Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs - Archibald Henry Sayce (thriller books to read txt) 📗

evidence, and the thoroughness with which each case was investigated, is one of the most striking features in the records of the Babylonian lawsuits which have come down to us. Mention has already been made of the case of the runaway slave Barachiel, who pretended to be a free citizen and the adopted son of a Babylonian gentleman. Every effort seems to have been made to get at the truth, and some of the higher officials were associated with the judges before whom the matter was brought. Eventually cross-examination compelled Barachiel to confess the actual facts. It is noticeable that no torture was used to compel confession, even though the defendant was not a free citizen. No allusion, in fact, is ever made to torture, whether by the bastinado or otherwise; the evidence of witnesses and the results of cross-examination are alone depended upon for arriving at the truth. In this respect the legal procedure of Babylonia offers an honorable contrast to that of ancient Greece or Rome, or even of Europe down to the middle of the last century.

Two cases which were pleaded before the courts in the reign of Nabonidos illustrate the carefulness with which the evidence was examined. One of them was a case of false witness. Beli-litu, the daughter of Bel-yusezib, the wine merchant (?), "gave the following testimony before the judges of Nabonidos, king of Babylon: In the month Ab, the first year of Nergal-sharezer, king of Babylon, I sold my slave Bazuzu for thirty-five shekels of silver to Nebo-akhi-iddin, the son of Sula of the family of Egibi, but he now asserts that I owed him a debt and so has not paid me the money. The judges heard the charge, and caused Nebo-akhi-iddin to be summoned and to appear before them. Nebo-akhi-iddin produced the contract which he had made with Beli-litu; he proved that she had received the money, and convinced the judges. And Ziriya, Nebo-suma-lisir, and Edillu gave further testimony before the judges that Beli-litu, their mother, had received the silver." The judges deliberated and condemned Beli-litu to a fine of 55 shekels, the highest fine that could be inflicted on her, and then gave it to Nebo-akhi-iddin. It is possible that the prejudice which has always existed against the money-lender may have encouraged Beli-litu to commit her act of dishonesty and perjury. That the judges should have handed over the fine to the defendant, instead of paying it to the court or putting it into their own pockets, is somewhat remarkable in the history of law.

The second case is that of some Syrians who had settled in Babylonia and there been naturalized. The official abstract of it is as follows: "Bunanitum, the daughter of the Kharisian, brought the following complaint before the judges of Nabonidos, king of Babylon: Ben-Hadad-nathan, the son of Nikbaduh, married me and received three and one-half manehs of silver as my dowry, and I bore him a daughter. I and Ben-Hadad-nathan, my husband, traded with the money of my dowry, and we bought together a house standing on eight roods of ground, in the district on the west side of the Euphrates in the suburb of Borsippa, for nine and one-third manehs of silver, as well as an additional two and one-half manehs, which we received on loan without interest from Iddin-Merodach, the son of Iqisa-ablu, the son of Nur-Sin, and we invested it all in this house. In the fourth year of Nabonidos, king of Babylon, I claimed my dowry from my husband Ben-Hadad-nathan, and he of his own free will gave me, under deed and seal, the house in Borsippa and the eight roods on which it stood, and assigned it to me for ever, stating in the deed he gave me that the two and one-half manehs which Ben-Hadad-nathan and Bunanitum had received from Iddin-Merodach and laid out in buying this house had been their joint property. This deed he sealed and called down in it the curse of the great gods (upon whoever should violate it). In the fifth year of Nabonidos, king of Babylon, I and my husband, Ben-Hadad-nathan, adopted Ben-Hadad-amara as our son and subscribed to the deed of adoption, and at the same time we assigned two manehs ten shekels of silver and the furniture of the house as a dowry for my daughter Nubtâ. My husband died, and now Aqabi-ilu (Jacob-el), the son of my father-in-law, has raised a claim to the house and property which was willed and assigned to me, as well as (a claim) to Nebo-nur-ilani, whom we bought for money through the agency of Nebo-akhi-iddin.

"I have brought him before you; pass judgment. The judges heard their pleas; they read the deeds and contracts which Bunanitum produced in court, and disallowed the claim of Aqabi-ilu to the house in Borsippa, which had been assigned to Bunanitum in lieu of her dowry, as well as to Nebo-nur-ilani, whom she and her husband had bought, and to the rest of the property of Ben-Hadad-nathan; they confirmed Bunanitum and Ben-Hadad-amara in their titles. (It was further added that) Iddin-Merodach should receive in full the sum of two and one-half manehs which he had given toward the purchase of the house, and that then Bunanitum should take in full three and one-half manehs, the amount of her dowry, and that part of the property (which had not been bequeathed to Nubtâ). Nebo-nur-ilani was to be given to Nubtâ in accordance with the will of her father. The following judges were present at the delivery of this judgment: Nergal-banunu the judge, the son of the architect; Nebo-akhi-iddin the judge, the son of Egibi; Nebo-sum-ukin the judge, the son of Irani; Bel-akhi-iddin the judge, the son of - - ; Nebo-balasu-iqbi the judge, the son of - - ; and the clerks Nadin and Nebo-sum-iskun. Babylon, the 29th day of Elul, the ninth year of Nabonidos, king of Babylon."

