Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs

by A. H. Sayce

The offerings to the gods were divided into sacrifices and meal-offerings. The ox, sheep, lamb, kid, and dove were offered in sacrifice—fruit, vegetables, bread, wine, oil, and spices where no blood was required to be shed. There were also sin-offerings and heave-offerings, when the offering was first “lifted up” before the gods. A contract dated in the thirty-second year of Nebuchadnezzar tells something [pg 249] about the parts of the animals which were sacrificed, though unfortunately the meaning of many of the technical words used in it is still unknown: “Izkur-Merodach, the son of Imbriya, the son of Ilei-Merodach, of his own free will has given for the future to Nebo-balasu-iqbi, the son of Kuddinu, the son of Ilei-Merodach, the slaughterers of the oxen and sheep for the sacrifices of the king, the prescribed offerings, the peace-offerings (?) of the whole year—viz., the caul round the heart, the chine, the covering of the ribs, the …, the mouth of the stomach, and the …, as well as during the year 7,000 sin-offerings and 100 sheep before Iskhara, who dwells in the temple of Sa-turra in Babylon (not excepting the soft parts of the flesh, the trotters (?), the juicy meat, and the salted (?) flesh), and also the slaughterers of the oxen, sheep, birds, and lambs due on the 8th day of Nisan, (and) the heave-offering of an ox and a sheep before Pap-sukal of Bit-Kiduz-Kani, the temple of Nin-ip and the temple of Anu on the further bank of the New Town in Babylon.” The 8th of Nisan, or March, was the first day of the festival of the New Year.

The hierarchy of priests was large. At its head was the patesi, or high-priest, who in the early days of Babylonian history was a civil as well as an ecclesiastical ruler. He lost his temporal power with the rise of the kings. But at first the King was also a patesi, and it is probable that in many cases at least it was the high-priest who made himself a king by subjecting to his authority the patesis or priestly rulers of other states. In Assyria the change of the [pg 250] high-priest into a king was accompanied by revolt from the supremacy of Babylonia.

With the establishment of a monarchy the high-priest lost more and more his old power and attributes, and tended to disappear altogether, or to become merely the vicegerent or representative of the King. The King himself, mindful of his sacerdotal origin, still claimed semi-priestly powers. But he now called himself a sangu or “chief priest” rather than a patesi; in fact, the latter name was retained only from antiquarian motives. The individual high-priest passed away, and was succeeded by the class of “chief priests.” Under them were several subordinate classes of temple servants. There were, for instance, the enû, or “elders,” and the pasisû, or “anointers,” whose duty it was to anoint the images of the gods and the sacred vessels of the temple with oil, and who are sometimes included among the ramkû, or “offerers of libations,” as well. By the side of them stood asipu, or “prophet,” who interpreted the will of heaven, and even accompanied the army on its march, deciding when it might attack the enemy with success, or when the gods refused to grant it victory. Next to the prophet came the makhkhû or interpreter of dreams, as well as the barû, or “seer.”

A very important class of temple-servants were the kalî, or “eunuch-priests,” the galli of the religions of Asia Minor. They were under a “chief kalû,” and were sometimes entitled “the servants of Istar.” It was indeed to her worship that they were specially consecrated, like the ukhâtu and kharimâtu, or female [pg 251] hierodules. Erech, with its sanctuary of Anu and Istar, was the place where these latter were chiefly to be found; here they performed their dances in honor of the goddess and mourned over the death of Tammuz.

Closely connected with the kalî was a sort of monastic institution, which seems to have been attached to some of the Babylonian temples. The Zikari, who belonged to it, were forbidden to marry, and it is possible that they were eunuchs like the kalî. They, too, were under a chief or president, and their main duty was to attend to the daily sacrifice and to minister to the higher order of priests. In this respect they resembled the Levites at Jerusalem; indeed they are frequently termed “servants” in the inscriptions, though they were neither serfs nor slaves. They could be dedicated to the service of the Sun-god from childhood. A parallel to the dedication of Samuel is to be found in a deed dated at Sippara on the 21st of Nisan, in the fifth year of Cambyses, in which “Ummu-dhabat, the daughter of Nebo-bel-uzur,” whose father-in-law was the priest of the Sun-god, is stated to have brought her three sons to him, and to have made the following declaration before another priest of the same deity: “My sons have not yet entered the House of the Males (Zikari); I have hitherto lived with them; I have grown old with them since they were little, until they have been counted among men.” Then she took them into the “House of the Males” and “gave” them to the service of the god. We learn from this and other documents that the Zikari lived together [pg 252] in a monastery or college within the walls of the temple, and that monthly rations of food were allotted to them from the temple revenues.

