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 Prœtos 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 Prœtos, 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 the age of Solomon was modern when compared with that to which some of the letters we now possess actually belong. Centuries earlier the words “message” and “letter” had become synonymous terms, and in Hebrew the word which had originally signified a “message” had come to mean a “book.” Not only is a message conceived of as always written, but even the idea of a book is taken from that of a letter. Nothing can show more plainly the important place occupied by literary correspondence in the ancient Oriental world or the antiquity to which the art of the letter-writer reaches back.
While in Egypt the letter was usually written upon papyrus, in Western Asia the ordinary writing material was clay. Babylonia had been the nurse and mother of its culture, and the writing material of Babylonia was clay. Originally pictorial hieroglyphics had been drawn upon the clay, but just as in Egypt the hieratic or running-hand of the scribe developed out of the primitive pictographs, so too in Babylonia the pictures degenerated into cuneiform characters which corresponded with the hieratic characters of the Egyptian script. What we call cuneiform is essentially a cursive hand.
As for books, so also for letters the clay tablet was employed. It may seem to us indeed a somewhat cumbrous mode of sending a letter; but it had the advantage of being solid and less likely to be injured or destroyed than other writing materials. The characters upon it could not be obliterated by a shower of rain, and there was no danger of its being torn. Moreover, it must be remembered that the tablet was usually of small size. The cuneiform system of writing allows a large number of words to be compressed into a small space, and the writing is generally so minute as to try the eyes of the modern decipherer.
Some of the letters which have been discovered during the last few years go back to the early days of the Babylonian monarchy. Many of them are dated in the reign of Khammurabi, or Amraphel, among them being several that were written by the King himself. That we should possess the autograph letters of a contemporary of Abraham is one of the romances of historical science, for it must be remembered that the letters are not copies, but the original documents themselves. What would not classical scholars give for the autograph originals of the letters of Cicero, or theologians for the actual manuscripts that were written by the Evangelists? And yet here we have the private correspondence of a prince who took part in the campaign against Sodom and Gomorrah!
One of the letters which has found a resting-place in the Museum of Constantinople refers to another of the actors in the campaign against the cities of the cunei-plain. This was the King of Elam, Chedor-laomer, whose name is written Kudur-Loghghamar in the form. The Elamites had invaded Babylonia and made it subject and tributary. Sin-idinnam, the King of Larsa, called Ellasar in the book of Genesis, had been compelled to fly from his ancestral kingdom in the south of Chaldea, and take refuge in Babylon at the court of Khammurabi. Eri-Aku, or Arioch, the son of an Elamite prince, was placed on the throne of Larsa, while Khammurabi also had to acknowledge himself a vassal of the Elamite King. But a time came when Khammurabi believed himself strong enough to shake off the Elamite yoke, and though the war at first seemed to go against him, he ultimately succeeded in making himself independent. Arioch and his Elamite allies were driven from Larsa, and Babylon became the capital of a united monarchy. It was after the overthrow of the Elamites that the letter was written in which mention is made of Chedor-laomer. Its discoverer, Père Scheil, gives the following translation of it: “To Sin-idinnam, Khammurabi says: I send you as a present (the images of) the goddesses of the land of Emutalum as a reward for your valor on the day of (the defeat of) Chedor-laomer. If (the enemy) annoy you, destroy their forces with the troops at your disposal, and let the images be restored in safety to their old habitations.”9
The letter was found at Senkereh, the ancient Larsa, where, doubtless, it had been treasured in the archive-chamber of the palace. Two other letters of Khammurabi, which are now at Constantinople, have also been translated by Dr. Scheil. One of them is as follows: “To Sin-idinnam, Khammurabi says: When you have seen this letter you will understand in regard to Amil-Samas and Nur-Nintu, the sons of Gis-dubba, that if they are in Larsa, or in the territory of Larsa, you will order them to be sent away, and that one of your servants, on whom you can depend, shall take them and bring them to Babylon.” The second letter relates to some officials about whom, it would seem, the King of Larsa had complained to his suzerain lord: “To Sin-idinnam, Khammurabi says: As to the officials who have resisted you in the accomplishment of their work, do not impose upon them any additional task, but oblige them to do what they ought to have performed, and then remove them from the influence of him who has brought them.”
Long before the age of Khammurabi a royal post had been established in Babylon for the conveyance of letters. Fragments of clay had been found at Tello, bearing the impressions of seals belonging to the officials of Sargon of Akkad and his successor, and addressed to the viceroy of Lagas, to King Naram-Sin and other personages. They were, in fact, the envelopes of letters and despatches which passed between Lagas and Agadê, or Akkad, the capital of the dynasty.