The term used in reference to the loan made by Iddin-Merodach implies that the lender accepted a share in the property that was bought instead of demanding interest for his money. Hence it was that, when the estate came to be settled after the death of Ben-Hadad-nathan, it was necessary to pay him off. What the grounds were upon which Aqabi-ilu laid claim to the property we are not told, and the dossier in which it was set forth has not been found. His name, however, is interesting, as it proves that the old Western Semitic name of Jacob-el, of which the Biblical Jacob is a shortened form, still survived in a slightly changed shape among the Syrian settlers in Babylonia. Indeed, Iqubu, or Jacob itself, is found in a contract of the tenth year of Nabonidos as the name of a coppersmith at Babylon. Two thousand years before there had been other Semitic settlers in Babylonia from Western Asia who had also taken part in the legal transactions of the country, and among whom the name of Ya'qub-ilu was known. The name had even spread to the Assyrian colonists near Kaisarîyeh, in Cappadocia, who have left us inscriptions in uniform characters, and among them it appears as Iqib-ilu. Iqib-ilu and Aqabi-ilu are alike kindred forms of Ya'qub-ilu (or Yaqub-ilu), the Jacob-el of Canaan.

Death, more especially with "an iron sword," was the punishment of the more serious offences; imprisonment and scourging of lighter ones. Imprisonment might be accompanied by chains or the stock, but the prisoner might also be left unfettered and be allowed to range freely through the court or cell of the prison. Whether the penalty of imprisonment with hard labor was ever inflicted is questionable; in a country where slavery existed and the corvée was in force there would have been but little need for it.

The prisoner could be released on bail, his surety being responsible for his appearance when it was required. Thus in the seventh year of Cyrus one of the officials of the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara was put into "iron fetters" by the chief priest of the god, but was afterward released, bail being given for him by another official of the temple. The latter undertook to do the work of the prisoner if he absconded. The bail was offered and accepted before "the priests and elders of the city," and the registration of the fact was duly dated and attested by witnesses. At a later date a citizen of Nippur was allowed to become surety for the release of his nephew from prison on condition that the latter did not leave the city without permission. The prison is called bit-karê , or "House of Walls."(9)

There was another bit-karê , which had a very different meaning and was used for a very different purpose. This was "the House of Cereals," the storehouse or barn in which were stored such tithes of the temples as were paid in grain. The name is also sometimes applied to the sutumme , or royal storehouses, where the grain and dates collected by the tax-gatherers were deposited, and from which the army and the civil servants were provided with food. The superintendent of these storehouses was an important personage; he was the paymaster of the state officials, in so far as they received their salaries in kind, and the loyalty of the standing army could be trusted only so long as it could be fed. Similar storehouses existed in Egypt, from the age of the eighteenth dynasty downward, and it is probable that the adoption of them was due to Babylonian influence. They gave the King a powerful hold upon his subjects, by enabling him to supply them with grain in the years of scarcity, or to withhold it except upon such terms as he chose to make with them.

The exportation of the grain, moreover, was a yearly source of wealth and revenue which flowed into the royal exchequer. In Babylonia, as in Egypt, the controller of the granaries was master of the destinies of the people.


CHAPTER X. LETTER-WRITING


We are apt to look upon letter-writing as a modern invention, some of us, perhaps, as a modern plague. But as a matter of fact it is an invention almost as old as civilization itself. As soon as man began to invent characters by means of which he could communicate his thoughts to others, he began to use them for holding intercourse with his absent friends. They took the place of the oral message, which was neither so confidential nor so safe. Classical scholars have long been familiar with the fact that letter-writing was one of the accomplishments of an educated Greek and Roman. The letters of Cicero and Pliny are famous, and the letters of Plato and Aristotle have been studied by a select few. Even Homer, who seems to avoid all reference to the art of writing as if it were an unclean thing, tells us of "the baleful characters" written on folded tablets, and sent by Proetos to the King of Lycia. Criticism, it is true, not so long ago doubted the facts of the story and tried to resolve the characters and the tablets into a child's drawings on the slate. But archæology has come to the rescue of Proetos, and while we now know that letters passed freely backward and forward in the world in which he is supposed to have moved, Mr. Arthur Evans has discovered the very symbols which he is likely to have used. Even the Lycians, to whom the letter was sent, have been found, not only on the Egyptian monuments, but also in the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna.

Letter-writing in the East goes back to a remote antiquity. In the book of Chronicles it is stated that the messages that passed between Hiram and Solomon were in writing, but