The regulation of transportation on the canals was also under the royal jurisdiction. The method of reckoning the size of ships has already been described, and there is evidence that the king possessed numerous vessels of all sizes for the carrying of grain, wool, and dates, as well as for the wood and stone employed in his building operations. Each ship seems to have had its own crew, under the command of a captain, and it is probable that officials who regulated the transportation from the centres where they were stationed were placed in charge of separate sections of the rivers and of the canals.
It is obvious, from the account that has been given of the numerous operations directly controlled and superintended by the king, that he had need of a very large body of officials, by whose means he was enabled to carry out successfully the administration of the country. In the course of the account we have made mention of the judges and judicial officers, the assessors and collectors of revenue, and the officials of the palace who were under the king’s direct orders. It is also obvious that different classes of officers were in charge of all the departments of the administration. Two classes of officials, who were placed in charge of the public works and looked after and controlled the public slaves, and probably also had a good deal to do with the collection of the revenue, had special privileges assigned to them, and special legislation was drawn up to protect them in the enjoyment of the same. As payment for their duties they were each granted land with a house and garden, they were assigned the use of certain sheep and cattle with which to stock their land, and in addition they received a regular salary. They were in a sense personal retainers of the king and were liable to be sent at any moment on a special mission to carry out the king’s commands. Disobedience was severely punished; for, if such an officer, when detailed for a special mission, did not go but hired a substitute, he was liable to be put to death and the substitute he had hired could take his office. Sometimes an officer was sent for long periods some distance from his home to take charge of a garrison, and when this was done his home duties were performed by another man, who temporarily occupied his house and land, but gave it back to the officer on his return. If such an officer had a son old enough to perform his duty in his father’s absence, he was allowed to do so and to till his father’s lands; but if the son was too young, the substitute who took the officer’s place had to pay one-third of the produce of the land to the child’s mother for his education. Before departing on his journey to the garrison it was the officer’s duty to arrange for the proper cultivation of his land and the discharge of his local duties during his absence. If he omitted to do so and left his land and duties neglected for more than a year, and another had meanwhile taken his place, on his return he could not reclaim his land and office. It will be obvious, therefore, that his position was a specially favoured one and much sought after, and these regulations ensured that the duties attaching to the office were not neglected.
In the course of his garrison duty or when on special service, these officers ran some risk of being captured by the enemy, and in that event regulations were drawn up for their ransom. If the captured officer was wealthy and could pay for his own ransom, he was bound to do so, but if he had not the necessary means his ransom was to be paid out of the local temple treasury, and, when the funds in the temple treasury did not suffice, he was to be ransomed by the state. It was specially enacted that his land and garden and house were in no case to be sold in order to pay for his ransom. These were inalienably attached to the office which he held, and he was not allowed to sell them or the sheep and cattle with which they were stocked. Moreover, he was not allowed to bequeath any of this property to his wife or daughter, so that his office would appear to have been hereditary and the property attached to it to have been entailed on his son if he succeeded him. Such succession would not, of course, have taken place if the officer by his own neglect or disobedience had forfeited his office and its privileges during his lifetime.
It has been suggested with considerable probability that these officials were originally personal retainers and follows of Sumu-abu, the founder of the First Dynasty of Babylon. They were probably assigned lands throughout the country in return for their services to the king, and their special duties were to preserve order and uphold the authority of their master. In the course of time their duties were no doubt modified, but they retained their privileges and they must have continued to be a very valuable body of officers, on whose personal loyalty the king could always rely. In the preceding chapter we have already seen how grants of considerable estates were made by the Kassite kings of the Third Dynasty to followers who had rendered conspicuous services, and at the same time they received the privilege of holding such lands free of all liability to forced labour and the payment of tithes and taxes. We may conclude that the class of royal officers under the kings of the First Dynasty had a similar origin.
In the present chapter, from information recently made available, we have given some account of the system of administration adopted by the early kings of Babylon, and we have described in some detail the various classes of the Babylonian population, their occupations, and the conditions under which they lived. In the two preceding chapters we have dealt with the political history of Western Asia from the very earliest period of the Sumerian city-states down to the time of the Kassite kings. In the course of this account we have seen how Mesopotamia in the dawn of history was in the sole possession of the Sumerian race and how afterwards it fell in turn under the dominion of the Semites and the kings of Elam. The immigration of fresh Semitic tribes at the end of the third millennium before Christ resulted in the establishment in Babylon of the Semitic kings who are known as First Dynasty kings; and under the sway of Hammurabi, the greatest of this group of kings, the empire thus established in Western Asia had every appearance of permanence. Although Elam no longer troubled Babylon, a great danger arose from a new and unexpected quarter. In the Country of the Sea—which comprised the districts in the extreme south of Babylonia on the shores of the Persian Gulf—the Sumerians had rallied their forces, and they now declared themselves independent of Babylonian control. A period of conflict followed between the kings of the First Dynasty and the kings of the Country of the Sea, in which the latter more than held their own; and, when the Hittite tribes of Syria invaded Northern Babylonia in the reign of Samsu-ditana, Babylon’s power of resistance was so far weakened that she fell an easy prey to the rulers of the Country of the Sea. But the reappearance of the Sumerians in the rôle of leading race in Western Asia was destined not to last long, and was little more than the last flicker of vitality exhibited by this ancient and exhausted race. Thus the Second Dynasty fell in its turn before the onslaught of the Kassite tribes who descended from the mountainous districts in the west of Elam, and, having overrun the whole of Mesopotamia, established a new dynasty at Babylon, and adopted Babylonian civilization.
With the advent of the Kassite kings a new chapter opens in the history of Western Asia. Up to that time Egypt and Babylon, the two chief centres of ancient civilization, had no doubt indirectly influenced one another, but they had not come into actual contact. During the period of the Kassite kings both Babylon and Assyria established direct relations with Egypt, and from that time forward the influence they exerted upon one another was continuous and unbroken. We have already traced the history of Babylon up to this point in the light of recent discoveries, and a similar task awaits us with regard to Assyria. Before we enter into a discussion of Assyria’s origin and early history in the light of recent excavation and research, it is necessary that we should return once more to Egypt, and describe the course of her history from the period when Thebes succeeded in displacing Memphis as the capital city.