Chapter VI. Trades, Houses, And Land; Wages And Prices
Babylonia, as we have seen, was essentially an industrial country. In spite of its agricultural basis and the vast army of slaves with which it was filled, it was essentially a land of trades and manufactures. Its manufacturing fame was remembered into classical days. One of the rooms in the palace of Nero was hung with Babylonian tapestries, which had cost four millions of sesterces, or more than £32,000, and Cato, it is said, sold a Babylonian mantle because it was too costly and splendid for a Roman to wear. The wool of which the cloths and rugs of Babylonia were made was derived from the flocks which fed on the banks of the Euphrates, and a large body of artisans was employed in weaving it into tapestries and curtains, robes and carpets. They were woven in bright and vari-colored patterns; the figures of men and animals were depicted upon them and the bas-relief or fresco could be replaced upon the wall by a picture in tapestry. The dyes were mainly vegetable, though the kermes or cochineal-insect, out of which the precious scarlet dye was extracted, was brought from the neighborhood of the Indus. So at least Ktesias states in the age of the Persian empire; and since teak was found by Mr. Taylor among the ruins of Ur, it is probable that intercourse with the western coast of India went back to an early date. Indeed an old bilingual list of clothing gives sindhu as the name of a material which is explained to be “vegetable wool;” in this we must see the cotton which in the classical epoch was imported from the island of Tylos, in the Persian Gulf, but which, as its name declares, must have originally been “the Indian” plant.
The looms and weavers of Babylonia are, as is natural, repeatedly referred to in the contracts, many of which, moreover, relate to the sale and purchase of wool. One of them even shows us Belshazzar, the son and heir-apparent of the King Nabonidos, as a wool-merchant on a considerable scale. “The sum of 20 manehs for wool,” it says, “the property of Belshazzar, the son of the king, which has been handed over to Iddin-Merodach, the son of Basa, the son of Nur-Sin, through the agency of Nebo-zabit, the servant of the house of Belshazzar, the son of the king, and the secretaries of the son of the king. In the month Adar (February) of the eleventh year (of Nabonidos) the debtor shall pay the money, 20 manehs. The house of – the Persian and all the property of Iddin-Merodach in town and country shall be the security of Belshazzar, the son of the king, until he shall pay in full the money aforesaid. The money which shall (meanwhile) accrue upon (the wool) he shall pay as interest.” Then follow the names of five witnesses and a priest, as well as the date and the place of registration. This was Babylon, and the priest, Bel-akhi-iddin, who helped to witness the deed was a brother of Nabonidos and consequently the uncle of Belshazzar.
The weight of the wool that was sold is unfortunately not stated. But considering that 20 manehs, or £180, was paid for it, there must have been a considerable amount of it. In the reign of Cambyses the amount of wool needed for the robe of the image of the Sun-goddess  was as much as 5 manehs 5 shekels in weight. Wealthy land-owners kept large flocks of sheep, chiefly for the sake of their wool. Their prices varied greatly. Thus in the fourth year of Nabonidos, 6 shekels, or 18s., were given for a sheep, while in the thirteenth year of the same King, 18 sheep fetched only 35 shekels, or less than 6s., each. In the first year of Cyrus, 6 lambs were sold for 8¼ shekels, and 5 other lambs for 7¼ shekels, while 1 sheep cost only one shekel and a quarter; in his sixth year the price of a single sheep had risen to 4 shekels (12s.). Under Cambyses we find sheep selling for 7 and 7¼ shekels apiece. In the eighth year of Nabonidos, 100 sheep were sold for 50 shekels after they had been slaughtered; it is clear, therefore, that the dead animal was considered less valuable than the living one.
