Chapter III: Chaldaean Civilization (1)

_Royalty--The constitution of the family and its property--Chaldaean commerce and industry_.

The Chaldaean kings, unlike their contemporaries the Pharaohs, rarely put forward any pretensions to divinity. They contented themselves with occupying an intermediate position between their subjects and the gods, and for the purpose of mediation they believed themselves to be endowed with powers not possessed by ordinary mortals. They sometimes designated themselves the sons of Ea, or of Ninsun, or some other deity, but this involved no belief in a divine parentage, and was merely pious hyperbole: they entertained no illusions with regard to any descent from a god or even from one of his doubles, but they desired to be recognized as his vicegerents here below, as his prophets, his well-beloved, his pastors, elected by him to rule his human flocks, or as priests devotedly attached to his service. While, however, the ordinary priest chose for himself a single master to whom he devoted himself, the priest-king exercised universal sacerdotal functions and claimed to be pontiff of all the national religions. His choice naturally was directed by preference to the patrons of his city, those who had raised his ancestors from the dust, and had exalted him to the supreme rank, but there were other divinities who claimed their share of his homage and expected of him a devotion suited to their importance. If he had attempted to carry out these duties personally in detail, he would have had to spend his whole life at the foot of the altar; even when he had delegated as many of them as he could to the regular clergy, there still remained sufficient to occupy a large part of his time. Every month, every day, brought its inevitable round of sacrifices, prayers, and processions. On the 1st of the second Elul, the King of Babylon had to present a gazelle without blemish to Sin; he then made an offering of his own choosing to Shamash, and cut the throats of his victims before the god. These ceremonies were repeated on the 2nd without any alteration, but from the 3rd to the 12th they took place during the night, before the statues of Merodach and Ishtar, in turn with those of Nebo and Tashmit, of Mullil and Ninlil, of Eamman and of Zirbanit; sometimes at the rising of a particular constellation--as, for instance, that of the Great Bear, or that of the sons of Ishtar; sometimes at the moment when the moon “raised above the earth her luminous crown.” On such a date a penitential psalm or a litany was to be recited; at another time it was forbidden to eat of meat either cooked or smoked, to change the body-linen, to wear white garments, to drink medicine, to sacrifice, to put forth an edict, or to drive out in a chariot. Not only at Babylon, but everywhere else, obedience to the religious rites weighed heavily on the local princes; at Uru, at Lagash, at Nipur, and in the ruling cities of Upper and Lower Chaldaea. The king, as soon as he succeeded to the throne, repaired to the temple to receive his solemn investiture, which differed in form according to the gods he worshipped: at Babylon, he addressed himself to the statue of Bel-Merodach in the first days of the month Nisan which followed his accession, and he “took him by the hands” to do homage to him. From thenceforth, he officiated for Merodach here below, and the scrupulously minute devotions, which daily occupied hours of his time, were so many acts of allegiance which his fealty as a vassal constrained him to perform to his suzerain. They were, in fact, analogous to the daily audiences demanded of a great lord by his steward, for the purpose of rendering his accounts and of informing him of current business: any interruption not justified by a matter of supreme importance would be liable to be interpreted as a want of respect or as revealing an inclination to rebel. By neglecting the slightest ceremonial detail the king would arouse the suspicions of the gods, and excite their anger against himself and his subjects: the people had, therefore, a direct interest in his careful fulfilment of the priestly functions, and his piety was not the least of his virtues in their eyes. All other virtues--bravery, equity, justice--depended on it, and were only valuable from the divine aid which piety obtained for them. The gods and heroes of the earliest ages had taken upon themselves the task of protecting the faithful from all their enemies, whether men or beasts. If a lion decimated their flocks, or a urus of gigantic size devastated their crops, it was the king’s duty to follow the example of his fabulous predecessors and to set out and overcome them. The enterprise demanded all the more courage and supernatural help, since these beasts were believed to be no mere ordinary animals, but were looked on as instruments of divine wrath the cause of which was often unknown, and whoever assailed these monsters, provoked not only them but the god who instigated them. Piety and confidence in the patron of the city alone sustained the king when he set forth to drive the animal back to its lair; he engaged in close combat with it, and no sooner had he pierced it with his arrows or his lance, or felled it with axe and dagger, than he hastened to pour a libation upon it, and to dedicate it as a trophy in one of the temples. His exalted position entailed on him no less perils in time of war: if he did not personally direct the first attacking column, he placed himself at the head of the band composed of the flower of the army, whose charge at an opportune moment was wont to secure the victory.

