A History of Babylon, from the Foundation of the Monarchy to the Persian Conquest

by L. W. King

In the semi-tropical climate of Babylonia the canals played a vitally important part for the successful prosecution of agriculture, and it was to the royal interest to see that their channels were kept in a proper state of repair and cleaned out at regular intervals. There is evidence that nearly every king of the First Dynasty of Babylon cut new canals and extended the system of irrigation and transport by water that he had inherited. The rich silt carried down by the rivers was deposited partly in the canals, especially in those sections nearer the main stream, with the result that the bed of a canal was constantly in process of being raised. Every year it was necessary to dig this deposit out and pile it upon the banks. Every year the banks rose higher and higher, until a point was reached when the labour involved in getting rid of the silt became greater than that required for cutting a new channel. Hence sections of a canal were constantly being recut alongside the old channel, and it is probable that many of the canals, the cutting of which is commemorated in the texts, were really reconstructions of older streams, the beds of which had become hopelessly silted up.

At the present day the traveller in certain parts of Babylonia comes across the raised embankments of old canals extending across the plain within a short distance of each other, and their parallel course is to be explained by the process of recutting, which was put off as long as possible, but was at last necessitated by the growing height of the banks. As the bed of a canal gradually rose too, the high banks served the purpose of retaining the stream, and these were often washed away by the flood-water which came down from the hills in spring. An interesting letter has been preserved, that was written by Hammurabi's grandson, Abi-eshu', who describes a sudden rise of this sort in the level of the Irnina Canal so that it overflowed its banks.[12] At the time the king was building a palace in the city of Kâr-Irnina, which was supplied by the Irnina Canal, and every year a certain amount of work was put into the building. At the time the letter was written little more than a third of the year's work had been done, when the building-operations were stopped by flood, the canal having overflowed its banks so that the water rose right up to the town-wall.

It was the duty of the local governors to see that the canals were kept in good repair, and they had the power of requisitioning labour from the inhabitants of villages and the owners of land situated on or near the banks. In return, the villagers had the right of fishing in the waters of a canal along the section in their charge, and any poaching by other villagers in their part of the stream was strictly forbidden. On one occasion in the reign of Samsu-iluna, Hammurabi's son, fishermen from the village of Itabim went down in their boats to the district of Shakanim, and caught fish there contrary to local custom. So the inhabitants of Shakanim complained to the king of this infringement of their rights, and he sent a palace-official to the authorities of Sippar. in the jurisdiction of which the villages in question lay, with instructions to inquire into the matter and take steps to prevent any poaching in the future. Fishing by line and net was a regular industry, and the preservation of rights in local waters was jealously guarded.

The larger canals were fed directly from the river, especially along the Euphrates, whose banks were lower than those of the swifter Tigris. But along the latter river, and also along the banks of the canals, it will be obvious that some means had to be employed to raise the water for purposes of irrigation from the main channel to the higher level of the land. Reference is made in the Babylonian inscriptions to irrigation-machines,[13] and, although their exact form and construction are not described, they must have been very similar to those employed at the present day. The most primitive method of raising water, which is commoner to-day in Egypt than in Mesopotamia, is the shadduf, which is worked by hand. It consists of a beam supported in the centre; and at one end a bucket is suspended for raising the water, while at the other end is fixed a counter-weight. Thus comparatively little labour is required to raise the bucket when full. That this contrivance was employed on the Tigris is proved by an Assyrian bas-relief, found at Kuyunjik, with representations of the shadduf in operation. Two of them are being used, the one above the other, to raise the water to successive levels. These were probably the contrivances usually employed by the early Babylonians for raising the water to the level of their fields, and the fact that they were light and easily removed must have made them tempting objects to the dishonest former. A scale of compensation was therefore in force, regulating the payments to be made to the owner by a detected thief. From the fact that these varied, according to the class and value of the machine he stole, we may infer that other contrivances, of a heavier and more permanent character, were also employed.

