Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs

by A. H. Sayce

The wine was kept in wine-cellars, and among the Assyrian letters that have come down to us are some from the cellarers of the King. In one of them it is stated that the wine received in the month Tebet had been bottled, and that there was no room in the royal cellars in which it could be stored. The King is therefore asked to allow new cellars to be made.

The various trades formed guilds or corporations, [pg 141] and those who wished to enter one of these had to be apprenticed for a fixed number of years in order to learn the craft. As we have seen, slaves could be thus apprenticed by their owners and in this way become members of a guild. What the exact relation was between the slave and the free members of a trading guild we do not know, but it is probable that the slave was regarded as the representative of his master or mistress, who accordingly became, instead of himself, the real member of the corporation. We perhaps have a parallel in modern England, where a person can be elected a member of one of the “city companies,” or trade guilds, without being in any way connected with the trade himself. Since women in Babylonia were able to carry on a business, there would be no obstacle to a slave being apprenticed to a trade by his mistress. Hence it is that we find a Babylonian lady named Nubtâ, in the second year of Cyrus, apprenticing a slave to a weaver for five years. Nubtâ engaged to provide the apprentice with clothing and 1 qa (nearly 2 quarts) of grain each day. As in ancient Greece a quart of grain was considered a sufficient daily allowance for a man, the slave's allowance would seem to have been ample. The teacher was to be heavily fined if he failed to teach the trade, or overworked the apprentice and so made him unable to learn it, the fine being fixed at 6 qas (about 10 quarts) per diem. Any infringement of the contract on either side was further to be visited with a penalty of 30 shekels of silver.

As 30 shekels of silver were equivalent to £4 10s., [pg 142] 6 qas of wheat at the time when the contract was drawn up would have cost about 1s. 3d. Under Nebuchadnezzar we find 12 qas, or the third part of an ardeb, of sesame sold for half a shekel, which would make the cost of a single quart a little more than a penny. In the twelfth year of Nabonidos 60 shekels, or £9, were paid for 6 gur of sesame, and since the gur contained 5 ardebs, according to Dr. Oppert's calculation, the quart of sesame would have been a little less than 1½d. When we come to the reign of Cambyses we hear of 6½ shekels being paid for 2 ardebs, or about 100 quarts, of wheat; that would give 2½d. as the approximate value of a single qa. It would therefore have cost Nubtâ about 2½d. a day to feed a slave.

It must, however, be remembered that the price of grain varied from year to year. In years of scarcity the price rose; when the crops were plentiful it necessarily fell. To a certain extent the annual value was equalized by the large exportation of grain to foreign countries, to which reference is made in many of the contract-tablets; the institution of royal or public store-houses, moreover, called sutummê, tended to keep the price of it steady and uniform. Nevertheless, bad seasons sometimes occurred, and there were consequent fluctuations in prices. This was more especially the case as regards the second staple of Babylonian food and standard of value—dates. These seem to have been mostly consumed in Babylonia itself, and, though large quantities of them were accumulated in the royal storehouses, it was upon a smaller scale than in the case of the grain. Hence [pg 143] we need not be surprised if we find that while in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar a shekel was paid for 1-1/3 ardebs of dates, or about a halfpenny a quart, in the thirtieth year of the same reign the price had fallen to one-twenty-fifth of a penny per quart. A little later, in the first year of Cambyses, 100 gur of dates was valued at 2½ shekels (7s. 6d.), the gur containing 180 qas, which gives 2d. per each qa, and in the second year of Cyrus a receipt for the payment of “the workmen of the overseer” states that the following amount of dates had been given from “the royal store-house” for their “food” during the month Tebet: “Fifty gur for the 50 workmen, 10 gur for 10 shield-bearers, 2 gur for the overseer, 1 gur for the chief overseer; in all, 63 gurs of dates.” It was consequently calculated that a workman would consume a gur of dates a month, the month consisting of thirty days.

About the same period, in the first year of Cyrus, after his conquest of Babylon, we hear of two men receiving 2 pi 30 qas (102 qas) of grain for the month Tammuz. Each man accordingly received a little over a qa a day, the wage being practically the same as that paid by Nubtâ to the slave. On the other hand, a receipt dated in the fifteenth year of Nabonidos is for 2 pi (72 qas) of grain, and 54 qas of dates were paid to the captain of a boat for the conveyance of mortar, to serve as “food” during the month Tebet. As “salt and vegetables” were also added, it is probable that the captain was expected to share the food with his crew. A week previously 8 shekels had been given for 91 gur of dates owed by [pg 144] the city of Pallukkatum, on the Pallacopas canal, to the temple of Uru at Sippara, but the money was probably paid for porterage only. At all events, five years earlier a shekel and a quarter had been paid for the hire of a boat which conveyed three oxen and twenty-four sheep, the offering made by Belshazzar “in the month Nisan to Samas and the gods of Sippara,” while 60 qas of dates were assigned to the two boatmen for food. This would have been a qa of dates per diem for each boatman, supposing the voyage was intended to last a month. In the ninth year of Nabonidos 2 gur of dates were given to a man as his nourishment for two months, which would have been at the rate of 6 qas a day. In the thirty-second year of the same reign 36 qas of dates were valued at a shekel, or a penny a qa.