What would have been the use of his valour, if the dread of the gods had not preceded his march, and if the light of their countenances had not struck terror into the ranks of the enemy? As soon as he had triumphed by their command, he sought before all else to reward them amply for the assistance they had given him. He poured a tithe of the spoil into the coffers of their treasury, he made over a part of the conquered country to their domain, he granted them a tale of the prisoners to cultivate their lands or to work at their buildings. Even the idols of the vanquished shared the fate of their people: the king tore them from the sanctuaries which had hitherto sheltered them, and took them as prisoners in his train to form a court of captive gods about his patron divinity. Shamash, the great judge of heaven, inspired him with justice, and the prosperity which his good administration obtained for the people was less the work of the sovereign than that of the immortals.

We know too little of the inner family life of the kings, to attempt to say how they were able to combine the strict sacerdotal obligations incumbent on them with the routine of daily life. We merely observe that on great days of festival or sacrifice, when they themselves officiated, they laid aside all the insignia of royalty during the ceremony and were clad as ordinary priests. We see them on such occasions represented with short-cut hair and naked breast, the loin-cloth about their waist, advancing foremost in the rank, carrying the heavily laden “kufa,” or reed basket, as if they were ordinary slaves; and, as a fact, they had for the moment put aside their sovereignty and were merely temple servants, or slaves appearing before their divine master to do his bidding, and disguising themselves for the nonce in the garb of servitors. The wives of the sovereign do not seem to have been invested with that semi-sacred character which led the Egyptian women to be associated with the devotions of the man, and made them indispensable auxiliaries in all religious ceremonies; they did not, moreover, occupy that important position side by side with the man which the Egyptian law assigned to the queens of the Pharaohs. Whereas the monuments on the banks of the Nile reveal to us princesses sharing the throne of their husbands whom they embrace with a gesture of frank affection, in Chaldaea the wives of the prince, his mother, sisters, daughters, and even his slaves, remain invisible to posterity.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey Sarzec.

The harem in which they were shut up by custom, rarely opened its doors: the people seldom caught sight of them, their relatives spoke of them as little as possible, those in power avoided associating them in any public acts of worship or government, and we could count on our fingers the number of those whom the inscriptions mention by name. Some of them were drawn from the noble families of the capital, others came from the kingdoms of Chaldaea or from foreign courts; a certain number never rose above the condition of mere concubines, many assumed the title of queen, while almost all served as living pledges of alliances made with rival states, or had been given as hostages at the concluding of a peace on the termination of a war.* As the kings, who put forward no pretensions to a divine origin, were not constrained, after the fashion of the Pharaohs, to marry their sisters in order to keep up the purity of their race, it was rare to find one among their wives who possessed an equal right to the crown with themselves: such a case could be found only in troublous times, when an aspirant to the throne, of base extraction, legitimated his usurpation by marrying a sister or daughter of his predecessor.

* Political marriage-alliances between Egypt and Chaldaea
were of frequent occurrence, according to the Tel el-Amarna
tablets, and at a later period between Chaldaea and Assyria;
among the few queens of the very earliest times, the wife of
Nammaghani is the daughter of Urbau, vicegerent of Lagash,
and consequently the cousin or niece of her husband, while
the wife of Rimsin appears to be the daughter of a nobleman
of the name of Rimnannar.

The original status of the mother almost always determined that of her children, and the sons of a princess were born princes, even if their father were of obscure or unknown origin.* These princes exercised important functions at court, or they received possessions which they administered under the suzerainty of the head of the family; the daughters were given to foreign kings, or to scions of the most distinguished families. The sovereign was under no obligation to hand down his crown to any particular member of his family; the eldest son usually succeeded him, but the king could, if he preferred, select his favourite child as his successor even if he happened to be the youngest, or the only one born of a slave. As soon as the sovereign had made known his will, the custom of primogeniture was set aside, and his word became law. We can well imagine the secret intrigues formed both by mothers and sons to curry favour with the father and bias his choice; we can picture the jealousy with which they mutually watched each other, and the bitter hatred which any preference shown to one would arouse in the breasts of all the others. Often brothers who had been disappointed in their expectations would combine secretly against the chosen or supposed heir; a conspiracy would break out, and the people suddenly learn that their ruler of yesterday had died by the hand of an assassin and that a new one filled his place.

* This fact is apparent from the introduction to the
inscription in which Sargon I. is supposed to give an
account of his life: “My father was unknown, my mother was a
princess;” and it was, indeed, from his mother that he
inherited his rights to the crown of Agade.

Sometimes discontent spread beyond the confines of the palace, the army became divided into two hostile camps, the citizens took the side of one or other of the aspirants, and civil war raged for several years till some decisive action brought it to a close. Meantime tributary vassals took advantage of the consequent disorder to shake off the yoke, the Blamites and various neighbouring cities joined in the dispute and ranged themselves on the side of the party from which there was most to be gained: the victorious faction always had to pay dearly for this somewhat dubious help, and came out impoverished from the struggle. Such an internecine war often caused the downfall of a dynasty--at times, indeed, that of the entire state.*

* The above is perfectly true of the later Assyrian and
Chalaean periods: it is scarcely needful to recall to the
reader the murders of Sargon II. and Sennacherib, or the
revolt of Assurdainpal against his father Shalmaneser III.
With regard to the earliest period we have merely
indications of what took place; the succession of King
Urnina of Lagash appears to have been accompanied by
troubles of this kind, and it is certain that his successor
Akurgal was not the eldest of his sons, but we do not at
present know to what events Akurgal owed his elevation.