Sometimes, however, the clay fragment has the form of a ball, and must then have been attached by a string to the missive like the seals of mediæval deeds. In either case the seal of the functionary from whom the missive came was imprinted upon it as well as the address of the person for whom it was intended. Thousands of letters seem to have passed to and fro in this manner, making it clear that the postal service of Babylonia was already well organized in the time of Sargon and Naram-Sin. The Tel-el-Amarna letters show that in the fifteenth century before our era a similar postal service was established throughout the Eastern world, from the banks of the Euphrates to those of the Nile. To what an antiquity it reached back it is at present impossible to say.
At all events, when Khammurabi was King, letters were frequent and common among the educated classes of the population. Most of those which have been preserved are from private individuals to one another, and consequently, though they tell us nothing about the political events of the time, they illustrate the social life of the period and prove how like it was to our own. One of them, for instance, describes the writer's journey to Elam and Arrapakhitis, while another relates to a ferry-boat and the boat-house in which it was kept. The boat-house, we are told, had fallen into decay in the reign of Khammurabi, and was sadly in want of repair, while the chief duty of the writer, who seems to have been the captain of the boat, was to convey the merchants who brought various commodities to Babylon. If the merchant, the letter states, was furnished with a royal passport, “we carried him across” the river; if he had no passport, he was not allowed to go to Babylon. Among other purposes for which the vessel had been used was the conveyance of lead, and it was capable of taking as much as 10 talents of the metal. We further gather from the letter that it was the custom to employ Bedâwin as messengers.
Among the early Babylonian documents found at Sippara, and now in the Museum at Constantinople, which have been published by Dr. Scheil, are two private letters of the same age and similar character. The first is as follows: “To my father, thus says Zimri-eram: May the Sun-god and Merodach grant thee everlasting life! May your health be good! I write to ask you how you are; send me back news of your health. I am at present at Dur-Sin on the canal of Bit-Sikir. In the place where I am living there is nothing to be had for food. So I am sealing up and sending you three-quarters of a silver shekel. In return for the money, send some good fish and other provisions for me to eat.” The second letter was despatched from Babylon, and runs thus: “To the lady Kasbeya thus says Gimil-Merodach: May the Sun-god and Merodach for my sake grant thee everlasting life! I am writing to enquire after your health; please send me news of it. I am living at Babylon, but have not seen you, which troubles me greatly. Send me news of your coming to me, so that I may be happy. Come in the month of Marchesvan (October). May you live for ever for my sake!”
It is plain that the writer was in love with his correspondent, and had grown impatient to see her again. Both belonged to what we should call the professional classes, and nothing can better illustrate how like in the matter of correspondence the age of Abraham was to our own. The old Babylonian's letter might easily have been written to-day, apart from the references to Merodach and the Sun-god. It must be noticed, moreover, that the lady to whom the letter is addressed is expected to reply to it. It is taken for granted that the ladies of Babylon could read and write as well as the men. This, however, is only what might have been concluded from the other facts of Babylonian social life, and the footing of equality with the man upon which the woman was placed in all matters of business. The fact that she could hold and bequeath property, and trade with it independently, implies that she was expected to know how to read and write. Even among the Tel-el-Amarna we find one or two from a lady who seems to have taken an active part in the politics of the day. “To the king my lord,” she writes in one of them, “my gods, my Sun-god, thus says Nin, thy handmaid, the dust of thy feet. At the feet of the king my lord, my gods, my Sun-god, seven times seven I prostrate myself. Let the king my lord wrest his country from the hand of the Bedâwin, in order that they may not rob it. The city of Zaphon has been captured. This is for the information of the king my lord.”
The letters of Tel-el-Amarna bridge over the gulf that separates the early Babylonia of Khammurabi from the later Assyria of Tiglath-pileser III. and his successors. The inner life of the intervening period is still known to us but imperfectly. No library or large collection of tablets belonging to it has as yet been discovered, and until this is the case we must remain less intimately acquainted with it than we are with the age of Khammurabi on the one hand, or that of the second Assyrian empire on the other.
It is true that the library of Nineveh, of which Assur-bani-pal was such a munificent patron, has preserved copies of some of the earlier epistolary literature of the country. Thus we have from it a fragment of a letter written by a King of Babylonia to two kings of Assyria, at a time when Assyria still acknowledged the supremacy of Babylon. But such documents are very rare, and apart from the Tel-el-Amarna tablets we have to descend to the days of the second Assyrian empire before we find again a collection of letters.