On the other hand, sheep cost a good deal to feed when the grazing season was over, and they had to be fed “in the stall.” A document dated in the seventh year of Cyrus states that 32 sheep required each day 1 pi 28 qas (or about 95 quarts) of grain, while 160 full-grown animals consumed daily 4 pi 16 qas, or more than 240 quarts. In the reign of Cambyses 1 pi 4 qas of fodder were needed daily for 20 old sheep, 100 qas for 100 younger sheep, and the same amount also for 200 lambs. At this time 2 pi of grain cost 6½ shekels; consequently the cost of keeping the 20 old sheep alone was about 10s 6d. a day. To this had to be added the wages of the shepherds, who were free Bedâwin. Hence, it is not wonderful that the owner demanded 7 shekels, or 21s., for the sheep he had to sell.
In the Edin or “field,” however, their keep came to but little. The pasturage was common property, and it was only the wages of the Aramean shepherds who looked after the flock which involved an outlay. The five shepherds who, in the tenth year of Nabonidos, were paid for their services by the overseer of the royal flocks in the town of Ruzabu received 30 shekels of silver and a gur of grain. The gur contained 180 qas, and since in the first year of Cyrus two men received 2 pi 30 qas, or 102 qas, of grain for their support during a month of thirty days, we may, perhaps, infer that the wages were intended to cover the third part of a month. In this case each man would have been paid at the rate of 9 shekels, or 37s., a month. It is, however, possible that the wages were really intended for the full month. The ancient Greeks considered a quart of wheat a sufficient daily allowance for a grown man, and 180 qas would mean about 1⅗ of a quart a day for each man.
We may gather from a contract dated the 5th of Sivan in the eighteenth year of Darius that it was not customary to pay for any sheep that were sold until they had been driven into the city, the cost of doing so being included in the price. The contract is as follows: “One hundred sheep of the house of Akhabtum, the mother of Sa-Bel-iddin, the servant of Bel-sunu, that have been sold to La-Bel, the son of Khabdiya, on the 10th day of the month Ab in the eighteenth year of Darius the king: The sheep, 200 in number, must be brought into Babylon and delivered to Supêsu, the servant of Sa-Bel-iddin. If 15 manehs of silver are not paid for the sheep on the 10th of Ab, they must be paid on 20th of the month. If the money, amounting to 15 manehs, is not paid, then interest shall be paid according to this agreement at the rate of one shekel for each maneh per month.” Then come the names of eight witnesses and a priest, the date, and the place of registration, which was a town called Tsikhu.
The contract is interesting from several points of view. The sheep, it will be seen, belonged to a woman, and not to her son, who was “the servant” of a Babylonian gentleman and had another “servant” who acted as his agent at Babylon. The father of the purchaser of the sheep bears the Hebrew name of 'Abdî, which is transcribed into Babylonian in the usual fashion, and the name of the purchaser himself, which may be translated “(There is) no Bel,” may imply that he was a Jew. Akhabtum and her son were doubtless Arameans, and it is noticeable that the latter is termed a “servant” and not a “slave.”
Before entering the city an octroi duty had to be paid upon the sheep as upon other produce of the country. The custom-house was at the gate, and the duty is accordingly called “gate-money” in the contracts. In front of the gate was an open space, the rébit, such as may still be seen at the entrance to an Oriental town, and which was used as a market-place. The rébit of Nineveh lay on the north side of the city, in the direction where Sargon built his palace, the ruins of which are now known as Khorsabad. But besides the market-place outside the walls there were also open spaces inside them where markets could be held and sheep and cattle sold. Babylon, it would seem, was full of such public “squares,” and so, too, was Nineveh. The suqi or “streets” led into them, long, narrow lanes through which a chariot or cart could be driven with difficulty. Here and there, however, there were streets of a broader and better character, called suli, which originally denoted the raised and paved ascents which led to a temple. It was along these that the religious processions were conducted, and the King and his generals passed over them in triumph after a victory. One of these main streets, called Â-ibur-sabu, intersected Babylon; it was constructed of brick by Nebuchadnezzar, paved with large slabs of stone, and raised to a considerable height. It started from the principal gate of the city, and after passing Ê-Saggil, the great temple of Bel-Merodach, was carried as far as the sanctuary of Istar. When Assur-bani-pal's army captured Babylon, after a long siege, the “mercy-seats” of the gods and the paved roads were “cleansed” by order of the Assyrian King and the advice of “the prophets,” while the ordinary streets and lanes were left to themselves.