The palaces of the Chaldaean kings, like those of the Egyptians, presented the appearance of an actual citadel: the walls had to be sufficiently thick to withstand an army for an indefinite period, and to protect the garrison from every emergency, except that of treason or famine. One of the statues found at Telloh holds in its lap the plan of one of these residences: the external outline alone is given, but by means of it we can easily picture to ourselves a fortified place, with its towers, its forts, and its gateways placed between two bastions. It represents the ancient palace of Lagash, subsequently enlarged and altered by Oudea or one of the vicegerents who succeeded him, in which many a great lord of the place must have resided down to the time of the Christian era. The site on which it was built in the Girsu quarter of. the city was not entirely unoccupied at the time of its foundation. Urbau had raised a ziggurat on that very spot some centuries previously, and the walls which he had constructed were falling into ruin.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec. The plan is
traced upon the tablet held in the lap of Statue E in the
Louvre. Below the plan can be seen the ruler marked with the
divisions used by the architect for drawing his designs to
the desired scale; the scribe’s stylus is represented lying
on the left of the plan. [Prof. Petrie has shown that the
unit of measurement represented on this ruler is the cubit
of the Pyramid-builders of Egypt.--Te.]

Gudea did not destroy the work of his remote predecessor, he merely incorporated it into the substructures of the new building, thus showing an indifference similar to that evinced by the Pharaohs for the monuments of a former dynasty. The palaces, like the temples, never rose directly from the soil, but were invariably built on the top of an artificial mound of crude brick. At Lagash, this solid platform rises to the height of 40 feet above the plain, and the only means of access to the top is by a single narrow steep staircase, easily cut off or defended.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the facsimile by Place.

The palace which surmounts this artificial eminence describes a sort of irregular rectangle, 174 feet long by 69 feet wide, and had, contrary to the custom in Egypt, the four angles orientated to the four cardinal points. The two principal sides are not parallel, but swell out slightly towards the middle, and the flexion of the lines almost follows the contour of one of those little clay cones upon which the kings were wont to inscribe their annals or dedications. This flexure was probably not intentional on the part of the architect, but was owing to the difficulty of keeping a wall of such considerable extent in a straight line from one end to another; and all Eastern nations, whether Chaldaeans or Egyptians, troubled themselves but little about correctness of alignment, since defects of this kind were scarcely ever perceptible in the actual edifice, and are only clearly revealed in the plan drawn out to scale with modern precision.*

* Mons. Heuzey thinks that the outward deflection of the
lines is owing “merely to a primitive method of obtaining
greater solidity of construction, and of giving a better
foundation to these long facades, which are placed upon
artificial terraces of crude brick always subject to cracks
and settlements.” I think that the explanation of the facts
which I have given in the text is simpler than that
ingeniously proposed by Mons. Heuzey: the masons, having
begun to build the wall at one end, were unable to carry it
on in a straight line until it reached the spot denoted on
the architect’s plan, and therefore altered the direction of
the wall when they detected their error; or, having begun to
build the wall from both ends simultaneously, were not
successful in making the two lines meet correctly, and they
have frankly patched up the junction by a mass of projecting
brickwork which conceals their unskilfulness.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec.

The facade of the building faces south-east, and is divided into three blocks of unequal size. The centre of the middle block for a length of 18 feet projects some 3 feet from the main front, and, by directly facing the spectator, ingeniously masks the obtuse angle formed by the meeting of the two walls. This projection is flanked right and left by rectangular grooves, similar to those which ornament the facades of the fortresses and brick houses of the Ancient Empire in Egypt: the regular alternation of projections and hollows breaks the monotony of the facing by the play of light and shade. Beyond these, again, the wall surface is broken by semicircular pilasters some 17 inches in diameter, without bases, capitals, or even a moulding, but placed side by side like so many tree-trunks or posts forming a palisade.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by Loftus.