The ordinary priests were married, though the wife of a priest was not herself a priestess. There were priestesses, however, as well as female recluses, who, like the Zikari, were not allowed to marry and were devoted to the service of the Sun-god. They lived in the temple, but were able to hold property of their own, and even to carry on business with it. A portion of the profits, nevertheless, went to the treasury of the temple, out of whose revenues they were themselves supplied with food. From contracts of the time of Khammurabi we gather that many of them not only belonged to the leading families of Babylonia, but that they might be relations of the King.

Wholly distinct from these devotees of the Sun-god were the female hierodules or prostitutes of Istar, to whom reference has already been made. Distinct from them, again, were the prophetesses of Istar, who prophesied the future and interpreted the oracles of the goddess. One of their chief seats was the temple of Istar at Arbela, and a collection of the oracles delivered by them and their brother prophets to Esar-haddon has been preserved. It is thus that he is addressed in one of them: “Fear not, O Esar-haddon; the breath of inspiration which speaks to thee is spoken by me, and I conceal it not. Thine enemies shall melt away from before thy feet like the floods in Sivan. I am the mighty mistress, Istar of Arbela, who have put thine enemies to flight before thy feet. Where are the words which I speak unto thee, that [pg 253] thou hast not believed them? I am Istar of Arbela; thine enemies, the Ukkians, do I give unto thee. I am Istar of Arbela; in front of thee and at thy side do I march. Fear not, thou art in the midst of those that can heal thee; I am in the midst of thy host. I advance and I stand still!” It is probable that these prophetesses were not ordained to their office, but that it depended on their possession of the “spirit of inspiration.” At all events, we find men as well as women acting as the mouth-pieces of Istar, and in one instance the woman describes herself as a native of a neighboring village “in the mountains.”

The revenues of the temples and priesthood were derived partly from endowments, partly from compulsory or voluntary offerings. Among the compulsory offerings were the esrâ, or “tithes.” These had to be paid by all classes of the population from the King downward, either in grain or in its equivalent in money. The “tithe” of Nabonidos, immediately after his accession, to the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara was as much as 5 manehs of gold, or £840. We may infer from this that it was paid on the amount of cash which he had found in the treasury of the palace and which was regarded as the private property of the King. Nine years later Belshazzar, the heir-apparent, offered two oxen and thirty-two sheep as a voluntary gift to the same temple, and at the beginning of the following year we find him paying a shekel and a quarter for a boat to convey three oxen and twenty-four sheep to the same sanctuary. Even at the moment when Cyrus was successfully invading the dominions of his father and [pg 254] Babylon had already been occupied for three weeks by the Persian army, Belshazzar was careful to pay the tithe due from his sister, and amounting to 47 shekels of silver, into the treasury of the Sun-god. As Sippara was in the hands of the enemy, and the Babylonian forces which Belshazzar commanded had been defeated and dispersed, the fact is very significant, and proves how thoroughly both invaders and invaded must have recognized the rights of the priesthood.

Tithe was also indirectly paid by the temple-serfs. Thus in the first year of Nergal-sharezer, out of 3,100 measures of grain, delivered by “the serfs of the Sun-god” to his temple at Sippara, 250 were exacted as “tithe.” These serfs must be distinguished from the temple-slaves. They were attached to the soil, and could not be separated from it. When, therefore, a piece of land came into the possession of a temple by gift and endowment, they went along with it, but their actual persons could not be sold. The slave, on the other hand, was as much a chattel as the furniture of the temple, which could be bought and sold; he was usually a captive taken in war, more rarely a native who had been sold for debt. All the menial work of the temple was performed by him; the cultivation of the temple-lands, on the contrary, was left to the serfs.

It is doubtful whether the “butchers,” or slaughterers of the animals required for sacrifice, or the “bakers” of the sacred cakes, were slaves or freemen. The expression used in regard to them in the contract of Izkur-Merodach quoted above is open to two [pg 255] interpretations, but it would naturally signify that they were regarded as slaves. We know, at all events, that many of the artisans employed in weaving curtains for the temples and clothing for the images of the gods belonged to the servile class, and the gorgeousness of the clothing and the frequency with which it was changed must have necessitated a large number of workmen. Many of the documents which have been bequeathed to us by the archives of the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara relate to the robes and head-dresses and other portions of the clothing of the images which stood there.