One of these must certainly have corresponded to a very primitive arrangement that is in general use at the present day in Mesopotamia, particularly along the Tigris, where the banks are high and steep. A recess or cutting with perpendicular sides is driven into the bank, and a wooden spindle is supported on struts in a horizontal position over the recess, which resembles a well with one side opening on to the river. A rope running over the spindle is fastened to a skin in which the water is raised from the river, being drawn up by horses, donkeys, or cattle harnessed to the other end of the rope. To empty the skin by hand into the irrigation channel would, of course, entail considerable time and labour, and, to avoid this necessity, an ingenious contrivance is employed. The skin is sewn up, not in the form of a closed bag, but of a bag ending in a long narrow funnel. While the skin is being filled and drawn to the top, the funnel is kept raised by a thin line running over a lower spindle and fastened off to the main rope, so that both are pulled up together by the beasts. The positions of the spindles and the length of the ropes are so adjusted, that the end of the funnel stops just above a wooden trough on the bank below the struts, while the rest of the skin is drawn up higher and shoots its water through the funnel into the trough. The trough is usually made from half the trunk of a date-palm, hollowed out, and one end leads to the irrigation-channel on the bank. To give the beasts a better purchase in pulling up the weight of water, an inclined plane is cut in the ground, sloping away from the machine, and up and down this the beasts are driven, the skin filling and emptying itself automatically. To increase the supply of water, two skins are often employed side by side, each with its own tackle and set of beasts, and, as one is drawn up full, the other is let down empty. Thus a continuous flow of water is secured, and not more than one man or boy is required to keep each set of beasts moving. No more effective or simpler method could be devised of raising water to a considerable height, and there can be no doubt that, at the period of the First Dynasty, cattle were employed not only for ploughing, but for working primitive irrigation-machines of this character.

On the Euphrates, where the river-banks are lower, a simple form of water-wheel was probably in use then as it is to-day, wherever there was sufficient current to work one. And the advantage of this form of machine is that, so long as it is in order, it can be unlocked at will and kept working without supervision day and night. The wheel is formed of stripped boughs and branches nailed together, with spokes joining the outer rims to a roughly hewn axle. Around the outer rim are tied a series of rough earthenware cups or bottles, and a few rude paddles are fixed to the wheel, projecting beyond the rim. The wheel is then set up in place near the bank of the river, its axle resting on pillars of rough masonry. The current turns the wheel, and the bottles, dipping below the surface, are raised up full, and empty their water into a wooden trough at the top. The banks of the Euphrates are usually sloping, and the water is conducted from the trough to the fields along a small aqueduct or earthen embankment. Such wheels to-day are usually set up where there is a slight drop in the river-bed and the water runs swiftly over shallows. In order to span the difference in level between the fields and the summer height of the stream the wheels are often huge contrivances, and their rough construction causes them to creak and groan as they turn with the current. In a convenient place in the river several of these are sometimes set up side by side, and their noise when at work can be heard at a great distance.[14]

It is not unlikely that the later Sumerians had already evolved these primitive forms of irrigation-machine, and that the Babylonians of the First Dynasty merely inherited them and passed them on to their successors. When once invented they were incapable of very great improvement. In the one the skin must always remain a skin; in the other the wheel must always be lightly constructed of boughs, or the strength of the current would not suffice to turn it. We have seen reason to believe that, in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II. at Babylon, the triple well in the north-west corner may be best explained as having formed the water-supply for a hydraulic machine, consisting of an endless chain of buckets passing over a great wheel. Such is a very common form of raising water in Babylonia at the present day. It is true that in some of these machines the wheel for the buckets is still geared by means of rough wooden cogs to the long pole or winch, turned by beasts, who move round in a circle. But it is very unlikely that the early Babylonians had evolved the principle of the cogged wheel, and it was probably not till the period of the later Assyrian empire that bronze was so plentiful that it could have been used in sufficient quantity for buckets on an endless chain. There seems reason to believe that Sennacherib himself introduced an innovation when he employed metal in the construction of the machines that supplied water to his palace;[15] and we may infer that even in the Neo-Babylonian period a contrivance of that sort was still a royal luxury, and that the farmer continued to use the more primitive machines, sanctioned by immemorial usage, which he could make with his own hands.

FIG. 40.