Various schemes of decoration succeed each other in progressive sequence, less ornate and at greater distances apart, the further they recede from the central block and the nearer they approach to the extremities of the facade. They stop short at the southern angle, and the two sides of the edifice running from south to west, and again from west to north, are flat, bare surfaces, unbroken by projection or groove to relieve the poverty and monotony of their appearance. The decoration reappears on the north-east front, where the arrangement of the principal facade is partly reproduced. The grooved divisions here start from the angles, and the engaged columns are wanting, or rather they are transferred to the central projection, and from a distance have the effect of a row of gigantic organ-pipes. We may well ask if this squat and heavy mass of building, which must have attracted the eye from all parts of the town, had nothing to relieve the dull and dismal colour of its component bricks.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec

The idea might not have occurred to us had we not found elsewhere an attempt to lessen the gloomy appearance of the architecture by coloured plastering. At Uruk, the walls of the palace are decorated by means of terra-cotta cones, fixed deep into the solid plaster and painted red, black, or yellow, forming interlaced or diaper patterns of chevrons, spirals, lozenges, and triangles, with a very fair result: this mosaic of coloured plaster covered all the surfaces, both flat and curved, giving to the building a cheerful aspect entirely wanting in that of Lagash.

A long narrow trough of yellowish limestone stood in front of the palace, and was raised on two steps: it was carved in relief on the outside with figures of women standing with outstretched hands, passing to each other vases from which gushed forth two streams of water. This trough formed a reservoir, which was filled every morning for the use of the men and beasts, and those whom some business or a command brought to the palace could refresh themselves there while waiting to be received by the master. The gates which gave access to the interior were placed at somewhat irregular intervals: two opened from the principal facade, but on each of the other sides there was only one entrance. They were arched and so low that admittance was not easily gained; they were closed with two-leaved doors of cedar or cypress, provided with bronze hinges, which turned upon two blackish stones firmly set in the masonry on either side, and usually inscribed with the name of the founder or that of the reigning sovereign. Two of the entrances possessed a sort of covered way, in which the soldiers of the external watch could take shelter from the heat of the sun by day, from the cold at night, and from the dews at dawn. On crossing the threshold, a corridor, flanked with two small rooms for porters or warders, led into a courtyard surrounded with buildings of sufficient depth to take up nearly half of the area enclosed within the walls. This court was moreover a semi-public place, to which tradesmen, merchants, suppliants, and functionaries of all ranks had easy access. A suite of three rooms shut off in the north-east angle did duty for a magazine or arsenal. The southern portion of the building was occupied by the State apartments, the largest of which measures only 40 feet in length. In these rooms Gudea and his successors gave audience to their nobles and administered justice. The administrative officers and the staff who had charge of them were probably located in the remaining part of the building. The roof was flat, and ran all round the enclosing wall, forming a terrace, access to it being gained by a staircase built between the principal entrance and the arsenal. At the northern angle rose a ziggurat. Custom demanded that the sovereign should possess a temple within his dwelling, where he could fulfil his religious duties without going into the town and mixing with the crowd. At Lagash the sacred tower was of older date than the palace, and possibly formed part of the ancient building of Urbau. It was originally composed of three stories, but the lower one was altered by Gudea, and disappeared entirely in the thickness of the basal platform. The second story thus became the bottom one; it was enlarged, slightly raised above the neighbouring roofs, and was probably crowned by a sanctuary dedicated to Ningirsu. It was, indeed, a monument of modest proportions, and most of the public temples soared far above it; but, small as it was, the whole town might be seen from the summit, with its separate quarters and its belt of gardens; and beyond, the open country intersected with streams, studded with isolated villages, patches of wood, pools and weedy marshes left by the retiring inundation, and in the far distance the lines of trees and bushes which bordered the banks of the Euphrates and its confluents. Should a troop of enemies venture within the range of sight, or should a suspicious tumult arise within the city, the watchers posted on the highest terrace would immediately give the alarm, and ‘through their warning the king would have time to close his gates, and take measures to resist the invading enemy or crush the revolt of his subjects.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec.

The northern apartments of the palace were appropriated to Gudea and his family. They were placed with their back to the entrance court, and were divided into two groups; the sovereign, his male children and their attendants, inhabited the western one, while the women and their slaves were cloistered, so to speak, in the northern set. The royal dwelling had an external exit by means of a passage issuing on the north-west of the enclosure, and it also communicated with the great courtyard by a vaulted corridor which ran along one side of the base of the ziggurat: the doors which, closed these two entrances opened wide enough to admit only one person at a time, and to the right and left were recesses in the wall which enabled the guards to examine all comers unobserved, and stab them promptly if there were anything suspicious in their behaviour. Eight chambers were lighted from the courtyard. In one of them were kept all the provisions for the day, while another served as a kitchen: the head, cook carried on his work at a sort of rectangular dresser of moderate size, on which several fireplaces were marked out by little dividing walls of burnt bricks, to accommodate as many pots or pans of various sizes. A well sunk in the corner right down below the substructure provided the water needed for culinary purposes. The king and his belongings accommodated themselves in the remaining five or six rooms as best they could. A corridor, guarded as carefully as the one previously described, led to his private apartments and to those of his wives: these comprised a yard, some half-dozen cells varying in size, a kitchen, a well, and a door through which the servants could come and go, without passing through the men’s quarters. The whole description in no way corresponds with the marvellous ideal of an Oriental palace which we form for ourselves: the apartments are mean and dismal, imperfectly lighted by the door or by some small aperture timidly cut in the ceiling, arranged so as to protect the inmates from the heat and dust, but without a thought given to luxury or display. The walls were entirely void of any cedar woodwork inlaid with gold, or panels of mosaic such as we find in the temples, nor were they hung with dyed or embroidered draperies such as we moderns love to imagine, and which we spread about in profusion, when we attempt to reproduce the interior of an ancient house or palace.*

