Part of an Egyptian Manuscript found in the Swathing of a
Mummy
Most of these stuffs preserved their original white or creamy colour—especially those woven at home by the women for the requirements of their own toilet, and for the ordinary uses of the household. The Chaldæans, however, like many other Asiatic peoples, had a strong preference for lively colours, and the outdoor garments and gala attire of the rich were distinguished by a profusion of blue patterns on a red ground, or red upon blue, arranged in stripes, zigzags, checks, and dots or circles. There must, therefore, have been as much occupation for dyers as there was for weavers; and it is possible that the two operations were carried out by the same hands. We know nothing of the bakers, butchers, carriers, masons, and other artisans who supplied the necessities of the cities: they were doubtless able to make two ends meet and nothing more, and if we should succeed some day in obtaining information about them, we shall probably find that their condition was as miserable as that of their Egyptian contemporaries. The course of their lives was monotonous enough, except when it was broken at prescribed intervals by the ordinary festivals in honour of the gods of the city, or by the casual suspensions of work occasioned by the triumphant return of the king from some warlike expedition, or by his inauguration of a new temple.
The gaiety of the people on such occasions was the more exuberant in proportion to the undisturbed monotony or misery of the days which preceded them. As soon, for instance, as Gudea had brought to completion Ininnu, the house of his patron Ningirsu, “he felt relieved from the strain and washed his hands. For seven days, no grain was bruised in the quern, the maid was the equal of her mistress, the servant walked in the same rank as his master, the strong and the weak rested side by side in the city.” The world seemed topsy-turvy as during the Roman Saturnalia; the classes mingled together, and the inferiors were probably accustomed to abuse the unusual licence which they momentarily enjoyed: when the festival was over, social distinctions reasserted themselves, and each one fell back into his accustomed position. Life was not so pleasant in Chaldæa as in Egypt. The innumerable promissory notes, the receipted accounts, the contracts of sale and purchase—these cunningly drawn up deeds which have been deciphered by the hundred—reveal to us a people greedy of gain, exacting, litigious, of artisans in Egypt. This is taken from a source belonging to the XIIth or possibly the XIIIth dynasty. We may assume, from the fact that the two civilizations were about on the same level, that the information supplied in this respect by the Egyptian monuments is generally applicable to the condition of Chaldæan workmen of the same period.
(Unreadable) and almost exclusively absorbed by material concerns. The climate, too, variable and oppressive in summer and winter alike, imposed upon the Chaldæan painful exactions, and obliged him to work with an energy of which the majority of Egyptians would not have felt themselves capable. The Chaldæan, suffering greater and more prolonged hardships, earned more doubtless, but was not on this account the happier. However lucrative his calling might be, it was not sufficiently so to supply him always with domestic necessities, and both tradespeople and operatives were obliged to run into debt to supplement their straitened means. When they had once fallen into the hands of the usurer, the exorbitant interest which they had to pay kept them a long time in his power. If when the bill fell due there was nothing to meet it, it had to be renewed under still more disastrous conditions; as the pledge given was usually the homestead, or the slave who assisted in the trade, or the garden which supplied food for the family, the mortgagor was reduced to the extreme of misery if he could not satisfy his creditors, This plague of usury was not, moreover, confined to the towns; it raged with equal violence in the country, and the farmers also became its victims.
If, theoretically, the earth belonged to the gods, and under them to the kings, the latter had made, and continued daily to make, such large concessions of it to their vassals, that the greater part of their domains were always in the hands of the nobles or private individuals. These could dispose of their landed property at pleasure, farm it out, sell it or distribute it among their heirs and friends.
They paid on account of it a tax which varied at different epochs, but which was always burthensome; but when they had once satisfied this exaction, and paid the dues which the temples might claim on behalf of the gods, neither the State nor any individual had the right to interfere in their administration of it, or put any restrictions upon them. Some proprietors cultivated their lands themselves—the poor by their own labour, the rich by the aid of some trustworthy slave whom they interested in the success of his farming by assigning him a certain percentage on the net return. Sometimes the lands were leased out in whole or in part to free peasants who relieved the proprietors of all the worry and risks of managing it themselves. A survey of the area of each state had been made at an early age, and the lots into which it had been divided were registered on clay tablets containing the name of the proprietor as well as those of his neighbours, together with such indications of the features of the land, dykes, canals, rivers, and buildings as would serve to define its boundaries: rough plans accompanied the description, and in the most complicated instances interpreted it to the eye. This survey was frequently repeated, and enabled the sovereign to arrange his scheme of taxation on a solid basis, and to calculate the product of it without material error. Gardens and groves of date-palms, together with large regions devoted to rough attempts at vegetable culture, were often to be met with, especially in the neighbourhood of towns; these paid their contributions to the State, as well as the owners’rent, in kind—in fruit, vegetables, and fresh or dried dates. The best soil was reserved, for the growth of wheat and other cereals, and its extent was measured in terms of corn; corn was also the standard in which the revenue was reckoned both in public and private contracts. Such and such a field required about fifty litres of seed to the arura. Another needed sixty-two or seventy-five according to the fertility of the land and its locality. Landed property was placed under the guardianship of the gods, and its transfer or cession was accompanied by formalities of a half-religious, half-magical character: the party giving delivery of it called down upon the head of any one who would dare in the future to dispute the validity of the deed, imprecations of which the text was inserted on a portion of the surface of an egg-shaped nodule of flint, basalt, or other hard stone. These little monuments display on their cone-shaped end a series of figures, sometimes arranged in two parallel divisions, sometimes scattered over the surface, which represent the deities invoked to watch over the sanctity of the contract. It was a kind of representation in miniature of the aspect which the heavens presented to the Chaldæans. The disks of the sun and moon, together with Venus-Ashtar, are the prominent elements in the scene: the zodiacal figures, or the symbols employed to represent them, are arranged in an apparent orbit around these—such as the Scorpion, the Bird, the Dog, the Thunderbolt of Ramman, the mace, the horned monsters, half hidden by the temples they guard, and the enormous Dragon who embraces in his folds half the entire firmament. “If ever, in the course of days, any one of the brothers, children, family, men or women, slaves or servants of the house, or any governor or functionary whatsoever, arises and intends to steal this field, and remove this landmark, either to make a gift of it to a god, or to assign it to a competitor, or to appropriate it to himself; if he modifies the area of it, the limits and the landmark; if he divides it into portions, and if he says: ‘The field has no owner, since there has been no donation of it; ‘—if, from dread of the terrible imprecations which protect this stele and this field, he sends a fool, a deaf or blind person, a wicked wretch, an idiot, a stranger, or an ignorant one, and should cause this stele to be taken away,* and should throw it into the water, cover it with dust, mutilate it by scratching it with a stone, burn it in the fire and destroy it, or write anything else upon it, or carry,it away to a place where it will be no longer seen,—this man, may Anu, Bel, Ea, the exalted lady, the great gods, cast upon him looks of wrath, may they destroy his strength, may they exterminate his race.” All the immortals are associated in this excommunication, and each one promises in his turn the aid of his power.
* All the people enumerated in this passage might, in
ignorance of what they were doing, be induced to tear up the
stone, and unconsciously commit a sacrilege from which every
Chaldæan in his senses would have shrunk back. The formula
provides for such cases, and it secures that the curse shall
fall not only on the irresponsible instruments, but reach
the instigator of the crime, even when he had taken no
actual part in the deed.