Employed for ferrying caravans across the river.
There is evidence that under the Assyrians rafts floated on inflated skins were employed for the transport of heavy goods, and these have survived in the keleks of the present day. They are specially adapted for the transportation of heavy materials, for they are carried down by the current, and are kept in the course by means of huge sweeps or oars. Being formed only of logs of wood and skins, they are not costly, for wood is plentiful in the upper reaches of the rivers. At the end of their journey, after the goods are landed, they are broken up. The wood is sold at a profit, and the skins, after being deflated, are packed on to donkeys to return by caravan.
It is not improbable that such rafts were employed on the Tigris and the Euphrates from the earliest periods of Chaldæan history, though boats would have been used on the canals and more sluggish waterways.
In the preceding pages we have given a sketch of the more striking aspects of early Babylonian life, on which light has been thrown by recently discovered documents belonging to the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon. We have seen that, in the code of laws drawn up by Hammurabi, regulations were framed for settling disputes and fixing responsibilities under almost every condition and circumstance which might arise among the inhabitants of the country at that time; and the question naturally arises as to how far the code of laws was in actual operation.
It is conceivable that the king may have held admirable convictions, but have been possessed of little power to carry them out and to see that his regulations were enforced. Luckily, we have not to depend on conjecture for settling the question, for Hammurabi’s own letters which are now preserved in the British Museum afford abundant evidence of the active control which the king exercised over every department of his administration and in every province of his empire. In the earlier periods of history, when each city lived independently of its neighbours and had its own system of government, the need for close and frequent communication between them was not pressing, but this became apparent as soon as they were welded together and formed parts of an extended empire. Thus in the time of Sargon of Agade, about 3800 B.C., an extensive system of royal convoys was established between the principal cities. At Telloh the late M. de Sarzec came across numbers of lumps of clay bearing the seal impressions of Sargon and of his son Narâm-Sin, which had been used as seals and labels upon packages sent from Agade to Shirpurla. In the time of Dungi, King of Ur, there was a constant interchange of officials between the various cities of Babylonia and Elam, and during the more recent diggings at Telloh there have been found vouchers for the supply of food for their sustenance when stopping at Shirpurla in the course of their journeys. In the case of Hammurabi we have recovered some of the actual letters sent by the king himself to Sin-idinnam, his local governor in the city of Larsam, and from them we gain considerable insight into the principles which guided him in the administration of his empire.