* Mons. de Sarzec expressly states that he was unable to
find anywhere in the palace of Gudea “the slightest trace of
any coating on the walls, either of colour or glazed brick.
The walls appear to have been left bare, without any
decoration except the regular joining of the courses of
brickwork.” The wood panelling was usually reserved for the
temples or sacred edifices: Mons. de Sarzec found the
remains of carbonized cedar panels in the ruins of a
sanctuary dedicated to Ningirsu. According to Mons. Heuzey,
the wall-hangings were probably covered with geometrical
designs, similar to those formed by the terra-cotta cones on
the walls of the palace at Uruk; the inscriptions, however,
which are full of minute details with regard to the
construction and ornamentation of the temples and palaces,
have hitherto contained nothing which would lead us to infer
that hangings were used for mural decoration in Chaldoa or
Assyria.

The walls had to remain bare for the sake of coolness: at the most they were only covered with a coat of white plaster, on which were painted, in one or two colours, some scene of civil or religious life, or troops of fantastic monsters struggling with one another, or men each with a bird seated on his Wrist. The furniture was not less scanty than the decoration; there were mats on the ground, coffers in which were kept the linen and wearing apparel, low beds inlaid with ivory and metal and provided with coverings and a thin mattress, copper or wooden stands to support lamps or vases, square stools on four legs united by crossbars, armchairs with lions’ claw feet, resembling the Egyptian armchairs in outline, and making us ask if they were brought into Chaldaea by caravans, or made from models which had come from some other country. A few rare objects of artistic character might be found, which bore witness to a certain taste for elegance and refinement; as, for instance, a kind of circular trough of black stone, probably used to support a vase. Three rows of imbricated scales surrounded the base of this, while seven small sitting figures lean back against the upper part with an air of satisfaction which is most cleverly rendered. The decoration of the larger chambers used for public receptions and official ceremonies, while never assuming the monumental character which we observe in contemporary Egyptian buildings, afforded more scope for richness and variety than was offered by the living-rooms.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec.

Small tablets of brownish limestone, let into the wall or affixed to its surface by terra-cotta pegs, and decorated with inscriptions, represented in a more or less artless fashion the figure of the sovereign officiating before some divinity, while his children and servants took part in the ceremony by their chanting. Inscribed bricks celebrating the king’s exploits were placed here and there in conspicuous places. These were not embedded like the others in two layers of bitumen or lime, but were placed in full view upon bronze statues of divinities or priests, fixed into the ground or into some part of the masonry as magical nails destined to preserve the bricks from destruction, and consequently to keep the memory of the dedicator continually before posterity. Stelaa engraved on both sides recalled the wars of past times, the battle-field, the scenes of horror which took place there, and the return of the victor and his triumph. Sitting or standing figures of diorite, silicious sandstone or hard limestone, bearing inscriptions on their robes or shoulders, perpetuated the features of the founder or of members of his family, and commemorated the pious donations which had obtained for him the favour of the gods: the palace of Lagash contained dozens of such statues, several of which have come down to us almost intact--one of the ancient Urbau, and nine of Gudea.

To judge by the space covered and the arrangement of the rooms, the vicegerents of Lagash and the chiefs of towns of minor importance must, as a rule, have been content with a comparatively small number of servants; their court probably resembled that of the Egyptian barons who lived much about the same period, such as Khnumhotpu of the nome of the Gazelle, or Thothotpu of Hermopolis. In great cities such as Babylon the palace occupied a much larger area, and the crowd of courtiers was doubtless as great as that which thronged about the Pharaohs. No exact enumeration of them has come down to us, but the titles which we come across show with what minuteness they defined the offices about the person of the sovereign. His costume alone required almost as many persons as there were garments. The men wore the light loin-cloth or short-sleeved tunic which scarcely covered the knees; after the fashion of the Egyptians, they threw over the loin-cloth and the tunic a large “abayah,” whose shape and material varied with the caprice of fashion. They often chose for this purpose a sort of shawl of a plain material, fringed or ornamented with a flat stripe round the edge; often they seem to have preferred it ribbed, or artificially kilted from top to bottom.*

* The relatively modern costume was described by Herodotus,
i. 114; it was almost identical with the ancient one, as
proved by the representations on the cylinders and monuments
of Telloh. The short-sleeved tunic is more rarely
represented, and the loin-cloth is usually hidden under the
abayah in the case of nobles and kings. We see the princes
of Lagash wearing the simple loin-cloth, on the monuments of
Urnina, for example. For the Egyptian abayah, and the manner
of representing it, cf. vol. i. pp. 69, 71.