It was in these latter streets, however, that the shops and bazaars were situated. Here the trade of the country was carried on in shops which possessed no windows, but were sheltered from the sun by awnings that were stretched across the street. Behind the shops were magazines and store-houses, as well as the rooms in which the larger industries, like that of weaving, were carried on. The scavengers of the streets were probably dogs. As early as the time of Khammurabi, however, there were officers termed rabiani, whose duty it was to look after “the city, the walls, and the streets.” The streets, moreover, had separate names.
Here and there “beer-houses” were to be found, answering to the public-houses of to-day, as well as regular inns. The beer-houses are not infrequently alluded to in the texts, and a deed relating to the purchase of a house in Sippara, of the age of Khammurabi, mentions one that was in a sort of underground cellar, like some of the beer-houses of modern Germany.
Sippara lay on both sides of the Euphrates, like Babylon, and its two halves were probably connected by a pontoon-bridge, as we know was the case at Babylon. Tolls were levied for passing over the latter, and probably also for passing under it in boats. At all events a document translated by Mr. Pinches shows that the quay-duties were paid into the same department of the government as the tolls derived from the bridge. The document, which is dated in the twenty-sixth year of Darius, is so interesting that it may be quoted in full: “The revenue derived from the bridge and the quays, and the guard-house, which is under the control of Guzanu, the captain of Babylon, of which Sirku, the son of Iddinâ, has charge, besides the amount derived from the tolls levied at the bridge of Guzanu, the captain of Babylon, of which Muranu, the son of Nebo-kin-abli, and Nebo-bullidhsu, the son of Guzanu, have charge: Kharitsanu and Iqubu (Jacob) and Nergal-ibni are the watchmen of the bridge. Sirku, the son of Iddinâ, the son of Egibi, and Muranu, the son of Nebo-kin-abli, the son of the watchman of the pontoon, have paid to Bel-asûa, the son of Nergal-yubal-lidh, the son of Mudammiq-Rimmon, and Ubaru, the son of Bel-akhi-erba, the son of the watchman of the pontoon, as dues for a month, 15 shekels of white silver, in one-shekel pieces and coined. Bel-asûa and Ubaru shall guard the ships which are moored under the bridge. Muranu and his trustees, Bel-asûa and Ubaru, shall not pay the money derived from the tolls levied at the bridge, which is due each month from Sirku in the absence of the latter. All the traffic over the bridge shall be reported by Bel-asûa and Ubaru to Sirku and the watchmen of the bridge.”
House-property was valuable, especially if it included shops. As far back as the reign of Eri-Aku, or Arisch, 2¼ shekels were given for one which stood on a piece of ground only 1⅚ sar in area, the sar, if Dr. Reisner is right, being the eighteen-hundredths part of the feddan or acre. In the twentieth year of Assur-bani-pal, just after a war which had desolated Babylonia, a house was sold in the provincial town of Erech for 75 shekels (£11 5s.), and in the beginning of the reign of Nabonidos a carpenter's shop in Borsippa, the suburb of Babylon, which was not more than 7 rods, 5 cubits, and 18 inches in length, was bought by the agent of the Syrian Ben-Hadad-nathan and his wife for 11½ manehs, or £103 10s. On the other hand, in the reign of Cambyses, we hear of smaller prices being given for houses in Babylon, 4½ manehs for a house with a piece of land attached to it, and 2 manehs for one that had been the joint property of a man and his wife; while in the ninth year of Nergal-sharezer a house was sold for only 52½ shekels.
