Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs

by A. H. Sayce

It is paralleled by the apotheosis of the King in ancient Egypt. There, too, the Pharaoh was regarded as an incarnation of divinity, to whom shrines were erected, priests ordained, and sacrifices offered. In early times he was, moreover, declared to be the son of the goddess of the city in which he dwelt; it was not till the rise of the fifth historical dynasty that he became the “Son of the Sun-god” of Heliopolis, rather than Horus, the Sun-god, himself. This curious parallelism is one of many facts which point to intercourse between Babylonia and Egypt in the prehistoric age; whether the deification of the King originated first on the banks of the Euphrates or of the Nile must be left to the future to decide.

Naram-Sin is addressed as “the god of Agadê,” or Akkad, the capital of his dynasty, and long lists have been found of the offerings that were made, month by month, to the deified Dungi, King of Ur, and his vassal, Gudea of Lagas. Here, for example, are Dr. Scheil's translations of some of them: “I. Half a measure of good beer and 5 gin of sesame oil on the new moon, the 15th day, for the god Dungi; half a measure of good beer and half a measure of herbs for Gudea the High-priest, during the month Tammuz. II. Half a measure of the king's good beer, half a [pg 171] measure of herbs, on the new moon, the 15th day, for Gudea the High-priest. One measure of good wort beer, 5 qas of ground flour, 3 qas of cones (?), for the planet Mercury: during the month of the festival of the god Dungi. III.… Half a measure of good beer, half a measure of herbs, on the new moon, the 15th day, for the god Gudea the High-priest: during the month Elul, the first year of Gimil-Sin, king [of Ur].”

The conception of the King as a visible god upon earth was unable to survive the conquest of Babylonia by the half-civilized mountaineers of Elam and the substitution of foreigners for the Semitic or Semitized Sumerian rulers of the country. As the doctrine of the divine right of kings passed away in England with the rise of the Hanoverian dynasty, so, too, in Babylonia the deified King disappeared with the Kassite conquest. But he continued to be supreme pontiff to the adopted son of the god of Babylon. Babylon had become the capital of the kingdom, and Merodach, its patron-deity, was, accordingly, supreme over the other gods of Chaldea. He alone could confer the royal powers that the god of every city which was the centre of a principality had once been qualified to grant. By “taking his hands” the King became his adopted son, and so received a legitimate right to the throne.

It was the throne not only of Babylonia, but of the Babylonian empire as well. It was never forgotten that Babylonia had once been the mistress of Western Asia, and it was, accordingly, the sceptre of Western Asia that was conferred by Bel Merodach upon his [pg 172] adopted sons. Like the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, Babylonian sovereignty brought with it a legal, though shadowy, right to rule over the civilized kingdoms of the world. It was this which made the Assyrian conquerors of the second Assyrian empire so anxious to secure possession of Babylon and there “take the hands of Bel.” Tiglath-pileser III., Shalmaneser IV., and Sargon were all alike usurpers, who governed by right of the sword. It was only when they had made themselves masters of Babylon and been recognized by Bel and his priesthood that their title to govern became legitimate and unchallenged.

Cyrus and Cambyses continued the tradition of the native kings. They, too, claimed to be the successors of those who had ruled over Western Asia, and Bel, of his own free choice, it was alleged, had rejected the unworthy Nabonidos and put Cyrus in his place. Cyrus ruled, not by right of conquest, but because he had been called to the crown by the god of Babylon. It was not until the Zoroastrean Darius and Xerxes had taken Babylon by storm and destroyed the temple of Bel that the old tradition was finally thrust aside. The new rulers of Persia had no belief in the god of Babylon; his priesthood was hostile to them, and Babylon was deposed from the position it had so long occupied as the capital of the world.

In Assyria, in contrast to Babylonia, the government rested on a military basis. It is true that the kings of Assyria had once been the high-priests of the city of Assur, and that they carried with them some part of their priestly functions when [pg 173] they were invested with royal power. But it is no less true that they were never looked upon as incarnations of the deity or even as his representative upon earth. The rise of the Assyrian kingdom seems to have been due to a military revolt; at any rate, its history is that of a succession of rebellious generals, some of whom succeeded in founding dynasties, while others failed to hand down their power to their posterity. There was no religious ceremony at their coronation like that of “taking the hands of Bel.” When Esar-haddon was made King he was simply acclaimed sovereign by the army. It was the army and not the priesthood to whom he owed his title to reign.

The conception of the supreme god himself differed in Assyria and Babylonia. In Babylonia, Bel-Merodach was “lord” of the city; in Assyria, Assur was the deified city itself. In the one case, therefore, the King was appointed vicegerent of the god over the city which he governed and preserved; in the other case the god represented the state, and, in so far as the King was a servant of the god, he was a servant also of the state.

In both countries there was an aristocracy of birth based originally on the possession of land. But in Babylonia it tended at an early period to be absorbed by the mercantile and priestly classes, and in later days it is difficult to find traces even of its existence. The nobles of the age of Nebuchadnezzar were either wealthy trading families or officers of the Crown. The temples, and the priests who lived upon their revenues, had swallowed up a considerable part [pg 174] of the landed and other property of the country, which had thus become what in modern Turkey would be called wakf. In Assyria many of the great princes of the realm still belonged to the old feudal aristocracy, but here again the tendency was to replace them by a bureaucracy which owed its position and authority to the direct favor of the King. Under Tiglath-pileser III. this tendency became part of the policy of the government; the older aristocracy disappeared, and instead of it we find military officers and civil officials, all of whom were appointed by the Crown.

While, accordingly, Babylonia became an industrial and priestly state, Assyria developed into a great military and bureaucratic organization. It taught the world how to organize and administer an empire. Tiglath-pileser III. inaugurated a course of policy which his successors did their best to carry out. He aimed at reviving the ancient empire of Sargon of Akkad, of uniting the civilized world of Western Asia under one head, but upon new principles and in a more permanent way. The campaigns which his predecessors had carried on for the sake of booty and military fame were now conducted with a set purpose and method. The raid was replaced by a carefully planned scheme of conquest. The vanquished territories were organized into provinces under governors appointed by the Assyrian King and responsible to him alone. By the side of the civil governor was a military commander, who kept watch upon the other's actions, while under them was a large army of administrators. Assyrian colonies [pg 175] were planted in the newly acquired districts, where they served as a garrison, and the native inhabitants were transported to other parts of the Assyrian empire. In this way an attempt was made to break the old ties of patriotism and local feeling, and to substitute for them fidelity to the Assyrian government and the god Assur, in whose name its conquests were made.

The taxes of the empire were carefully regulated. A cadastral survey was an institution which had long been in existence; it had been borrowed from Babylonia, where, as we have seen, it was already known at a very early epoch. The amount to be paid into the treasury by each town and province was fixed, and the governor was called upon to transmit it each year to Nineveh. Thus in the time of Sennacherib the annual tribute of Carchemish was 100 talents, that of Arpad 30, and that of Megiddo 15, while, at home, Nineveh was assessed at 30 talents, and the district of Assur at 20, which were expended on the maintenance of the fleet, the whole amount of revenue raised from Assyria being 274 talents. Besides this direct taxation, there was also indirect taxation, as well as municipal rates. Thus a tax was laid upon the brick-fields, which in Babylonia were economically of considerable importance, and there was an octroi duty upon all goods, cattle, and country produce which entered a town. Similar tolls were exacted from the ships which moored at the quays, as well as from those who made use of the pontoon-bridges which spanned the Euphrates or passed under them in boats.