The narrative of Heeren will be supplemented, however, by accounts of the manners and customs of the people in question based upon a more recent study of the monuments, both pictorial and documentary. We have already noted that the sculptures rather than the written documents furnish us a view of the everyday life of the people. Certain matters, however, such as those pertaining to legal transactions, could not possibly be known to us except through the medium of inscriptions.[a]
THE COMMERCE OF THE BABYLONIANS
As the European steps into a new world as soon as he has crossed the Alps, says Heeren, so is the contrast equally striking to the Asiatic traveller upon descending from the mountainous country of Persia and Media, or Irak Ajemi, into the plain of ancient Babylon and modern Baghdad, the capital of Irak Arabi. The connection, frequently so mysterious and inexplicable, which exists between climates and countries, and even between climates and inhabitants, is here most remarkably exemplified. The manners of the people, their habitations, their dress, are all different. While in Persia and Media the garments, though long, were closely fitted to the person, they are here, on the contrary, loose and flowing. The black sheepskin cap which covered the head gives way to the lofty and proud folds of the turban, and the girdle, with its single knife, is replaced with the costly shawl and rich poniard. “On my entrance into the city of the Caliphs,” says a modern traveller (Porter, ii, 243, et seq.), “I found the streets crowded with men in every variety of dress, and of every shade of complexion. Instead of the low dwellings peculiar to Persia, the houses were several stories high, with lattice windows closely shut. The great Bazaar was full of people, and I saw on all sides innumerable shops and coffee-houses. The sound of voices and the rustling of silks reminded one of the buzzing of a swarm of bees. For even now, though but the shadow of its former splendour, Baghdad is still the grand caravanserai of Asia.” But what a change has taken place in manners and modes of life! The rigid etiquette of the Persian court has disappeared; the tone of society, the relation of the sexes, is under less constraint, and everything betokens pleasure and voluptuousness. Though in the hot season the glowing sky forces the inhabitants during the day into their underground vaults, yet they enjoy the balmy coolness of night in the open air on their house tops. The delightful temperature of the winter months, from the middle of November to that of February, compensates for the inconveniences of summer, though at the same time it offers irresistible incentives to all manner of sensual enjoyments.
It must surely have been the same in former times. Can it be supposed that those who came down the Euphrates from the royal cities of Persia and Media to the great city of traffic had not the same spectacle before their eyes? But what is modern Baghdad compared with the ancient capital of the East? What crowds must have once thronged the streets and squares of that city when the caravans of the East and West, with the crews of ships trading to the south, were there collected together; when the Chaldean and Persian sovereigns, with their numberless attendants, made it their residence; when it was the emporium of the world, and the great centre of attraction to all nations! How bustling and animated must not these desolate places have been formerly, where all now is still, save the call of the Bedouin or the roaring of the lion!
The accounts of ancient Babylon given by Jewish and Grecian writers set before us a picture of wealth, magnificence, and pomp, though at the same time a less pleasing representation of luxury and licentiousness. Their banquets were carried to a disgusting excess, and the pleasures of the table degenerated into debauchery; nay, at the very time when the victorious Persians rushed into the city, the princes of Babylon were engaged in festivities; and Belshazzar was given up to intoxication in company with thousands of his lords when the hand which wrote on the wall of the royal banqueting house, and predicted his approaching fate, aroused him to the dreadful reality of his condition. But this total degeneracy of manners was above all conspicuous in the other sex, amongst whom were no traces of that reserve which usually prevails in an eastern harem. The prophet, therefore, when he denounces the fall of Babylon, describes it under the image of a luxurious and lascivious woman, who is cast headlong into slavery from the seat where she sits so effeminately. Moreover, at these orgies the women appeared, where they proceeded so far as to lay aside their garments, and with them every feeling of shame; nay, there was even a religious enactment, as we are informed by Herodotus, according to which every woman was obliged to prostitute herself to strangers in the temple of Mylitta once in her life, and was not allowed to reject any person who presented himself.
The principal cause of this profligacy of manners was the riches and luxury consequent upon extended commerce, which Babylon owed to its geographical position. Climate and religion effected the rest.
I have already had occasion to notice this advantageous situation of Babylonia, in which respect it was probably superior to every other country in Asia. While this afforded admirable facilities for traffic by land, it was equally convenient for maritime and river navigation. The two large rivers which flowed on each side of it seemed the natural channels of commercial intercourse with the interior of Asia, and the Persian Gulf by no means presented the same difficulties and dangers to the navigator as that of Arabia.
If we add to this the accounts which ancient authors have given us of the industry, manners, and civil institutions of Babylon, it will be evident that it owed its splendour and wealth to the same causes which in latter times have been the occasion of an extensive commerce to the cities of Baghdad and Bassorah. They unanimously describe the Babylonians as a people fond of magnificence, and accustomed to a multitude of artificial wants, which they could not have supplied except by commercial relations with many countries, some of them very remote. In their private life, especially in their dress, costliness appears to have been more their object than either convenience or utility. Their public festivals and sacrifices were attended with immense expense, particularly in precious perfumes, with which they could not have been provided but from foreign countries. The raw materials, too, required for their celebrated manufactures—flax, cotton, and wool, and perhaps silk—were either not the produce of their soil, or certainly not in sufficient quantities for their consumption. Lastly, many of their civil institutions were of such a nature as only to be calculated for a city into which there was a continual influx of strangers. On this principle alone can be explained, not only their custom of exposing sick persons in the market-place, that they might meet with some one competent to prescribe for them, but also, and more particularly, the above-mentioned law, which obliged their women to prostitute themselves in the temple of Mylitta, and the public auction of marriageable virgins. It has been already observed that the relations of the sexes are formed in a peculiar manner in large commercial cities, and this will serve to explain many remarkable institutions of several nations in Asia.
However certain may be the evidence drawn from these principles, and the accounts of antiquity in general, viz., that Babylon was the great centre where all nations assembled, and whence they departed to their several destinations, yet it is difficult to enter in detail on the commerce of the Babylonians, and to settle with any degree of accuracy its nature and its course. The obscure traces of it which yet remain must be laboriously sought for in the works of Greek and Hebrew writers alone; the labour, however, will not be without its recompense, and the general result of this investigation will be a picture, which, though not complete in its subordinate details, will yet present a generally faithful outline.
As a preliminary step, however, let us take a glance at the products of Babylonian skill and industry, amongst which weaving of various kinds deserves our first notice. The peculiar dress of the Babylonians consisted partly of woollen, and partly of linen, or probably cotton stuffs. “They wear,” says Herodotus, “a gown of linen (or cotton) flowing down to the feet, over this, an upper woollen garment, and a white (woollen) tunic covering the whole.” This garb, which must have been too much for so warm a climate, seems to have been assumed rather for ostentation, than to meet their actual wants, and probably some alteration was made in it as the weather became warmer. Their woven stuffs, however, were not confined to domestic use, but were exported into foreign countries. Carpets, one of the principal objects of luxury in the East, the floors of the rich being generally covered with them, were nowhere so finely woven, and in such splendid colours, as at Babylon. Particular representations were seen on them, of those wonderful Indian animals, the griffin and others, with which we have become acquainted by the ruins of Persepolis, whence the knowledge of them was brought to the West. Foreign nations made use of these carpets in the decoration of their harems and royal saloons; indeed, this species of luxury appears nowhere to have been carried farther than among the Persians. With them, not only the floors, but even beds and sofas in the houses of the nobles were covered with two or three of these carpets; nay, the oldest of their sacred edifices, the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargada, was ornamented with a purple one of Babylonian workmanship.