These are the letters addressed to the Assyrian government, or more generally to the King, in the reigns of Tiglath-pileser III., Shalmaneser IV., Sargon, Sennacherib, Esar-haddon, and Assur-bani-pal. They were preserved in the royal library of Nineveh, principally on account of their political and diplomatic importance, and are now in the British Museum. As might have been expected from their character, they throw more light on the politics of the day than on the social condition of the people. A few of them, however, are private communications to the King on other than political matters, and we also find among them reports in the form of letters from the royal astronomers, as well as upon such subjects as the importation of horses from Asia Minor for the royal stud. The letters have been copied by Professor R. F. Harper, who is now publishing them in a series of volumes. How numerous the letters are may be gathered from the fact that no less than 1,575 of them (including fragments) have come from that part of the library alone which was excavated by Sir A. H. Layard, and was the first to be brought to England.
Many of them are despatches from generals in the field or from the governors of frontier towns who write to inform the Assyrian government of the movements of the enemy or of the political events in their own neighborhood. It is from these letters, for example, that we learn the name of the King of Ararat who was the antagonist of Sennacherib and the predecessor of the King Erimenas, to whom his murderers fled for protection. The details, again, of the long Elamite war, which eventually laid Susa at the feet of Assyria, have been given us by them. It is needless, therefore, to insist upon the value they possess for the historian.
Among them, however, as has been already said, are some of a more private character. Here, for instance, is one which reminds us that human nature is much the same in all ages of the world: “To the king my lord, thy servant, Saul-miti-yuballidh: Salutation to the king my lord; may Nebo and Merodach for ever and ever be gracious to the king my lord. Bau-gamilat, the handmaid of the king, is constantly ill; she cannot eat a morsel of food; let the king send orders that some physician may go and see her.” In another letter the writer expresses his gratitude to the King for his kindness in sending him his own doctor, who had cured him of a serious disease. “May Istar of Erech,” he says, “and Nana (of Bit-Ana) grant long life to the king my lord, for he sent Basa the physician of the king my lord to save my life and he has cured me; therefore may the great gods of heaven and earth be gracious to the king my lord, and may they establish the throne of the king my lord in heaven for ever; since I was dead, and the king has restored me to life.” In fact there are a good many letters which relate to medical matters. Thus Dr. Johnston gives the following translation of a letter from a certain Arad-Nana, who seems to have been a consulting physician, to Esar-haddon about a friend of the prince who had suffered from violent bleeding of the nose: “As regards the patient who has a bleeding from the nose, the Rab-Mag (or chief physician) reports: ‘Yesterday, toward evening, there was a good deal of hæmorrhage.’ The dressings have not been properly applied. They have been placed outside the nostrils, oppressing the breathing and coming off when there is hæmorrhage. Let them be put inside the nostrils and then the air will be excluded and the hæmorrhage stopped. If it is agreeable to my lord the king I will go to-morrow and give instructions; (meanwhile) let me know how the patient is.” Another letter from Arad-Nana translated by the same Assyriologist is as follows: “To the king my lord, thy servant Arad-Nana: May there be peace for ever and ever to the king my lord. May Ninip and Gula grant health of soul and body to the king my lord. All is going on well with the poor fellow whose eyes are diseased. I had applied a dressing covering the face. Yesterday, toward evening, undoing the bandage which held it (in place), I removed the dressing. There was pus upon the dressing, the size of the tip of the little finger. If any of your gods set his hand thereto, let him say so. Salutation for ever! Let the heart of the king my lord be rejoiced. Within seven or eight days the patient will recover.”
The doctors were not alone in writing to the Assyrian King. Besides the reports which they were bound to make, the astronomers also sent letters to him on the results of their observations. Among the letters published by Professor Harper is an interesting one—unfortunately defaced and imperfect—which was sent to Nineveh from one of the observatories in Babylonia. After the ordinary compliments the writer, Abil-Istar, says: “As for the eclipse of the moon about which the king my lord has written to me, a watch was kept for it in the cities of Akkad, Borsippa, and Nippur. We observed it ourselves in the city of Akkad.” Abil-Istar then goes on to describe the progress of the eclipse, but the lines are so broken as to be untranslatable, and when the text becomes perfect again we find him saying that he had written an exact report of the whole occurrence and sent it in a letter to the King. “And whereas the king my lord ordered me to observe also the eclipse of the sun, I watched to see whether it took place or not, and what passed before my eyes I now report to the king my lord. It was an eclipse of the moon that took place.… It was total over Syria and the shadow fell on the land of the Amorites, the land of the Hittites, and in part on the land of the Chaldees.” We gather from this letter that there were no less than three observatories in Northern Babylonia: one at Akkad, near Sippara; one at Nippur, now Niffer; and one at Borsippa, within sight of Babylon. As Borsippa possessed a university, it was natural that one of the three observatories should be established there.
