But contracts were not the only kind of inscription protected by a clay envelope or “case”; letters and despatches sometimes shared the same consideration. Like contracts, letters were inscribed on small oblong tablets, such as might be easily transmitted through the Babylonian and Assyrian post, that is to say carried by the messenger whose duty it was to convey the letter to its destination. As might be expected, the envelope in this case bore the name of the person to whom the letter was addressed, and occasionally also that of the sender, just as the envelopes of letters are sometimes initialled to-day. Many of these letters are of a royal character, and emanate from kings and princes. Quite a number of letters and despatches from the early kings of Babylon to their officials and governors have come down to us. They treat of divers subjects: in one Khammurabi writes to Sin-Idinnam commanding him to send forty-seven shepherds to Babylon in order that they may give an account to the king of the flocks under their care (Brit. Mus. No. 23122). In another letter the king writes to the same prince with instructions to arrest three officials and despatch them to Babylon, while in yet another Khammurabi writes to Sin-Idinnam with orders to restore a certain baker to his former position. Some of Sin-Idinnam’s official correspondence has also been preserved. In one communication he directs a legal officer to summon a certain man to appear in court (Brit. Mus. No. 12868). Sin-Idinnam’s duties were clearly very varied and must have been sufficiently arduous. In one of these despatches Khammurabi orders Sin-Idinnam to cut down some “Abba” trees required by smelters of metal (Brit. Mus. No. 26234). In another he commands the same personage to see to the mustering of crews for transport-barges (Brit. Mus. No. 27288). Others contain instructions to attend to the repair of the banks of the Euphrates at various points. But his duties were not exclusively civil; judicial affairs fell to his charge also; thus it is that to him the king writes regarding a dispute between a landlord and his tenant concerning the payment of rent for land, while he is perpetually receiving orders to arrest delinquent officials and other misconducted persons. In one letter (Brit. Mus. No. 12827) Khammurabi directs Sin-Idinnam to postpone the date of a certain trial, owing to the presence of the plaintiff, one Ili-Ippalzam, in the city of Ur at a certain festival.
Elsewhere (Brit. Mus. No. 12841) Khammurabi issues a report to the same overburdened official to the effect that certain persons have cancelled a deed of mortgage, and commands the instant presence of Enubi-Marduk, who received their lands on mortgage, in Babylon. Many of the letters of these early kings of Babylon embody the royal wishes regarding the date of sheep-shearing, or the reaping of corn, as well as instructions concerning the irrigation canals.
In one letter, Samsu-iluna (Brit. Mus. No. 27269) instructs Sin-Idinnam and the judges of Sippar to prohibit certain fishermen from fishing in forbidden waters; at other times the same judges are directed to send a particular case for trial in the capital (cf. Brit. Mus. No. 27266). Another collection of letters written in cuneiform and on clay tablets are the famous Tell el-Amarna Letters,—generally of somewhat larger size and less distinctly oblong than the ordinary Babylonian despatches. The majority of them are rectangular, though a few are oval. Some are convex on both sides, some are flat on both sides, while others are plano-convex or pillow-shaped. These tablets were discovered at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt; they represent nearly all that remains of the official and diplomatic correspondence which passed between the Pharaohs Amenhetep III and Amenhetep IV of the Eighteenth Dynasty (i.e. they belong to the fourteenth or fifteenth century B.C.), and their various officials and vassals in Palestine. Some of the tablets found at Tell el-Amarna are inscribed with letters from the King of Babylon, from the King of Mitani, from the King of Alashiya, and other royal potentates, but as they are mostly of Palestinian and Egyptian interest, a detailed consideration of them would be out of place in this volume.
Among the larger rectangular clay tablets in existence are those containing syllabaries. Owing to the deterioration and simplification which the cuneiform characters underwent in the course of ages, the Assyrian scribes found it necessary to make lists of the early Babylonian characters adding what they believed to be the later Assyrian equivalents. Most of these syllabaries consist of three columns; in the middle column the Assyrian sign to be explained is given, on the left the Sumerian value of the same, and in the right-hand column either the Assyrian name for the sign, or else the Assyrian meaning, and occasionally both. These syllabaries are obviously of immense importance in the reconstruction of the old Sumerian language.
Other tablets of abnormally large size are those dealing with astrology, magic and medicine: the two latter subjects are inextricably confused owing to the fact that they went hand in hand with each other; the medicine was prescribed and administered, but the medicine alone was by no means sufficient to cure the patient, that could only be effected by the potent spell of the magician.
But the largest clay tablets emanate from Babylonia and contain lists of accounts mostly concerning grain, cattle, asses, lambs, sheep. Some of these tablets are perfectly square, and measure as much as a foot each way, while nearly all of them are more square than oblong: the clay of which they are made is of fine quality, and the Babylonian characters with which they are inscribed are singularly clear. Most of them may be assigned to the second half of the third millennium B.C., and many of them are specifically dated in the reign of Dungi, king of Ur about 2400 B.C. But as already mentioned, tablets were not always rectangular; sometimes they assumed a circular form. Tablets of this kind are usually inscribed in the Sumerian language, and contain lists of landed estates and fields, with information regarding their size, their capacity for producing crops and other details. Many of these circular tablets are dated, the year deriving its name after some noteworthy event, as was the regular mode of dating in the early days of Babylonian civilization. Thus many of these lists are dated “in the year after that in which the land of Khukhnuri was laid waste,” and were drawn up in the reign of Bur-Sin and other kings of Ur, i.e. during the second half of the third millennium B.C.
The clay of which these tablets are made is of the finest, while the writing is exceedingly clear; they vary from about two to six inches in diameter, and are oval on one side and more or less flat on the other.