Houses, however, were more frequently let than sold. Already, in the age of Khammurabi, we have the record of the lease of a house for eight years. At a later date contracts relating to the renting of houses are numerous. Thus in the sixth year of Cyrus a house was let at a yearly rent of 10 shekels, part of which was to be paid at the beginning of the year and the rest in the middle of it. The tenant was to renew the fences when necessary and repair all dilapidations. He was also expected to send a present to his landlord thrice a year in the months of Nisan, Tammuz, and Kisleu. Other houses in Babylon in the Persian age were let at yearly rents of 5 shekels, 5½ shekels, 7½ shekels, 9 shekels, 15 shekels, 20 shekels, 23 shekels, and 35 shekels, the leases running for two, three, five, and more years. The tenant usually undertook to keep the property in repair and to make good all dilapidations. Loss in case of fire or other accidents also fell upon him. Most of the houses seem to have been inhabited by single families; but there were tenements or flats as well, the rent of which was naturally lower than that of a whole house. Thus we find a woman paying only 2 shekels, or 6s., a year for a tenement in the reign of Cambyses.
Any violation of the lease involved a fine, the amount of which was stated in the contract. A house, for instance, was let at Babylon in the first year of Cambyses for 5 shekels a year, the rent to be paid in two halves “at the beginning and in the middle of the year.” In this case a breach of the contract was to be punished by a fine of 10 shekels, or double the amount of the rent. In other cases the fine was as much as a maneh of silver.
Occasionally the primitive custom was retained of paying the rent in kind instead of in coin. We even hear of “six overcoats” being taken in lieu of rent. The rent of a house might also take the place of interest upon a loan, and the property be handed over to the creditor as security for a debt. Thus in the second and last year of the reign of Evil-Merodach (560 B.C.), and on the fourth of the month Ab, the following agreement was drawn up at Babylon: “Four manehs of silver belonging to Nadin-akhi, the son of Nur-Ea, the son of Masdukku, received from Sapik-zeri, the son of Merodach-nazir, the son of Liu-Merodach. The house of Sapik-zeri, which is in the street Khuburru, and adjoins the houses of Rimut-Bel, the son of Zeriya, the son of the Egyptian, and of Zeriya, the son of Bel-edheru, shall be handed over as security to Nadin-akhi. No rent shall be paid for it, and no interest demanded for the debt. Sapik-zeri shall have it for three years. He must renew the fences and repair all injuries to the walls. At the end of the three years Sapik-zeri shall repay the money—namely, four manehs—to Nadin-akhi, and the latter shall vacate the house. The rent of the warehouse of the eunuch is included, of which Sapik-zeri enjoys the use. Whatever doors Nadin-akhi may have added to the house during his tenancy he shall take away.” Then come the names of three witnesses, one of them being the brother of the creditor, as well as of the clerk who drew up the document.
A few years later, in the fifth year of Nabonidos (551 B.C.), we find the heir-apparent, Belshazzar, receiving house-property on similar terms. “The house of Nebo-akhi-iddin, the son of Sula, the son of Egibi,” we read, “which adjoins the house of Bel-iddin, the son of Birrut, the son of the life-guardsman, is handed over for three years as security for a loan of 1½ manehs to Nebo-kin-akhi, the agent of Belshazzar, the son of the king, on the following conditions: no rent shall be paid for the house, and no interest paid on the debt. The tenant shall renew the fences and make good all dilapidations. At the end of three years the 1½ manehs shall be paid by Nebo-akhi-iddin to Nebo-kin-akhi, and Nebo-kin-akhi shall vacate the house of Nebo-akhi-iddin. Witnessed by Kab-tiya, the son of Talnea, the son of Egibi; by Sapik-zeri, the son of Nergal-yukin, the son of Sin-karab-seme; by Nebo-zer-ibni, the son of Ardia, and the clerk, Bel-akhi-iqisa, the son of Nebo-balasu-ikbi, at Babylon, the 21st day of Nisam (March) and the fifth year of Nabonidos, King of Babylon.”
This was not the only transaction of the kind in which Belshazzar appears, though it is true that his business was carried on by means of agents. Six years later we have another contract relating to his commercial dealings which has already been quoted above. It illustrates the intensely commercial spirit of the Babylonians, and we may form some idea of the high estimation in which trade was held when we see the eldest son of the reigning King acting as a wool merchant and carrying on business like an ordinary merchant.