In the older period of Babylonian history prices were reckoned in grain, and, as might be expected, payment was made in kind rather than in coin. In the reign of Ammi-zadok, for instance, 3 homers 24⅔ qas of oil, though valued at 20⅔ shekels of silver, were actually bought with “white Kurdish slaves,” it being stipulated that if the slaves were not forthcoming the purchaser would have to pay for the oil in cash. A thousand years later, under Merodach-nadin-akhi, cash had become the necessary medium of exchange. A cart and harness were sold for 100 shekels, six riding-horses for 300 shekels, one “ass from the West” for 130 shekels, one steer for 30 shekels, 34 gur 56 qas of grain for 137 shekels, 2 homers 40 qas of oil for 16 shekels, two long-sleeved robes for 12 shekels, and nine shawls for 18 shekels.

From this time forward we hear no more of payment in kind, except where wages were paid in food, or where tithes and other offerings were made to the temples. Though the current price of wheat continued to fix the market standard of value, business was conducted by means of stamped money. The shekel and the maneh were the only medium of exchange.

There are numerous materials for ascertaining the average prices of commodities in the later days of Babylonian history. We have already seen what prices were given for sheep and wool, as well as the cost of some of the articles of household use. In the thirty-eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar 100 gur of wheat were valued at only 1 maneh—that is to say, the qa of wheat was worth only the hundredth part of a shilling—while at the same time the price of dates was exactly one-half that amount. On the other hand, in the fourth year of Cambyses 72 qas of sesame were sold at Sippara for 6½ shekels, or 19s. 6d. This would make the cereal worth approximately 1½d. a quart, the same price as that at which it was sold in the twelfth year of Nabonidos. In the second year of Nergal-sharezer twenty-one strings of onions fetched as much as 10 shekels, and a year later 96 shekels were given for onion bulbs for planting. Sheep in the reign of Cambyses fetched 7 and 7¼ shekels each, while 10 shekels were given for an ox, and 22½ shekels for a steer two years old. In the twenty-fourth year of Nebuchadnezzar 13 shekels had been paid for a full-grown ox, and as much as 67 shekels in the fourth year of Nabonidos, [pg 146] while in the first year of Evil-Merodach a cow was sold for 15 shekels. The ass was in more request, especially if it was of “Western” breed. In the reign of Merodach-nadin-akhi, it will be remembered, as much as 130 shekels had been paid for one of these, as compared with 30 shekels given for an ox, and though at a subsequent period the prices were lower, the animal was still valued highly. In the year of the death of Cyrus a Babylonian gentleman bought “a mouse-colored ass, eight years old, without blemish,” for 50 shekels (£7 10s.), and shortly afterward another was purchased for 32 shekels. At the same time, however, an ass of inferior quality went for only 13 shekels. When we consider that only three years later a shekel was considered sufficient wages for a butcher for a month's work, we can better estimate what these prices signify. Nevertheless, the value of the ass seems to have been steadily going down in Babylonia; at all events, in the fourth year of Nabonidos, 1 maneh, or 60 shekels, was demanded for one, and the animal does not seem to have been in any way superior to another which was sold for 50 shekels a few years afterward.

Clothes and woven stuffs were naturally of all prices. In the time of Nebuchadnezzar a cloak or overcoat used by the mountaineers cost only 4½ shekels, though under Cambyses we hear of 58 shekels being charged for eight of the same articles of dress, which were supplied to the “bowmen” of the army. Three years earlier 7½ shekels had been paid for two of these cloaks. About the same time ten sleeved gowns cost 35 shekels.

Metal was more expensive. As has already been noticed, a copper libation-bowl and cup were sold for 4 manehs 9 shekels (£37 7s.), and two copper dishes, weighing 7½ manehs (19 pounds 8 ounces. troy), were valued at 22 shekels. The skilled labor expended upon the work was the least part of the cost. The workman was supplied with his materials by the customer, and received only the value of his labor. What this was can be gathered from a receipt dated the 11th day of Chisleu, in the fourteenth year of Nabonidos, recording the payment of 4 shekels to “the ironsmith,” Suqâ, for making certain objects out of 3⅚ manehs of iron which had been handed over to him.