The most remarkable remains in the ruins of Ur and Erech are the tombs. At Ur, outside the wall already mentioned, there is a broad band of sepulchres encircling the ruins of the wall. The tombs are chambers of seven feet in length, three to four feet in breadth, and five feet in height. The roofs are formed by tiles projecting in successive layers over the walls, and thus gradually approaching each other. The floors are also covered with tiles. On the tiles lay a mat of reeds, and on this the corpse was placed, generally turned to the left side, with the head on a brick; the right arm, laid towards the left over the breast, rests the fingers on the edge of a copper saucer. Clay vessels for food and drink are found on the walls. In the ruins of Erech the whole space between the three prominent heaps of ruins and the external walls is filled with tombs, bones, and relics of the dead. The coffins here are receptacles partly oval, made of burnt clay in a single piece, about seven feet long, two and a half broad, and two to three feet high, contracting towards the top; and partly narrow funnel-shaped vessels of clay rounded off at both ends and united in the middle, in which the body was closely fitted. The position of the skeletons and objects round them are the same in the oval coffins as in the brick vaults. As a rule these coffins are not found under the surface, but in raised brick buildings. They lie thickly together, and often in several rows, one upon the other. Relics of weapons, necklaces, and bracelets, gold and silver rings for the fingers and toes, and other ornaments, are found in these sepulchres.[420]
The industry of the Babylonians quickly attained great skill and wide development. They were famous for their weaving in wool and linen. The nations of the West agree in acknowledging the excellence of the cloths and coloured stuffs of Babylonia. Their pottery was excellent and the manufacture active; the preparation of glass was not unknown; the ointments prepared in Babylon were famous and much sought after, and the stones cut there were highly valued. The products of Babylonian skill and industry were first brought to their kinsmen in Syria, who could offer oil and wine in exchange. In the Hebrew scriptures we find Babylonian cloaks in use in Syria before the immigration of the Hebrews into Canaan.[421] How active the commerce between Babylonia and Syria was even before that date is proved by the circumstance that the tribute which in the sixteenth century B.C. was received by Tuthmosis III. from Syria is put down on the inscriptions at Karnak ([p. 135]) in part in weight by the mina, and in part, when reduced from the Egyptian to the Babylonian weight, gives round sums corresponding to the Babylonian weight, from which the conclusion can be drawn that the imperial Babylonian weight and the Babylonian money weight were already in use in Syria about this time. That the trade mina of the Syrians was the sixtieth part of the heavy (weight) talent of the Babylonians is ascertained; but the heavy and light gold talent, as well as the silver talent of 67⅓ pounds, must, according to these deductions, have been known to the Syrians about this date.[422] Afterwards the Hebrews put their gold shekel, on the basis of the heavy gold talent of Babylon, at the fiftieth part of the mina of this talent. Besides the silver talent of Babylonia, there was also a heavy silver talent of about ninety pounds (44,760 kil.) in use in Syria. This came into existence because in Syria fifteen, and not ten, silver pieces (fiftieths of the mina) were equal to the fiftieth of the heavy gold mina (1⅗ pounds), ([p. 285]).[423] Along with their weights the Syrians also adopted the cubic measures of the Babylonians.
The rough material required by Babylonian industry was supplied in the first place by the Arabs, who exchanged their animals, skins, and wool for corn and weapons. Wine, and more especially wood, of which there was none in Babylonia, were brought by the Armenians from their valleys in the north down the Euphrates to Babylon.[424] Before 1500 B.C. the commerce of the Arabs brought the products of South Arabia, the spices of Yemen, and even the products and manufactures of India, especially their silks, which reached the coasts of Southern Arabia (see below), to Babylon. The Babylonians required the perfumes of Arabia and India to prepare their ointments. In order to prepare the best or royal ointment, twenty-five of the most precious perfumes were mixed together.[425] When the cities of Phenicia became great centres of trade which carried the wares of Babylonia by sea to the West in order to obtain copper in exchange, the trade between Babylonia and Syria must have become more lively still. It was the ships of the Phenicians which brought the cubic measure, and the weights, and the cubit of Babylonia to the shores of Greece, and caused them to be adopted there. In the ninth or eighth century B.C. the Greeks completely dropped their old measures of length and superficies, and fixed their stadium at 360 Babylonian cubits, their plethrum at the length and the square of sixty Babylonian cubits, and regulated the Greek foot by the Babylonian at a measure from 308 to 315 millimeters, and made their cubit equal to one and a half of these feet.[426] The light Babylonian talent became known in Greece under the name of the Eubœic talent, while the Greek city Phocæa, on the shores of Asia Minor, struck the oldest Greek coin, the Phocæan stater, at the value of a fiftieth of the heavy gold mina of Babylon (1⅗ pounds). Chios, Clazomenæ, and Lampsacus followed the heavy Syrian silver talent in their coinage; and lastly, Crœsus made his gold stater equal to the fiftieth part of the mina of the light Babylonian gold talent (50½ pounds), and his silver stater equal to the fiftieth part of the mina of the Babylonian silver talent of 67⅓ pounds.[427]
FOOTNOTES:
[401] H. Rawlinson, "Journ. Asiat. Soc." 1861, 18, 2 ff.
[402] The assumption that the Birs Nimrud is the temple Beth-Sida at Borsippa is contradicted by the inscriptions. The measurements of the temple give no support for such a theory, even if the forty-two cubits of the cylinders of Rawlinson are interpreted with Norris, "Dict." p. 280, by Amatgagar; for we do not know the value of this measure exactly. I cannot regard Borsippa as a part of Babylon in the teeth of the direct testimony of Strabo (p. 728), Justin (12, 13), and Ptolemy (5, 20). The inscriptions of the Assyrians, and, not least, those of Nebuchadnezzar himself, always mention Borsippa beside Babylon. If it be maintained that in spite of this Nebuchadnezzar might have included Borsippa in the walls of Babylon, the theory is contradicted by Berosus (Joseph, "c. Apion." 1, 20), according to whom Cyrus besieges and takes Babylon while Nabonetus is blocked up in Borsippa, and by Nebuchadnezzar himself, who, after speaking of the great walls of Babylon, adds:—"I also laid the foundations of the walls of Borsippa, the Tabi-subur-su" (Ménant, "Babylone," p. 205).
[403] Herod. 1, 181-183.
[404] Diod. 2, 9.
[405] Strabo, p. 738.
[406] "Antiq." 1, 4.