Other large rectangular tablets are inscribed with lists of the principal events in different kings’ reigns and are obviously of immense importance for the reconstruction of Babylonian and Assyrian history. One of the tablets belonging to this class (Brit. Mus. No. 92702) gives us a list of the chief events, after which the various years of Sumu-abu, Sumu-la-ilu, Zabum, Apil-Sin, Sin-muballit, Khammurabi and Samsu-iluna, kings of the first dynasty of Babylon (about the end of the third and beginning of the second millennium B.C.) were named. Another of the same class (Brit. Mus. No. 92502) gives us a list of the leading events which took place in Babylonia and Assyria from the third year of Nabonassar, king of Babylon 744 B.C., and the first year of Shamash-shum-ukîn, the contemporary of Ashur-bani-pal (668 B.C.). One of the most interesting events here alluded to is the assassination of Sennacherib by his son on the 20th day of the month Tebet, and in the 23rd year of his reign. Among other historical documents of primary importance, a tablet generally known as “the Synchronous History” must be placed in the first rank. This document is an agreement drawn up about the time of Ashur-bani-pal, and it had as its object the settlement of boundary-disputes between Babylonia and Assyria, while its historical value lies largely in the short notices of the various conflicts and alliances between the two countries from about 1600-800 B.C. One other large rectangular tablet (K. 3751) of exceptional interest alike to the historian and the Biblical student, is the document in which Tiglath-Pileser III, king of Assyria 745-727 B.C., gives us an account of his building operations and conquests, and mentions “Ahaz, King of Judah” as one of his tributary princes. This tablet must have been very large when complete, for what remains of it measures nine inches by seven and a half. The largest tablet in the Kouyunjik collection is not however historical in character, but contains a list of the names and titles of various gods, and in its present fragmentary state measures fifteen inches in length.
Other cuneiform inscriptions were written on pieces of clay shaped like cones. Most of these terra-cotta cones date from the time of the dynasty of Ur, i.e. the latter half of the third millennium B.C. Two good examples of this kind of cuneiform inscription bear the name of Sin-gashid, king of Erech, and record the dedication of a temple to the god Lugal-banda and the goddess Ninsun, and give the price of wool, grain, oil and copper during the reign of Sin-gashid (Brit. Mus. 91, 150). Another baked clay cone is inscribed with the name of Sin-idinnam, king of Larsa about 2300 B.C., and likewise records the dedication of a temple—in this case that of the Sun-god, Larsa being one of the principal centres of the worship of the Sun-god. But the conquering Elamites, who imitated their subjugated enemies, the Babylonians, in so many ways, also adopted the practice of writing cuneiform inscriptions on clay cones; for an example of an Elamite cone we may compare Brit. Mus. 91, 149, which bears the name of Kudur-Mabug. But the habit of writing inscriptions on clay cones did not cease at this period, at least not permanently, for a similar cone exists bearing the name of the Neo-Babylonian king Nabopolassar (625-604 B.C.), and like the older cones recording the dedication of a temple, this time the temple of Marduk at Babylon. (Brit. Mus. No. 91,090.)
But Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions on clay were not always in the form of rectangular or circular tablets; frequently they assumed the form of large hexagonal, octagonal, or decagonal prisms, or in the case of Babylonia of barrel-shaped cylinders. It was customary to place these large clay memorials in the four corners of the foundation of a building in Babylonia and Assyria, a good example of which practice was found at Muḳeyyer (Ur): the cylinders from Ur had been deposited at the four angles of the foundation of the temple of Sin, the Moon-god, by Nabonidus, and they record the rebuilding of the temple by Nabonidus (555-538 B.C.) on the site of the ancient temple erected by Ur-Engur and his son Dungi, about 2400 B.C. The text finds a fitting conclusion in a prayer to the god whose fane he is restoring, on behalf of his eldest son Bal-shar-uṣur, the Biblical Belshazzar. Three octagonal prisms of baked clay give us an account of the campaigns and building operations of Tiglath-Pileser I, king of Assyria about 1100 B.C. (Brit. Mus. 91033-91035). Another prism is inscribed with an account of the expeditions of Sargon, king of Assyria 721-705 B.C. (Brit. Mus. No. 22505), while the fragments of an octagonal prism of the same king, and also preserved in the British Museum, (K. 1668, etc.) are of peculiar interest in that they give Sargon’s own account of his campaign against the Philistine city of Ashdod, which is referred to in Isaiah XX. I. Judah is mentioned as one of the allies of Ashdod, but the Assyrians were ultimately successful in reducing the rebellious city. Sargon’s successor, Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.), similarly caused his military achievements to be recorded on large clay prisms, and the most interesting document of his reign is preserved on the six sides of a hexagonal prism now in the British Museum (91032). It records the defeat of Merodach-Baladan, king of Babylon, and the subjugation of various other peoples, but the particular interest attaching to this cylinder lies in the allusions to the Palestinian campaign of 2 Kings xviii. Sennacherib states that he severely punished the rebellious people of Ekron and restored the banished Padî to his throne; he then proceeded to attack Hezekiah in Jerusalem “his royal city”; he laid siege to Jerusalem, and shut Hezekiah up like a bird in a cage, but in spite of this demonstration, he was clearly unable to open the cage and seize the bird. However, Hezekiah seems to have been duly impressed, and he hastened to buy off Sennacherib with gifts and tribute—“thirty talents of gold, eight hundred talents of silver, precious stones, eye paint ... ivory couches and thrones, hides and tusks, precious woods and divers objects,” together with his daughters, his women-folk and male and female musicians—apparently being the price.