History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery

by L. W. King; H. R. Hall

The letters themselves, in their general characteristics, resembled the contract tablets of the period which have been already described. They were written on small clay tablets oblong in shape, and as they were only three or four inches long they could easily be carried about the person of the messenger into whose charge they were delivered. After the tablet was written it was enclosed in a thin envelope of clay, having been first powdered with dry clay to prevent its sticking to the envelope. The name of the person for whom the letter was intended was written on the outside of the envelope, and both it and the tablet were baked hard to ensure that they should not be broken on their travels. The recipient of the letter, on its being delivered to him, broke the outer envelope by tapping it sharply, and it then fell away in pieces, leaving the letter and its message exposed. The envelopes were very similar to those in which the contract tablets of the period were enclosed, of which illustrations have already been given, their only difference being that the text of the tablet was not repeated on the envelope, as was the case with the former class of documents.

The royal letters that have been recovered throw little light on military affairs and the prosecution of campaigns, for, being addressed to governors of cities and civil officials, most of them deal with matters affecting the internal administration of the empire. One letter indeed contains directions concerning the movements of two hundred and forty soldiers of “the King’s Company” who had been stationed in Assyria, and another letter mentions certain troops who were quartered in the city of Ur. A third deals with the supply of clothing and oil for a section of the Babylonian army, and troops are also mentioned as having formed the escort for certain goddesses captured from the Elamites; while directions are sent to others engaged in a campaign upon the Elamite frontier. The letter which contains directions for the safe escort of the captured Elamite goddesses, and the one ordering the return of these same goddesses to their own shrines, show that foreign deities, even when captured from an enemy, were treated by the Babylonians with the same respect and reverence that was shown by them to their own gods and goddesses. Hammurabi gave directions in the first letter for the conveyance of the goddesses to Babylon with all due pomp and ceremony, sheep being supplied for sacrifice upon the journey, and their usual rites being performed by their own temple-women and priestesses. The king’s voluntary restoration of the goddesses to their own country may have been due to the fact that, after their transference to Babylon, the army of the Babylonians suffered defeat in Elam. This misfortune would naturally have been ascribed by the king and the priests to the anger of the Elamite goddesses at being detained in a foreign land, and Hammurabi probably arrived at his decision that they should be escorted back in the hope of once more securing victory for the Babylonian arms.

The care which the king exercised for the due worship of his own gods and the proper supply of their temples is well illustrated from the letters that have been recovered, for he superintended the collection of the temple revenues, and the herdsmen and shepherds attached to the service of the gods sent their reports directly to him. He also took care that the observances of religious rites and ceremonies were duly carried out, and on one occasion he postponed the hearing of a lawsuit concerning the title to certain property which was in dispute, as it would have interfered with the proper observance of a festival in the city of Ur. The plaintiff in the suit was the chief of the temple bakers, and it was his duty to superintend the preparation of certain offerings for the occasion. In order that he should not have to leave his duties, the king put off the hearing of the case until after the festival had been duly celebrated. The king also exercised a strict control over the priests themselves, and received reports from the chief priests concerning their own subordinates, and it is probable that the royal sanction was obtained for all the principal appointments. The guild of soothsayers was an important religious class at this time, and they also were under the king’s direct control. A letter written by Ammiditana, one of the later kings of the First Dynasty, to three high officials of the city of Sippar, contains directions with regard to certain duties to be carried out by the soothsayers attached to the service of the city, and indicates the nature of their functions. Ammiditana wrote to the officials in question, stating that there was a scarcity of corn in the city of Shagga, and he therefore ordered them to send a supply thither. But before the corn was brought into the city they were told to consult the soothsayers, who were to divine the future and ascertain whether the omens were favourable. If they proved to be so, the corn was to be brought in. We may conjecture that the king took this precaution, as he feared the scarcity of corn in Shagga was due to the anger of some local deity or spirit, and that, if this were the case, the bringing in of the corn would only lead to fresh troubles. This danger it was the duty of the soothsayers to prevent.