An interesting document, drawn up in Babylonia in the eleventh year of Sargon (710 B.C.), shortly after the overthrow of Merodach-Baladan, contains an account of a lawsuit which resulted from the purchase of two “ruined houses” in Dur-ilu, a town on the frontier of Elam. They had been purchased by a certain Nebo-liu for 85 shekels, with the intention of pulling them down and erecting new buildings on the site. In order to pay the purchase money Nebo-liu demanded back from “Bel-usatu, the son of Ipunu,” the sum of 30 shekels which he claimed to have lent him. Bel-usatu at first denied the claim, and the matter was brought into court. There judgment was given in favor of the plaintiff, and the defendant was ordered to pay him 45 shekels, 15, or half the amount claimed, being for “costs.” Thereupon Bel-usatu proposed:
“ ‘Instead of the money, take my houses, which are in the town of Der.’ The title-deeds of these houses, the longer side of which was bounded to the east by the house of Bea, the son of Sulâ, and to the west by the entrance to a field which partly belonged to the property, while the shorter side was bounded to the north by the house of Ittabsi, and to the south by the house of Likimmâ, were signed and sealed by Nebo-usatu, who pledged himself not to retract the deed or make any subsequent claim, and they were then handed over to Nebo-liu.” The troubles of the latter, however, were not yet at an end. “Ilu-rabu-bel-sanât, Sennacherib, and Labasu, the sons of Rakhaz the [priest] of the great god, said to Nebo-liu: ‘Seventy-three shekels of your money you have received from our father. Give us, therefore, 50 shekels and we will deliver to you the house and its garden which belonged to our father.’ The house, which was fit only to be pulled down and rebuilt, along with a grove of forty date-bearing palms, was situated on the bank of the canal of Dûtu in Dur-ilu, its longer side adjoining on the north the house of Edheru, the son of Baniya, the priest of Â, and on the south the canal of Dûtu, while its shorter side was bounded on the east by the house of Nergal-epus, and on the west by the street Mutaqutu. Nebo-liu agreed, and looked out and gave Rakhaz and his sons 50 shekels of silver, together with an overcoat and two shekels by way of a bakshish to bind the bargain, the whole amounting to 52 shekels, paid in full.” The custom of adding a bakshish or “present” to the purchase-money at the conclusion of a bargain is still characteristic of the East. Other examples of it are met with in the Babylonian contracts, and prove how immemorially old it is. Thus in the second year of Darius, when the three sons of a “smith” sold a house near the Gate of Zamama, at Babylon, to the grandson of another “smith,” besides the purchase money for the house, which amounted to 67½ shekels, the buyer gave in addition a bakshish of 2½ shekels (7s. 6d.) as well as “a dress for the lady of the house.” Three shekels were further given as “a present” for sealing the deed. So too, the negotiations for the sale of some land in the second year of Evil-Merodach were accompanied by a bakshish of 5 shekels.
Lawsuits connected with the sale or lease of houses do not seem to have been uncommon. One of the documents which have come down to us from the ancient records of Babylon is a list of “the judges before whom Sapik-zeri, the son of Zirutu, and Baladhu, the son of Nasikatum, the slave of the secretary for the Marshlands,” were called upon to appear in a suit relating to “the house and deed which Zirutu, the father of Sapik-zeri, had sealed and given to Baladhu,” who had afterward handed both of them over to Sapik-zeri. Among the judges we find the governor of the Marshlands, who acted as president, the sub-governor, the mayor of Erech, the priest of Ur, and one of the governors of the district “beyond” the Euphrates. The list is dated the 6th of Nisan or March, in the seventeenth year of Nebuchadnezzar.
