daily 4 pi 16 qas, or more than 240 quarts. In the reign of Cambyses 1 pi 4 [pg 110] qas of fodder were needed daily for 20 old sheep, 100 qas for 100 younger sheep, and the same amount also for 200 lambs. At this time 2 pi of grain cost 6½ shekels; consequently the cost of keeping the 20 old sheep alone was about 10s 6d. a day. To this had to be added the wages of the shepherds, who were free Bedâwin. Hence, it is not wonderful that the owner demanded 7 shekels, or 21s., for the sheep he had to sell.
In the Edin or “field,” however, their keep came to but little. The pasturage was common property, and it was only the wages of the Aramean shepherds who looked after the flock which involved an outlay. The five shepherds who, in the tenth year of Nabonidos, were paid for their services by the overseer of the royal flocks in the town of Ruzabu received 30 shekels of silver and a gur of grain. The gur contained 180 qas, and since in the first year of Cyrus two men received 2 pi 30 qas, or 102 qas, of grain for their support during a month of thirty days, we may, perhaps, infer that the wages were intended to cover the third part of a month. In this case each man would have been paid at the rate of 9 shekels, or 37s., a month. It is, however, possible that the wages were really intended for the full month. The ancient Greeks considered a quart of wheat a sufficient daily allowance for a grown man, and 180 qas would mean about 1⅗ of a quart a day for each man.