The civilization of Babylonia and Assyria

Its remains, language, history, religion, commerce, law, art, and literature

by Morris Jastrow | 1915 | 168,585 words

This work attempts to present a study of the unprecedented civilizations that flourished in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley many thousands of years ago. Spreading northward into present-day Turkey and Iran, the land known by the Greeks as Mesopotamia flourished until just before the Christian era....

We may now pass on to some illustrations of the manner in which existing laws were applied in the regulation of commercial transactions, which cover an exceedingly wide scope from actual sales of houses, land, orchards, goods, cattle and slaves to loans of money or chattels, rent of houses or fields, deposits, transfer of property, covering also legal transactions such as contracts of all kinds, including marriage deeds, division of estates, partnerships, hiring of laborers, commercial agencies and testaments. [1](we run 1 up from here.....)

Incidental to such transactions and contracts, we have numerous cases of lawsuits brought before a tribunal which, after an examination of the facts, renders its decision on the basis of the prevailing statutes.

In this way, a constant succession of new cases is brought before the judges, and each new decision carries with it some supplement to the recognized code. Law in Babylonia and Assyria is thus a progressive process, and as we pass from older to later periods, we can follow in detail the modifications in both legal procedure and practice incident to the growing complications -of commercial expansion and the various forms of social activity.

The many thousands of legal and business documents found in the course of excavations and that have been published up to the present time thus unfold a picture of the inner life of the communities in both the south and north, which complements the data to be derived from the annals and votive inscriptions of the rulers and from the official correspondence in the form of letters, orders and reports of all kinds.

A striking feature thus revealed for a very early period, the time of the Ur dynasty (c. 2450-2330 B.C.) and for several centuries before this age, is the great business activity displayed by the temple organizations in the larger centres. As an example we may instance the extensive temple archive discovered at Telloh, the site of the ancient centre Shirpurla or Lagash, [2] the most extensive of the kind that has as yet come to light.

The temples in this early period owned extensive lands which were either farmed out with stipulations of adequate returns of the yield, or were directly cultivated through a large body of officials connected with the temple organization. The temple accounts were most accurately maintained, records being kept of all transactions, of purchases or sales, of the income from temple property, of the wages assigned to the many workmen engaged, and the numerous other details involved in the management of temple property.

Receipts were given, and records made of offerings and gifts for the temple and of taxes or contributions that were levied. Such receipts of which there are hundreds upon hundreds give us lists of animals cattle, sheep, goats, asses, birds and fishes that were brought to the temple, as were all kinds of produce from the fields fruits, vegetables, grain, flour, oil, perfumes and the like.

The rulers in these early periods still exercised priestly functions, or at all events were so closely associated with the temples that the management of their affairs formed an integral part of the activities of temple officials. We find hundreds of accounts dealing with the royal exchequer, gifts and allowances apportioned to the members of the royal household, records of expenses incurred in connection with the royal estates, special lists of royal offerings to the gods, payments to palace officials and to the numerous body of workmen coming directly under the authority of the palace, and more the like.

The functionaries of the temple and palace include commercial agents, overseers of workmen, gardeners, grain measurers, shepherds, fishermen, butchers, superintendents of temple and palace granaries, storehouses and stables, beside various classes of priests, diviners, doorkeepers, guardians, scribes and judges, including at a very early period female votaries and active priestesses attached to temple service in various capacities.

Completing the picture of the extensive activities of temple and palace, we have hundreds of lists of produce of the field brought to the temple by the officials, wool from sheep, garments, oil, bread, salt, spices, silver, bronze, beverages, lists of workmen, of barges, inventories of slaves, salary accounts, memoranda of provisions for voyages of temple and palace officials, of food for the cattle and the flocks, and more the like.

What applies to Telloh holds good for the other large centres like Nippur which likewise yielded an extensive temple archive [3] as a result of extended excavations conducted on that site, and for later periods we have the thousands upon thousands of business and legal documents found at Abu Habba, which was the site of the ancient city of Sippar. Quite recently thousands of such documents have been found by marauding Arabs at Drehem, not far from Nippur, dating from the Ur dynasty, and there is no doubt that similar collections still lie beneath the soil at such sites as Eridu, Uruk, Ur, Umma, Kish and other places in the south that rose to importance in the Euphrates Valley. [4]

The temples were, however, not merely the most extensive business establishments of the country; they were also the centres of justice to which all classes of the population repaired. In the temples sat the tribunals, composed in the earlier periods of priests who heard complaints and rendered decisions.

Within the temple precincts were the offices of the notaries where contracts were drawn up and duly registered in the presence of witnesses. The temples in both the larger and smaller centres included record rooms in .which copies of agreements, settlements of estates, and judicial decisions were stored. At every turn, we thus find the temples entering closely into the life of the people. C

ommercial methods take their cue from the activities of the temple organizations; private business is largely an offshoot of the extensive operations carried on by the temple and palace officials. Correspondingly, legal formulae, legal procedure, and legal decisions, in so far as they deal with business and commercial aspects of life in Babylonia and Assyria, reflect the points of view acquired in the course of the business and commercial activities of the temples.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

See the admirably arranged bibliography for this section of Babylonian-Assyrian literature in Johns, The Relations Between the Laws of Babylonia and the Laws of the Hebrew Peoples (London, 1914), pp. 76-89.
 

[2]:

For a list of the chief publications of tablets from Telloh, see Myhrman, Sumerian Administrative Documents dated in the reigns of the Kings of the Second Dynasty of Ur, pp. 13-15.

[3]:

Above, p. 46. Many temple documents from the older and later Babylonian periods are included in the series of publications of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania by Myhrman (Ur dynasty), Poebel and Eanke (1st Babylonian Dynasty) and Clay (Cassite and later periods) . See above p. 50, note 66.

[4]:

From Uruk and Umma have come several thousand tablets, dug up there by Arabs and sold through dealers.

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