The favourite material in ancient times, however, seems to have been a hairy, shaggy cloth or woollen stuff, whose close fleecy thread hung sometimes straight, sometimes crimped or waved, in regular rows like flounces one above another. This could be arranged squarely around the neck, like a mantel, but was more often draped crosswise over the left shoulder and brought under the right arm-pit, so as to leave the upper part of the breast and the arm bare on that side. It made a convenient and useful garment--an excellent protection in summer from the sun, and from the icy north wind in the winter. The feet were shod with sandals, a tight-fitting cap covered the head, and round it was rolled a thick strip of linen, forming a sort of rudimentary turban, which completed the costume.*

*Cf. the head belonging to one of the statues of Telloh,
which is reproduced on p. 112 of this volume. We notice the
same head-dress on several intaglios and monuments, and also
on the terra-cotta plaque which will be found on p. 330 of
this volume, and which represents a herdsman wrestling with
a lion. Until we have further evidence, we cannot state, as
G. Raw-linson did, that this strip forming a turban was of
camel’s hair; the date of the introduction of the camel into
Chaldoa still remains uncertain.

It is questionable whether, as in Egypt, wigs and false beards formed part of the toilette. On some monuments we notice smooth faces and close-cropped heads; on others the men appear with long hair, either falling loose or twisted into a knot on the back of the neck.* While the Egyptians delighted in garments of thin white linen, but slightly plaited or crimped, the dwellers on the banks of the Euphrates preferred thick and heavy stuffs patterned and striped with many colours. The kings wore the same costume as their subjects, but composed of richer and finer materials, dyed red or blue, decorated with floral, animal, or geometrical designs;** a high tower-shaped tiara covered the forehead,*** unless replaced by a diadem of Sin or some of the other gods, which was a conical mitre supporting a double pair of horns, and sometimes surmounted by a sort of diadem of feathers and mysterious figures, embroidered or painted on the cap. Their arms were loaded with massive bracelets and their fingers with rings; they wore necklaces and earrings, and carried each a dagger in the belt.

* Dignitaries went bareheaded and shaved the chin; see, for
example, the two bas-reliefs given on pp. 105 and 244 of
this volume; cf. the heads reproduced as tailpieces on pp.
2, 124. The knot of hair behind on the central figure is
easily distinguished in the vignette on p. 266 of this
volume.

** The details of colour and ornamentation, not furnished by
the Chaldaean monuments, are given in the wall-painting at
Beni-Nasan representing the arrival of Asiatics in Egypt,
which belongs to a period contemporary with or slightly
anterior to the reign of Gudea. The resemblance of the
stuffs in which they are clothed to those of the Chaldaean
garments, and the identity of the patterns on them with the
geometrical decoration of painted cones on the palace at
Uruk, have been pointed out with justice by H. G. Tomkins

*** The high tiara is represented among others on the head
of Mardukna-dinakhe, King of Babylon: cf. what is said of
the conical mitre, the headdress of Sin, on pp. 14, 169 of
this volume.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bronze figure in the
Louvre, published by Heuzey-Sarzec, _Decouvertes en
Chaldee_, pl. 14.

The royal wardrobe, jewels, arms, and insignia formed so many distinct departments, and each was further divided into minor sections for body-linen, washing, or for this or that kind of headdress or sceptre. The dress of the women, which was singularly like that of the men, required no less a staff of attendants. The female servants, as well as the male, went about bare to the waist, at all events while working indoors. When they went out, they wore the same sort of tunic or loin-cloth, but longer and more resembling a petticoat; they had the same “abayah” drawn round the shoulders or rolled about the body like a cloak, but with the women it nearly touched the ground; sometimes an actual dress seems to have been substituted for the “abayah,” drawn in to the figure by a belt and cut out of the same hairy material as that of which the mantles were made. The boots were of soft leather, laced, and without heels; the women’s ornaments were more numerous than those of the men, and comprised necklaces, bracelets, ankle, finger, and ear rings; their hair was separated into bands and kept in place on the forehead by a fillet, falling in thick plaits or twisted into a coil on the nape of the neck.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the alabaster statuette in the
Louvre, published in Heuzey. She holds in her hand the jar
full of water, analogous to the streaming vase mentioned
above.

A great deal of the work was performed by foreign or native slaves, generally under the command of eunuchs, to whom the king and royal princes entrusted most of the superintendence of their domestic arrangements; they guarded and looked after the sleeping apartments, they fanned and kept the flies from their master, and handed him his food and drink. Eunuchs in Egypt were either unknown or but little esteemed: they never seem to have been used, even in times when relations with Asia were of daily occurrence, and when they might have been supplied from the Babylonian slave-markets.

