“Before Idin-Marduk, the officer, son of Idin-îli-šu; before Ina-lali-šu, son of Ibni-Marduk.
“Month Adar, day 25th, year Ammi-zaduga the king (made ?) a weapon (?) of gold.”
This contract is not quite clear without a little explanation. The grain advanced was, to all appearance, from the storehouse of the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara, and Iltani, as a sun-devotee, seems to have had it at her disposal for the benefit of the temple. In any case, the amount came from her, and was received by Šeritum, who seems to have been the reaper referred to. He promises to come to do the work in Adar, that very month, when the grain would have to be reaped, and the penalty for failing to fulfil his contract was apparently slavery. Evidently the work was urgent.
It is needless to say, that interesting as these texts are, they are very incomplete, and leave a great deal to the imagination, and still more altogether unrecorded. Nevertheless, they are very valuable as far as they go, and show us the royal family of Babylonia at the time working among the people as members of the community. Each one, however, evidently worked for his or her own interest, or for the interest of the religious community to which he or she belonged, and not for the people at large. It was only the king who worked for his people, and he did it, it is hardly going too far to say, because it was his interest to do so. Most people, however, acted for their own interest in those days, as now.
The People.
In all probability the Babylonians consisted of what may be called the original Semites of that tract, with the Akkadians, also aboriginal, with whom they lived and had already, at the time of the dynasty of Babylon, mingled to such an extent that they must have become a homogeneous people, notwithstanding the racial differences which were probably noticeable at certain points—for example, a more strongly-marked Semitic type at Sippar and in that neighbourhood, and a more strongly-marked Akkadian type in the State to which Lagaš belonged. Other invasions, however, seem to have taken place, the principal being that of the Amorites, to which allusion has already been made—an invasion which the tablets of this period indicate to have been sufficiently numerous, and which must have left its mark on the population, to all appearance increasing the Semitic preponderance, and emphasizing the type. The existence of an “Amorite tract” in the district of Sippar, and the fact that Sin-idinnam, Ḫammurabi's general, is designated by the characters GAL-MAR-TU, in Semitic Babylonian Rab-Amurrî, “chief of the Amorite(s),” are in themselves sufficient testimony to this invasion. It is noteworthy, too, that the dynasty to which Ḫammurabi belonged is apparently that described by Berosus as “Arabic,” in which case we should have to recognize yet another invasion of Semites; but there is just the probability, that “Arabic” and “Amorite” were interchangeable terms, the Amorites being regarded as a collection of wandering hordes of whom a portion entered the country, and took possession of the government. In any case, they shared the fate of all invaders of the kind referred to, for they were speedily conquered by the superior civilization of the conquered, and became so naturalized that notwithstanding their [pg 170] western names, they were called by the Babylonians “the dynasty of Babylon.” This Amorite element was to all appearance a sufficiently large one, as the more easily recognizable names show. Thus we have Amurrū-bani, Karasumia, Asalia, Kuyatum, Bizizana, Izi-idrê, Sumu-raḳ, Betani, Sar-ili (Israel), Awel-Addî (“man of Hadad,” described an Amorite,) with many others, though the different nationalities cannot always be distinguished, as many Amorites bore Babylonian names, and vice versâ.
Naturally other nationalities than the Babylonians, Akkadians, Šumerians, and Amorites were represented in the country—Elamites from the invasions of earlier centuries, Kassites and Sutites who came, in all probability, to trade, Qutites or Gutians brought into the country as slaves, or possibly living there as freemen—all these and others helped to increase the confusion of tongues which existed in the land from remote ages, and reminded people of the legend of the Tower of Babel, when “the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth.”[25]
Documents of an earlier date than those now under our notice indicate that Babylonian civilization goes back no less than three thousand years before the period of the dynasty of Babylon, and this, in consideration of the date calculated for the foundation of Niffer (another three thousand years earlier), must be regarded as a moderate estimate. Babylonian civilization was already, at the time now treated of, exceedingly [pg 171] ancient. The early village settlement of primitive houses, clustered around an equally primitively-constructed temple, had grown into a large city, with many fanes therein. The scattered outlying smaller villages around this primitive settlement had gradually been incorporated with it, and formed its suburbs, each retaining its ancient name. Villages of more recent foundation were scattered all over the land, and the whole country was instinct with national life, due to the increase of importance which the comparatively recent union of several small states in a single large and therefore powerful kingdom had brought into existence.
Thus we find Babylonia at the period of the dynasty of Babylon. It could even then look back into a past stretching back into a remote and dim antiquity. Its laws, manners, customs, and religion were already old, and were our knowledge of this interesting period complete, we should probably find that there was much that was excellent in their laws, and interesting and instructive in the administration of those laws, as well as in their manners and customs with regard to legal matters in general.