The obligations to public institutions which existed in Babylonia in later times have not yet been made the subject of a thorough study. Kohler and Peiser have noted several of the more important indications, and to them we owe what has been done up to the present.
To take a share in the expense of warfare
The most noteworthy obligation was what they call the ḳablu. This has the same sign as so commonly used in the phrase, ḳablu u taḫâzu, for “war and fighting.” But it is also the ideogram for šisîtu, the call of the nâgiru to war or the corvée. There is no doubt that it indicates the levy for war. The rikis ḳabli was the money due from certain persons to furnish a soldier for the war. Thus we have seventy shekels paid to a certain man, in the fifth year of Darius, to go to the city Shiladu.[525] Again, a certain Bêl-iddin had to find twenty-five shekels to pay a substitute to go for him to the presence of the king.[526] Another man paid the wages of a soldier for two years.[527] This was an æs militare. In another case we find the rikis ḳabli for a horseman for a certain troop, for three years. It consisted of an ass worth fifty shekels, thirty-six shekels for its keep, twelve coats, twelve breastplates (?), twelve mušapallatum, twelve leather mîṭu, twenty-four shoes, thirty ḲA of oil, sixty ḲA of bdellium sixty ḲA of some aromatic, all as equipment, ṣiditum, to go to the camp (?). This may be described as æs equestre.[528] So[529] the burgomaster of Babylon paid rikis ḳabli for three years for a certain soldier, receiving the amount from single citizens. How this arose, what dues it was a composition for, and whether it antedates Persian times, are details not yet clear.
To pay dues for the land
Besides the personal obligation to contribute “work,” dullu, a liability for contributions in kind, ilku, dues from [pg 205] the land, existed. We are in the dark as yet as to the exact form these took. In the Code, the ilku, or duty from an estate held as the benefice of an office, was the fulfilment of the functions of the office.[530] The word does not seem to denote contributions. But the word literally is what “comes” of any holding, income, or what is “taken” from it. In a charter of Melišhiḫu,[531] we have a long list of powers which could be exercised by the king's officials over land. They are levies or forced contributions of wood, crops, straw, corn, wagons, harness, asses or men, rights to abstract water from canals, to drink from the water, to pasture herbage, or set on the royal flocks or herds, to pasture sheep, to construct roads or bridges. These are referred to as either a dullu or ilku. The governor is named as likely to demand right of pasture for his flocks and herds or work for roads and bridges. But we are left without information as to the proportion these levies bore to the property. All we can conclude is that the king had a right to impress such things or such labor. Few, if any, other documents are so full and explicit as to the dues exacted from the land, but all these dues are mentioned again, one or two together, in almost all the charters.
The temple tithe
This is one of the most important dues from land. It was paid to the temple. Some are inclined to see it in the niširtu, from which many charters exempt land; but others consider this merely a word for “diminution,” or levy in general. There is no means of deciding yet as to the time at which the tithe first became a fixed institution.
In Assyria
There seems to be no trace in Assyrian times of any payment of a tithe. The tithe rab ešrite, which has been rendered “tithe collector,” is more likely to be a commander of ten, a decurion.[532]
Common among Neo-Babylonians