All these various officials closely attached to the person of the sovereign--heads of the wardrobe, chamberlains, cupbearers, bearers of the royal sword or of the flabella, commanders of the eunuchs or of the guards--had, by the nature of their duties, daily opportunities of gaining a direct influence over their master and his government, and from among them he often chose the generals of his army or the administrators of his domains. Here, again, as far as the few monuments and the obscurity of the texts permit of our judging, we find indications of a civil and military organization analogous to that of Egypt: the divergencies which contemporaries may have been able to detect in the two national systems are effaced by the distance of time, and we are struck merely by the resemblances. As all business transactions were carried on by barter or by the exchange of merchandise for weighed quantities of the precious metals, the taxes were consequently paid in kind: the principal media being corn and other cereals, dates, fruits, stuffs, live animals and slaves, as well as gold, silver, lead, and copper, either in its native state or melted into bars fashioned into implements or ornamented vases. Hence we continually come across fiscal storehouses, both in town and country, which demanded the services of a whole troop of functionaries and workmen: administrators of corn, cattle, precious metals, wine and oil; in fine, as many administrators as there were cultures or industries in the country presided over the gathering of the products into the central depots and regulated their redistribution. A certain portion was reserved for the salaries of the employes and the pay of the workmen engaged in executing public works: the surplus accumulated in the treasury and formed a reserve, which was not drawn upon except in cases of extreme necessity. Every palace, in addition to its living-rooms, contained within its walls large store-chambers filled with provisions and weapons, which made it more or less a fortress, furnished with indispensable requisites for sustaining a prolonged siege either against an enemy’s troops or the king’s own subjects in revolt. The king always kept about him bodies of soldiers who perhaps were foreign mercenaries, like the Mazaiu of the armies of the Pharaohs, and who formed his permanent body-guard in times of peace. When a war was imminent, a military levy was made upon his domains, but we are unable to find out whether the recruits thus raised were drawn indiscriminately from the population in general, or merely from a special class, analogous to that of the warriors which we find in Egypt, who were paid in the same way by grants of land. The equipment of these soldiers was of the rudest kind: they had no cuirass, but carried a rectangular shield, and, in the case of those of higher rank at all events, a conical metal helmet, probably of beaten copper, provided with a piece to protect the back of the neck; the heavy infantry were armed with a pike tipped with bronze ox-copper, an axe or sharp adze, a stone-headed mace, and a dagger; the light troops were provided only with the bow and sling. As early as the third millennium b.c., the king went to battle in a chariot drawn by onagers, or perhaps horses; he had his own peculiar weapon, which was a curved baton probably terminating in a metal point, and resembling the sceptre of the Pharaohs. Considerable quantities of all these arms were stored in the arsenals, which contained depots for bows, maces, and pikes, and even the stones needed for the slings had their special department for storage. At the beginning of each campaign, a distribution of weapons to the newly levied troops took place; but as soon as the war was at an end, the men brought back their accoutrements, which were stored till they were again required. The valour of the soldiers and their chiefs was then rewarded; the share of the spoil for some consisted of cattle, gold, corn, a female slave, and vessels of value; for others, lands or towns in the conquered country, regulated by the rank of the recipients or the extent of the services they had rendered.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the Chaldaean intaglio in the
British. Museum.

Property thus given was hereditary, and privileges were often added to it which raised the holder to the rank of a petty prince: for instance, no royal official was permitted to impose a tax upon such lands, or take the cattle off them, or levy provisions upon them; no troop of soldiers might enter them, not even for the purpose of arresting a fugitive. Most of the noble families possessed domains of this kind, and constituted in each kingdom a powerful and wealthy feudal aristocracy, whose relations to their sovereign were probably much the same as those which bound the nomarchs to the Pharaoh. The position of these nobles was not more stable than that of the dynasties under which they lived: while some among them gained power by marriages or by continued acquisitions of land, others fell into disgrace and were ruined. As the soil belonged to the gods, it is possible that these nobles were supposed, in theory, ‘to depend upon the gods; but as the kings were the vicegerents of the gods upon earth, it was to the king, as a matter of fact, that they owed their elevation. Every state, therefore, comprised two parts, each subject to a distinct regime: one being the personal domain of the suzerain, which he managed himself, and from which he drew the revenues; the other was composed of fiefs, whose lords paid tribute and owed certain obligations to the king, the nature of which we are as yet unable to define.

