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

by L. W. King

Adad-shum-usur, who owed his throne to a revolt of the Kassite nobles against the Assyrian domination, restored the fortunes of his country for a time. He defeated and slew Enlil-kudur-usur in battle, and, when the Assyrians retreated, he followed them up and fought a battle before Ashur. This successful reassertion of Babylon's initiative was maintained by his direct descendants Meli-Shipak II. and Marduk-aplu-iddina, or Merodach-baladan I.; and the kudurru-records of their reigns, which have been recovered, have thrown an interesting light on the internal conditions of the country during the later Kassite period. But Assyria once again asserted herself under Ashur-dân I., who defeated Zamama-shum-iddin and succeeded in recovering her lost frontier provinces.[60] The Kassite dynasty did not long survive this defeat, although it received its death-blow from another quarter. Shutruk-Nakhkhunte, the Elamite king, invaded Babylonia, defeated and slew Zamama-shum-iddin, and, aided by son Kutir-Nakhkhunte, he sacked Sippar and carried away much spoil to Elam. The name of the last Kassite ruler, who reigned for only three years, is broken in the Kings' List, but it is possible that we may restore it as Bêlnadin-akhi,[61] whom Nebuchadnezzar I. mentions after referring to the invasion which cost Zamama-shum-iddin his life. Whether we accept the identification or not, we may certainly connect the fall of the Kassite Dynasty with aggression on the part of Elam, such as so often before had changed the course of Babylonian politics.

Apart from the tablets of the Kassite period discovered at Nippur,[62] our principal source of information on economic conditions in Babylonia at this time is to be found in the kudurru-inscriptions, or boundary-stones, to which reference has already been made.[63] The word kudurru may be rendered accurately enough as "boundary-stone," for the texts are engraved on conical blocks or boulders of stone; and there is little doubt that many of the earlier stones must have been set up on landed estates, whose limits and ownership they were intended to define and commemorate. Even at a time when the stone itself had ceased to be employed to mark the boundary and was preserved in the owner's house, or in the temple of his god, as a charter or title-deed to which he could appeal in case of need, the text preserved its old formulas setting out the limits and orientation of the plot of land to which it referred. The importance of these records is considerable, not only in their legal and religious aspects, but also from a historical point of view. Apart from the references to Babylonian kings and to historical events, which they contain, they form in many cases the only documents of their period which have come down to us. They thus serve to bridge the gap in our knowledge of Euphratean civilization between the Kassite epoch and that of the Neo-Babylonian kings; and, while they illustrate the development which gradually took place in Babylonian law and custom, they prove the continuity of culture during times of great political change.[64]

The kudurru or boundary-stone had its origin under the Kassite kings, and, while at first recording, or confirming, a royal grant of land to an important official or servant of the king, its aim was undoubtedly to place the newly acquired rights of the owner under the protection of the gods. A series of curses, regularly appended to the legal record, was directed against any interference with the owner's rights, which were also placed under the protection of a number of deities whose symbols were engraved upon the blank spaces of the stone. It has been suggested that the idea of placing property under divine protection was not entirely an innovation of the Kassites. It is true that the foundation-cones of the early Sumerian patesi Entemena may well have ended with elaborate curses intended to preserve a frontier-ditch from violation.[65] But the cones themselves, and the stele from which they were copied, were intended to protect a national frontier, not the boundaries of private property. Gate-sockets, too, have been treated as closely related to boundary-stones, on the ground that the threshold of a temple might be regarded as its boundary.[66] But the main object of the gate-socket was to support the temple-gate, and its prominent position and the durable nature of its material no doubt suggested its employment as a suitable place for a commemorative inscription. The peculiarity of the boundary-stone is that, by both curse and sculptured emblem, it invokes divine protection upon private property and the rights of private individuals.

In the age of Hammurabi we have no evidence of such a practice, and the Obelisk of Manishtusu,[67] the far earlier Semitic king of Akkad, which records his extensive purchases of land in Northern Babylonia, is without the protection of imprecatory clauses or symbols of the gods. The suggestion is thus extremely probable that the custom of protecting private property in this way arose at a time when the authority of the law was not sufficiently powerful to guarantee respect for the property of private individuals.[68] This would specially apply to grants of land to favoured officials settled among a hostile population, especially if no adequate payment for the property had been made by the Kassite king. The disorder and confusion which followed the fall of the First Dynasty must have been renewed during the Kassite conquest of the country, and the absence of any feeling of public security would account for the general adoption of such a practice as placing land in private possession under the protection of the gods.

The use of stone stelæ for this purpose may well have been suggested by a Kassite custom; for in the mountains of Western Persia, the recent home of the Kassite tribes before their conquest of the river-plain, stones had probably been used to mark the limits of their fields, and these may well have borne short inscriptions giving the owner's name and title.[69] The employment of curses to secure divine protection was undoubtedly of Babylonian, and ultimately of Sumerian origin, but the idea of placing symbols of the gods upon the stone was probably Kassite.[70] Moreover, the kudurru was not the original title-deed recording the acquisition of the land to which it refers. As in the earlier Babylonian periods, clay tablets continued to be employed for this purpose, and they received the impression of the royal seal as evidence of the king's sanction and authority. The text of the tablet, generally with the list of witnesses, was later on recopied by the engraver upon the stone, and the curses and symbols were added.[71]

A boundary-stone was sometimes employed to commemorate a confirmation of title, and, like many modern legal documents, it recited the previous history of the property during a long period extending over several reigns. But the majority of the stones recovered commemorate original grants of land made by the king to a relative, or to one of his adherents in return for some special service. Perhaps the finest of this class of charters is that in which Meli-Shipak makes a grant of certain property in Bît-Pir-Shadû-rabû, near the old city of Akkad or Agade and the Kassite town Dûr-Kurigalzu, to his son Merodach-baladan I., who afterwards succeeded him upon the throne.[72] After giving the size and situation of the estates, and the names of the high officials who had been entrusted with the duty of drawing up the survey, the text defines the privileges granted to Merodach-baladan along with the land. As some of these throw considerable light on the system of land tenure during the Kassite period, they may be briefly summarized.

KASSITE BOUNDARY STONES SET UP IN THE REIGNS OF MELI-SHIPAK AND NAZI-MARUTTASH.
After Délég. en Perse, Mém. I, pl. XVI et XIV

The king, in conferring the ownership of the land upon his son, freed it from all taxes and tithes, and forbade the displacement of its ditches, limits, and boundaries. He freed it also from the corvée, and enacted that none of the people of the estate were to be requisitioned among the gangs levied in its district for public works, for the prevention of flood, or for the repair of the royal canal, a section of which was maintained in working order by the neighbouring villages of Bît-Sikkamidu and Damiḳ-Adad. They were not liable to forced labour on the canal-sluices, nor for building dams, nor for digging out the canal-bed. No cultivator on the property, whether hired or belonging to the estate, was to be requisitioned by the local governor even under royal authority. No levy was to be made on wood, grass, straw, corn, or any sort of crop, on the carts and yokes, on asses or man-servants. No one was to use his son's irrigation-ditch, and no levy was to be made on his water-supply even during times of drought. No one was to mow his grass-land without his permission, and no beasts belonging to the king or governor, which might be assigned to the district, were to be driven over or pastured on the estate. And, finally, he was freed from all liability to build a road or a bridge for the public convenience, even though the king or the governor should give the order.