As nothing is said about the eclipse of the sun which the astronomers at the Assyrian court had led the King to expect, it is probable that it did not take place, or at all events that it did not occur so soon as was anticipated. The expression “the land of the Amorites (and) the land of the Hittites” is noteworthy on account of its biblical ring; in the mind of the Assyrian, however, it merely denoted Palestine and Northern Syria. The Babylonians at an early age called Palestine “the land of the Amorites,” the Assyrians termed it “the land of the Hittites,” and it would appear that in the days of the second Assyrian empire, when Babylonia had become a province of its Assyrian rival, the two names were combined together in order to denote what we should entitle “Syria.”
Letters, however, were written to the King by all sorts of people, and upon all sorts of business. Thus we find Assur-bani, the captain of a river-barge, writing about the conveyance of some of those figures of colossal bulls which adorned the entrance to the palace of Sennacherib. The letter is short and to the point: “To the king my lord, thy servant Assur-bani: Salutation to the king my lord. Assur-mukin has ordered me to transport in boats the colossal bulls and cherubim of stone. The boats are not strong enough, and are not ready. But if a present be kindly made to us, we will see that they are got ready and ascend the river.” The unblushing way in which bakshish is here demanded shows that in this respect, at all events, the East has changed but little.
Of quite a different character is a letter about some wine that was sent to the royal cellars. The writer says in it: “As for the wine about which the king my lord has written to me, there are two homers of it for keeping, as well as plenty of the best oil.” Later on, in the same letter, reference is made to a targu-manu, or “dragoman,” who was sent along with the wine, which probably came from the Armenian highlands. It may be noted that in another letter mention is made of a “master of languages,” who was employed in deciphering the despatches from Ararat.
A letter from the cellarers of the palace has been translated as follows by Dr. Johnston: “To the king our lord, thy servants … Bel-iqisa and Babi-lû: Salutation to the king our lord! May Assur, … Bel, and Nebo grant long life and everlasting years to the king our lord! Let the king our lord know that the wine received during the month Tebet has been bottled, but that there is no room for it, so we must make (new) cellars for the king our lord. Let the king our lord give orders that a (place for) the cellars be shown to us, and we shall be relieved from our embarrassment (?). The wine that has come for the king our lord is very considerable. Where shall we put it?”
A good deal of the correspondence relates to the importation of horses from Eastern Asia Minor for the stables of the Assyrian King. The following is a specimen of what they are like: “To the king my lord, thy servant Nebo-sum-iddin: Salutation to the king my lord; for ever and ever may Nebo and Merodach be gracious to the king my lord. Thirteen horses from the land of Kusa, 3 foals from the land of Kusa—in all 16 draught-horses; 14 stallions; altogether 30 horses and 9 mules—in all 39 from the city of Qornê: 6 horses from the land of Kusa; 3 foals from Kusa—in all 9 draught-horses; 14 stallions; altogether 23 horses and 9 mules—in all 28 from the city of Dâna (Tyana): 19 horses of Kusa and 39 stallions—altogether 57 from the city of Kullania (Calneh); 25 stallions and 6 mules—in all 31 from the city of Arpad. All are gelded. Thirteen stallions and 10 mules—altogether 23 from the city of Isana. In all 54 horses from Kusa and 104 stallions, making 148 horses and 30 mules—altogether 177 have been imported. (Dated) the second day of Sivan.”
The land of Kusa is elsewhere associated with the land of Mesa, which must also have lain to the north-west of Syria among the valleys of the Taurus. Kullania, which is mentioned as a city of Kusa, is the Calneh of the Old Testament, which Isaiah couples with Carchemish, and of which Amos says that it lay on the road to Hamath. The whole of this country, including the plains of Cilicia, has always been famous for horse-breeding, and one of the letters to the Assyrian King specially mentions Melid, the modern Malatiyeh, as exporting them to Nineveh.