Another class of the priesthood, which we may infer was under the king’s direct control, was the astrologers, whose duty it probably was to make reports to the king of the conjunctions of the heavenly bodies, with a view to ascertaining whether they portended good or evil to the state. No astrological reports written in this early period have been recovered, but at a later period under the Assyrian empire the astrologers reported regularly to the king on such matters, and it is probable that the practice was one long established. One of Hammurabi’s letters proves that the king regulated the calendar, and it is legitimate to suppose that he sought the advice of his astrologers as to the times when intercalary months were to be inserted. The letter dealing with the calendar was written to inform Sin-idinnam, the governor of Larsam, that an intercalary month was to be inserted. “Since the year (i.e. the calendar) hath a deficiency,” he writes, “let the month which is now beginning be registered as a second Elul,” and the king adds that this insertion of an extra month will not justify any postponement in the payment of the regular tribute due from the city of Larsam, which had to be paid a month earlier than usual to make up for the month that was inserted. The intercalation of additional months was due to the fact that the Babylonian months were lunar, so that the calendar had to be corrected at intervals to make it correspond to the solar year.

From the description already given of the code of laws drawn up by Hammurabi it will have been seen that the king attempted to incorporate and arrange a set of regulations which should settle any dispute likely to arise with regard to the duties and privileges of all classes of his subjects. That this code was not a dead letter, but was actively administered, is abundantly proved by many of the letters of Hammurabi which have been recovered. From these we learn that the king took a very active part in the administration of justice in the country, and that he exercised a strict supervision, not only over the cases decided in the capital, but also over those which were tried in the other great cities and towns of Babylonia. Any private citizen was entitled to make a direct appeal to the king for justice, if he thought he could not obtain it in his local court, and it is clear from Hammurabi’s letters that he always listened to such an appeal and gave it adequate consideration. The king was anxious to stamp out all corruption on the part of those who were invested with authority, and he had no mercy on any of his officers who were convicted of taking bribes. On one occasion when he had been informed of a case of bribery in the city of Dûr-gurgurri, he at once ordered the governor of the district in which Dûr-gurgurri lay to investigate the charge and send to Babylon those who were proved to be guilty, that they might be punished. He also ordered that the bribe should be confiscated and despatched to Babylon under seal, a wise provision which must have tended to discourage those who were inclined to tamper with the course of justice, while at the same time it enriched the state. It is probable that the king tried all cases of appeal in person when it was possible to do so. But if the litigants lived at a considerable distance from Babylon, he gave directions to his local officials on the spot to try the case. When he was convinced of the justice of any claim, he would decide the case himself and send instructions to the local authorities to see that his decision was duly carried out. It is certain that many disputes arose at this period in consequence of the extortions of money-lenders. These men frequently laid claim in a fraudulent manner to fields and estates which they had received in pledge as security for seed-corn advanced by them. In cases where fraud was proved Hammurabi had no mercy, and summoned the money-lender to Babylon to receive punishment, however wealthy and powerful he might be.

A subject frequently referred to in Hammurabi’s letters is the collection of revenues, and it is clear that an elaborate system was in force throughout the country for the levying and payment of tribute to the state by the principal cities of Babylonia, as well as for the collection of rent and revenue from the royal estates and from the lands which were set apart for the supply of the great temples. Collectors of both secular and religious tribute sent reports directly to the king, and if there was any deficit in the supply which was expected from a collector he had to make it up himself; but the king was always ready to listen to and investigate a complaint and to enforce the payment of tribute or taxes so that the loss should not fall upon the collector. Thus, in one of his letters Hammurabi informs the governor of Larsam that a collector named Sheb-Sin had reported to him, saying “Enubi-Marduk hath laid hands upon the money for the temple of Bît-il-kittim (i.e. the great temple of the Sun-god at Larsam) which is due from the city of Dûr-gurgurri and from the (region round about the) Tigris, and he hath not rendered the full sum; and Gimil-Marduk hath laid hands upon the money for the temple of Bît-il-kittim which is due from the city.of Rakhabu and from the region round about that city, and he hath not (paid) the full amount. But the palace hath exacted the full sum from me.” It is probable that both Enubi-Marduk and Gimil-Marduk were money-lenders, for we know from another letter that the former had laid claim to certain property on which he had held a mortgage, although the mortgage had been redeemed. In the present case they had probably lent money or seed-corn to certain cultivators of land near Dûr-gurgurri and Rakhabu and along the Tigris, and in settlement of their claims they had seized the crops and had, moreover, refused to pay to the king’s officer the proportion of the crops that was due to the state as taxes upon the land. The governor of Larsam, the principal city in the district, had rightly, as the representative of the palace (i.e. the king), caused the tax-collector to make up the deficiency, but Hammurabi, on receiving the subordinate officer’s complaint, referred the matter back to the governor. The end of the letter is wanting, but we may infer that Hammurabi condemned the defaulting money-lenders to pay the taxes due, and fined them in addition, or ordered them to be sent to the capital for punishment.

