The standard weight of the maneh, which continued in use up to the latest days of Babylonian history, had been fixed by Dungi, of the dynasty of Ur, [pg 159] about 2700 B.C. An inscription on a large cone of dark-green stone, now in the British Museum, tells us that the cone represents “one maneh standard weight, the property of Merodach-sar-ilani, and a duplicate of the weight which Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the son of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, had made in exact imitation of the standard weight established by the deified Dungi, an earlier king.” The stone now weighs 978.309 grammes, which, making the requisite deductions for the wear and tear of time, would give 980 grammes, or rather more than 2 pounds 2 ounces avoirdupois. The Babylonian maneh, as fixed by Dungi and Nebuchadnezzar, thus agrees in weight rather with the Hebrew maneh of gold than with the “royal” maneh, which was equivalent to 2 pounds 7½ ounces.
It was not, however, the only maneh in use in Babylonia. Besides the “heavy” or “royal” maneh there was also a “light” maneh, like the Hebrew silver maneh of 1 pound 11 ounces, while the Assyrian contract-tablets make mention of “the maneh of Carchemish,” which was introduced into Assyria after the conquest of the Hittite capital in 717 B.C. Mr. Barclay V. Head has pointed out that this latter maneh was known in Asia Minor as far as the shores of the Ægean, and that the “tongues” or bars of silver found by Dr. Schliemann on the site of Troy are shekels made in accordance with it.[8]
A similar “tongue” of gold “of fifty shekels weight” is referred to in Josh. vii. 21, in connection with that “goodly Babylonish garment” which was carried away by Achan from among the spoils of Jericho. It is probable that the shekels and manehs of Babylonia were originally cast in the same tongue-like form. In Egypt they were in the shape of rings and spirals, but there is no evidence that the use of the latter extended beyond the valley of the Nile. In Western Asia it was rather bars of metal that were employed.
At first the value of the bar had to be determined by its being weighed each time that it changed hands. But it soon came to be stamped with an official indication of its weight and value. A Cappadocian tablet found near Kaisariyeh, which is at least as early as the age of the Exodus and may go back to that of Abraham, speaks of “three shekels of sealed” or “stamped silver.” In that distant colony of Babylonian civilization, therefore, an official seal was already put upon some of the money in circulation. In the time of Nebuchadnezzar the coinage was still more advanced. There were “single shekel” pieces, pieces of “five shekels” and the like, all implying that coins were issued representing different fractions of the maneh. The maneh itself was divided into pieces of five-sixths, two-thirds, one-third, one-half, one-quarter, and three-quarters. It is often specified whether a sum of money is to be paid in single shekel pieces or in 5-shekel pieces, and the word “stamped” is sometimes added. The invention of a regular coinage is generally ascribed to the [pg 161] Lydians; but it was more probably due to the Babylonians, from whom both Lydians and Greeks derived their system of weights as well as the term mina or maneh.
The Egibi firm was not the only great banking or trading establishment of which we know in ancient Babylonia. The American excavators at Niffer have brought to light the records of another firm, that of Murasu, which, although established in a provincial town and not in the capital, rose to a position of great wealth and influence under the Persian kings Artaxerxes I. (464-424 B.C.) and Darius II. (424-405 B.C.). The tablets found at Tello also indicate the existence of similarly important trading firms in the Babylonia of 2700 B.C., though at this period trade was chiefly confined to home products, cattle and sheep, wool and grain, dates and bitumen.
The learned professions were well represented. The scribes were a large and powerful body, and in Assyria, where education was less widely diffused than in Babylonia, they formed a considerable part of the governing bureaucracy. In Babylonia they acted as librarians, authors, and publishers, multiplying copies of older books and adding to them new works of their own. They served also as clerks and secretaries; they drew up documents of state as well as legal contracts and deeds. They were accordingly responsible for the forms of legal procedure, and so to some extent occupied the place of the barristers and attorneys of to-day. The Babylonian seems usually, if not always, to have pleaded his own case; but his statement of it was thrown [pg 162] into shape by the scribe or clerk like the final decision of the judges themselves. Under Nebuchadnezzar and his successors such clerks were called “the scribes of the king,” and were probably paid out of the public revenues. Thus in the second year of Evil-Merodach it is said of the claimants to an inheritance that “they shall speak to the scribes of the king and seal the deed,” and the seller of some land has to take the deed of quittance “to the scribes of the king,” who “shall supervise and seal it in the city.” Many of the scribes were priests; and it is not uncommon to find the clerk who draws up a contract and appears as a witness to be described as “the priest” of some deity.