Here the writer, after stating that he had “inscribed in a register the number of horses” that had just arrived from Arrapakhitis, goes on to say: “What are the orders of the king about the horses which have arrived this very day before the king? Shall they be stabled in the garden-palace, or shall they be put out to grass? Let the king my lord send word whether they shall be put out to grass or whether they are to be stabled?”
As is natural, several of the letters are upon religious matters. Among those which have been translated by Dr. Johnston there is one which throws light on the religious processions which were held in honor of the gods. “To the son of the king my lord, thy servant Nebo-sum-iddina: salutation to the son of the king my lord for ever and ever! May Nebo and Merodach be gracious unto the son of the king my lord! On the third day of the month Iyyar the city of Calah will consecrate the couch of Nebo, and the god will enter the bed-chamber. On the fourth day Nebo will return. The son of the king my lord has (now) received the news. I am the governor of the temple of Nebo thy god, and will (therefore) go. At Calah the God will come forth from the interior of the palace, (and) from the interior of the palace will go to the grove. A sacrifice will be offered. The charioteer of the gods will go from the stable of the gods, will take the god out of it, will carry him in procession and bring him back. This is the course of the procession. Of the vase-bearers, whoever has a sacrifice to make will offer it. Whoever offers up one qa of his food may enter the temple of Nebo. May the offerers fully accomplish the ordinances of the gods, to the life and health of the son of the king my lord. What (commands) has the son of the king my lord to send me? May Bel and Nebo, who granted help in the month Sebat, protect the life of the son of the king my lord, and cause thy sovereignty to continue to the end of time!”
There is another letter in which, if Dr. Johnston's rendering is correct, reference is made to the inscriptions that were written on the walls of the temples like the texts which the book of Deuteronomy orders to be inscribed on the door-posts and gates (Deut. vi. 9, and xi. 20). “To the king my lord, thy servant Istar-Turi: salutation to the king my lord! I am sending Nebo-sum-iddina and Nebo-erba, the physicians of whom I spoke to the king, [with] my messenger to the presence of the king my lord. Let them be admitted to the presence of the king my lord; let the king my lord converse with them. I have not disclosed to them the real facts, and tell them nothing. As the king my lord commands, so is it done. Samas-bel-utsur sends word from the city of Der that ‘there are no inscriptions which we can place on the walls of the Beth-el.’ I send accordingly to the king my lord in order that an inscription may be written and despatched, (and) that the rest may be soon written and placed on the walls of the Beth-el. There has been a great deal of rain, (but) the harvest is gathered. May the heart of the king my lord rejoice!”
While the letters which have been found on the site of Nineveh come from the royal archives and are therefore with few exceptions addressed to the King, those which have been discovered in Babylonia have more usually been sent by one private individual to another. They represent for the most part the private correspondence of the country, and prove how widely education must have been diffused there. Most of them, moreover, belong to the age of Khammurabi or that of the kings of Ur who preceded the dynasty to which he belonged, and thus cast an unexpected light on the life of the Babylonian community in the times of Abraham. Here, for example, is one that was written by a tenant to his landlord: “To my lord says Ibgatum, your servant. As, my lord, you have heard, an enemy has carried away my oxen. Though I never before wrote to you, my lord, now I send this letter (literally tablet). O my lord, send me a cow! I will lie up five shekels of silver and send them to my lord, even to you. O my lord, by the command of Merodach you determine whatever place you prefer (to be in); no one can hinder you, my lord. O my lord, as I will send you by night the five shekels of silver which I am tying up, so do you put them away at night. O my lord, grant my request and do glorify my head, and in the sight of my brethren my head shall not be humbled. As to what I send you, O my lord, my lord will not be angry (?). I am your servant; your wishes, O my lord, I have performed superabundantly; therefore entrust me with the cow which you, my lord, shall send, and in the town of Uru-Batsu your name, O my lord, shall be celebrated for ever. If you, my lord, will grant me this favor, send [the cow] with Ili-ikisam my brother, and let it come, and I will work diligently at the business of my lord, if he will send the cow. I am tying up the five shekels of silver and am sending them in all haste to you, my lord.”
Ibgatum was evidently the lessee of a farm, and he does his best to get a cow out of his landlord in order to make up for the loss of his oxen. The 5 shekels probably represented the rent due to the landlord, and his promptitude in sending them was one of the arguments he used to get the cow. The word rendered “tie up” means literally “to yoke,” so that the shekels would appear to have been in the form of rings rather than bars of metal.