On another occasion Sheb-Sin himself and a second tax-collector named Sin-mushtal appear to have been in fault and to have evaded coming to Babylon when summoned thither by the king. It had been their duty to collect large quantities of sesame seed as well as taxes paid in money. When first summoned, they had made the excuse that it was the time of harvest and they would come after the harvest was over. But as they did not then make their appearance, Hammurabi wrote an urgent letter insisting that they should be despatched with the full amount of the taxes due, in the company of a trustworthy officer who would see that they duly arrived at the capital.

Tribute on flocks and herds was also levied by the king, and collectors or assessors of the revenue were stationed in each district, whose duty it was to report any deficit in the revenue accounts. The owners of flocks and herds were bound to bring the young cattle and lambs that were due as tribute to the central city of the district in which they dwelt, and they were then collected into large bodies and added to the royal flocks and herds; but, if the owners attempted to hold back any that were due as tribute, they were afterwards forced to incur the extra expense and trouble of driving the beasts to Babylon. The flocks and herds owned by the king and the great temples were probably enormous, and yielded a considerable revenue in themselves apart from the tribute and taxes due from private owners. Shepherds and herdsmen were placed in charge of them, and they were divided into groups under chief shepherds, who arranged the districts in which the herds and flocks were to be grazed, distributing them when possible along the banks and in the neighbourhood of rivers and canals which would afford good pasturage and a plentiful supply of water. The king received reports from the chief shepherds and herdsmen, and it was the duty of the governors of the chief cities and districts of Babylonia to make tours of inspection and see that due care was taken of the royal flocks and sheep. The sheep-shearing for all the flocks that were pastured near the capital took place in Babylon, and the king used to send out summonses to his chief shepherds to inform them of the day when the shearing would take place; and it is probable that the governors of the other great cities sent out similar orders to the shepherds of flocks under their charge. Royal and priestly flocks were often under the same chief officer, a fact which shows the very strict control the king exercised over the temple revenues.

The interests of the agricultural population were strictly looked after by the king, who secured a proper supply of water for purposes of irrigation by seeing that the canals and waterways were kept in a proper state of repair and cleaned out at regular intervals. There is also evidence that nearly every king of the First Dynasty of Babylon cut new canals, and extended the system of irrigation and transportation which had been handed down to him from his fathers. The draining of the marshes and the proper repair of the canals could only be carried out by careful and continuous supervision, and it was the duty of the local governors to see that the inhabitants of villages and owners of land situated on the banks of a canal should keep it in proper order. When this duty had been neglected complaints were often sent to the king, who gave orders to the local governor to remedy the defect. Thus on one occasion it had been ordered that a canal at Erech which had silted up should be deepened, but the dredging had not been carried out thoroughly, so that the bed of the canal soon silted up again and boats were prevented from entering the city. In these circumstances Hammurabi gave pressing orders that the obstruction was to be removed and the canal made navigable within three days.

Damage was often done to the banks of canals by floods which followed the winter rains, and a letter of Abêshu’ gives an interesting account of a sudden rise of the water in the Irnina canal so that it overflowed its banks. The king was building a palace at the city of Kâr-Irnina, which was supplied by the Irnina canal, and every year it was possible to put so much work into the building. But one year, when little more than a third of the year’s work was done, the building operations were stopped by flood, the canal having overflowed its banks so that the water rose right up to the wall of the town. In return for the duty of keeping the canals in order, the villagers along the banks had the privilege of fishing in its waters in the portion which was in their charge, and any poaching by other villagers in this part of the stream was strictly forbidden. On one occasion, in the reign of Samsu-iluna, Hammurabi’s son and successor, the fishermen of the district of Rabim went down in their boats to the district of Shakanim and caught fish there contrary to the law. So the inhabitants of Shakanim complained of this poaching to the king, who sent a palace official to the authorities of Sippar, near which city the districts in question lay, with orders to inquire into the matter and take steps to prevent all such poaching for the future.