The Chaldaean, like the Egyptian scribe, was the pivot on which the machinery of this double royal and seignorial administration turned. He does not appear to have enjoyed as much consideration as his fellow-official in the Nile Valley: the Chaldaean princes, nobles, priests, soldiers, and temple or royal officials, did not covet the title of scribe, or pride themselves upon holding that office side by side with their other dignities, as we see was the case with their Egyptian contemporaries. The position of a scribe, nevertheless, was an important one. We continually meet with it in all grades of society--in the palace, in the temples, in the storehouses, in private dwellings; in fine, the scribe was ubiquitous, at court, in the town, in the country, in the army, managing affairs both small and great, and seeing that they were carried on regularly. His education differed but little from that given to the Egyptian scribe; he learned the routine of administrative or judicial affairs, the formularies for correspondence either with nobles or with ordinary people, the art of writing, of calculating quickly, and of making out bills correctly. We may well ask whether he ever employed papyrus or prepared skins for these purposes. It would, indeed, seem strange that, after centuries of intercourse, no caravan should have brought into Chaldaean any of those materials which were in such constant use for literary purposes in Africa;* yet the same clay which furnished the architect with such an abundant building material appears to have been the only medium for transmitting the language which the scribes possessed. They were always provided with slabs of a fine plastic clay, carefully mixed and kept sufficiently moist to take easily the impression of an object, but at the same time sufficiently firm to prevent the marks once made from becoming either blurred or effaced. When a scribe had a text to copy or a document to draw up, he chose out one of his slabs, which he placed flat upon his left palm, and taking in the right hand a triangular stylus of flint, copper, bronze, or bone,** he at once set to work. The instrument, in early times, terminated in a fine point, and the marks made by it when it was gently pressed upon the clay were slender and of uniform thickness; in later times, the extremity of the stylus was cut with a bevel, and the impression then took the shape of a metal nail or a wedge.

* On the Assyrian monuments we frequently see scribes taking
a list of the spoil, or writing letters on tablets and some
other soft material, either papyrus or prepared skin. Sayce
has given good reasons for believing that the Chaldaeanns of
the early dynasties knew of the papyrus, and either made it
themselves, or had it brought from Egypt.

** See the triangular stylus of copper or bronze reproduced
by the side of the measuring-rule, and the plan on the
tablet of Gudea, p. 248 of this volume. The Assyrian Museum
in the Louvre possesses several large, flat styli of bone,
cut to a point at one end, which appear to have belonged to
the Assyrian scribes. Taylor discovered in a tomb at Eridu a
flint tool, which may have served for the same purpose as
the metal or bone styli.

They wrote from left to right along the upper part of the tablet, and covered both sides of it with closely written lines, which sometimes ran over on to the edges. When the writing was finished, the scribe sent his work to the potter, who put it in the kiln and baked it, or the writer may have had a small oven at his own disposition, as a clerk with us would have his table or desk. The shape of these documents varied, and sometimes strikes us as being peculiar: besides the tablets and the bricks, we find small solid cones, or hollow cylinders of considerable size, on which the kings related their exploits or recorded the history of their wars or the dedication of their buildings. This method had a few inconveniences, but many advantages. These clay books were heavy to hold and clumsy to handle, while the characters did not stand out well from the brown, yellow, and whitish background of the material; but, on the other hand, a poem, baked and incorporated into the page itself, ran less danger of destruction than if scribbled in ink on sheets of papyrus. Fire could make no impression on it; it could withstand water for a considerable length of time; even if broken, the pieces were still of use: as long as it was not pulverized, the entire document could be restored, with the exception, perhaps, of a few signs, or ‘some scraps of a sentence. The inscriptions which have been saved from the foundations of the most ancient temples, several of which date back forty or fifty centuries, are for the most part as clear and legible as when they left the hands of the writer who engraved them or of the workmen who baked them. It is owing to the material to which they were committed that we possess the principal works of Chaldaean literature which have come down to us--poems, annals, hymns, magical incantations; how few fragments of these would ever have reached us had their authors confided them to parchment or paper, after the manner of the Egyptian scribes! The greatest danger that they ran was that of being left forgotten in the corner of the chamber in which they had been kept, or buried under the rubbish of a building after a fire or some violent catastrophe; even then the _debris_ were the means of preserving them, by falling over them and covering them up. Protected under the ruins, they would lie there for centuries, till the fortunate explorer should bring them to light and deliver them over to the patient study of the learned.

The cuneiform character in itself is neither picturesque nor decorative. It does not offer that delightful assemblage of birds and snakes, of men and quadrupeds, of heads and limbs, of tools, weapons, stars, trees, and boats, which succeed each other in perplexing order on the Egyptian monuments, to give permanence to the glory of Pharaoh and the greatness of his gods. Cuneiform writing is essentially composed of thin short lines, placed in juxtaposition or crossing each other in a somewhat clumsy fashion; it has the appearance of numbers of nails scattered about at haphazard, and its angular configuration, and its stiff and spiny appearance, gives the inscriptions a dull and forbidding aspect which no artifice of the engraver can overcome.