The physician is mentioned at a very early date. Thus we hear of “Ilu-bani, the physician of Gudea,” the High-priest of Lagas (2700 B.C.), and a treatise on medicine, of which fragments exist in the British Museum, was compiled long before the days of Abraham. It continued to be regarded as a standard work on the subject even in the time of the second Assyrian empire, though its prescriptions are mixed up with charms and incantations. But an attempt was made in it to classify and describe various diseases, and to enumerate the remedies that had been proposed for them. The remedies are often a compound of the most heterogeneous drugs, some of which are of a very unsavory nature. However, the patient, or his doctor, is generally given a choice of the remedies he might adopt. Thus for an attack of spleen he was told either to “slice the seed of a reed and dates in palm-wine,” or to “mix calves' milk and [pg 163] bitters in palm-wine,” or to “drink garlic and bitters in palm-wine.” “For an aching tooth,” it is laid down, “the plant of human destiny (perhaps the mandrake) is the remedy; it must be placed upon the tooth. The fruit of the yellow snakewort is another remedy for an aching tooth; it must be placed upon the tooth.… The roots of a thorn which does not see the sun when growing is another remedy for an aching tooth; it must be placed upon the tooth.” Unfortunately it is still impossible to assign a precise signification to most of the drugs that are named, or to identify the various herbs contained in the Babylonian pharmacopœia.
As time passed on, the charms and other superstitious practices which had at first played so large a part in Babylonian medicine fell into the background and were abandoned to the more uneducated classes of society. The conquest of Western Asia by the Egyptian Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty brought Babylonia into contact with Egypt, where the art of medicine was already far advanced. It is probable that from this time forward Babylonian medicine also became more strictly scientific. We have indeed evidence that the medical system and practice of Egypt had been introduced into Asia. When the great Egyptian treatise on medicine, known as the Papyrus Ebers, was written in the sixteenth century B.C., one of the most fashionable oculists of the day was a “Syrian” of Gebal, and as the study of the disease of the eye was peculiarly Egyptian, we must assume that his science had been derived from the valley of the Nile. It must not be supposed, however, that [pg 164] the superstitious beliefs and practices of the past were altogether abandoned, even by the most distinguished practitioners, any more than they were by the physicians of Europe in the early part of the last century. But they were invoked only when the ordinary remedies had failed, and when no resource seemed left except the aid of spiritual powers. Otherwise the doctor depended upon his diagnosis of the disease and the prescriptions which had been accumulated by the experience of past generations.
At the head of the profession stood the court-physician, the Rab-mugi or Rab-mag as he was called in Babylonia. In Assyria there was more than one doctor attached to the royal person, but letters have come down to us from which we learn that the royal physicians were at times permitted to attend private individuals when they were sick. Thus we have a letter of thanks to the Assyrian King from one of his subjects full of gratitude to the King for sending his own doctor to the writer, who had accordingly been cured of a dangerous disease. “May Istar of Erech,” he says, “and Nana (of Bit-Anu) grant long life to the king my lord, for he has sent Basa, the royal physician, to save my life, and he has cured me; may the great gods of heaven and earth be therefore gracious to the king my lord, and may they establish the throne of the king my lord in heaven for ever, since I was dead and the king has restored me to life.” Another letter contains a petition that one of the royal physicians should be allowed to visit a lady who was ill. “To the king my lord,” we read, “thy servant, Saul-miti-yuballidh, [pg 165] sends salutation to the king my lord: may Nebo and Merodach be gracious to the king my lord for ever and ever. Bau-gamilat, the handmaid of the king, is constantly ill; she cannot eat a morsel of food. Let the king send orders that some physician may go and see her.” In this case, however, it is possible that the lady, who seems to have been suffering from consumption, belonged to the harîm of the monarch, and it was consequently needful to obtain the royal permission for a stranger to visit her, even though he came professionally.
We can hardly reckon among Babylonian professions that of the poet. It is true that a sort of poet-laureate existed at the court, and that we hear of a piece of land being given by the King to one of them for some verses which he had composed in honor of the sovereign. But poetry was not a separate profession, and the poet must be included in the class of scribes, or among those educated country gentlemen who possessed estates of their own. He was, however, fully appreciated in Babylonia. The names of the chief poets of the country were never forgotten, and the poems they had written passed through edition after edition down to the later days of Babylonian history. Sin-liqi-unnini, the author of the “Epic of Gilgames,” Nis-Sin, the author of the “Adventures of Etana,” and many others, never passed out of literary remembrance. There was a large reading public, and the literary language of Babylonia changed but little from century to century.