The value of land was proportionate to that of house-property. In the early days of Babylonia its value was fixed by the amount of grain that could be grown upon it, and it was accordingly in grain that the owner was paid by the purchaser or lessee. Gradually, however, a metal currency took the place of the grain, and in the later age of Babylonian history even the rent was but rarely paid in kind. We learn from a lawsuit decided in the reign of Samsu-iluna, the son of Khammurabi, that it was customary for an estate to be “paced round” by the rabianum or “magistrates” of the city. The ceremony was equivalent to “beating the bounds” of a parish in modern England, and it is probable that it was performed every year. Such at least is the custom in Egypt, where the limits of a piece of property are measured and fixed annually. The Babylonian document in which the custom is referred to relates to a dispute about a plantation of acacias which grew in the neighborhood of the modern Tel Sifr. The magistrates, before whom it was brought, are described as looking after not only the city but also “the walls and streets,” from which we may gather that municipal commissioners already existed in the Babylonian towns. The plaintiff made oath before them over the copper libation-bowl of the god of Boundaries, which thus took the place of the Bible in an English court of law.
A few years later, in the reign of Ammi-zadok, three men rented a field for three years on terms of partnership, agreeing to give the owner during the first two years 1 gur of grain upon each feddan or acre. The whole of the third harvest was to go to the lessees, and the partners were to divide the crop in equal shares “on the day of the harvest.”
When we come to the twelfth century B.C., however, the maneh and shekel have been substituted for the crops of the field. Thus we hear of 704 shekels and a fraction being paid for a field which was calculated to produce 3 gur of corn, and of 110 shekels being given for another estate which contained a grove of date-palms and on which 2 gur of grain were sown. How much grain could be grown on a piece of land we can gather from the official reports of the cadastral survey. In the sixth year of Cyrus, for example, the following report was drawn up of the “measurement of a corn-field and of the corn in the ear” belonging to a Babylonian taxpayer:
The cadastral survey for purposes of taxation went back to an early period of Babylonian history. It was already at work in the age of Sargon of Akkad. The survey of the district or principality of Lagas (now Tello) which was drawn up in that remote epoch of history is in our hands, and is interesting on account of its reference to a “governor” of the land of the Amorites, or Canaan, who bears the Canaanitish name of Urimelech. The survey states that the district in question contained 39,694 acres, 1,325 sar, as well as 17 large towns and 8 subdivisions.
Another cadastral survey from Lagas, but of the period of Khammurabi, which has recently been published by Dr. Scheil, tells us that the towns on the lower banks of “the canal of Lagas” had to pay the treasury each year 35⅚ shekels of silver according to the assessment of the tax-collector Sin-mustal. One of the towns was that of the Aramean tribe of Pekod. Another is called the town of the Brewers, and another is described as “the Copper-Foundry.” Most of the towns were assessed at half a shekel, though there were some which had to pay a shekel and more. Among the latter was the town of Ninâ, which gave its name to the more famous Nineveh on the Tigris. The surveyor, it should be added, was an important personage in Babylonian society, and the contract tablets of the second Babylonian empire not unfrequently mention him.
Assyria, like Babylonia, has yielded us a good many deeds relating to the sale and lease of houses and landed estate. We can estimate from them the average value of house-property in Nineveh in the time of the second Assyrian empire, when the wealth of the Eastern world was being poured into it and the Assyrian kings were striving to divert the trade of Phœnicia into their own hands. Thus, in 694 B.C., a house with two doors was sold for 3 manehs 20 shekels, and two years subsequently another which adjoined it was purchased for 1 maneh “according to the royal standard.” The contract for the sale is a good example of what an Assyrian deed of sale in such a case was like. “The nail-marks of Sar-ludari, Akhassuru, and Amat-Suhla, the wife of Bel-suri, the official, the son of the priest, and owner of the house which is sold. The house, which is in thorough repair, with its woodwork, doors, and court, situated in the city of Nineveh and adjoining the houses of Mannu-ki-akhi and Ilu-ittiya and the street Sipru, has been negotiated for by Zil-Assur, the Egyptian secretary. He has bought it for 1 maneh of silver according to the royal standard from Sar-ludari, Akhassuru, and Amat-Suhla, the wife of Bel-duri. The money has been paid in full, and the house received as bought. Withdrawal from the contract, lawsuits, and claims are hereby excluded. Whoever hereafter at any time, whether these men or others, shall bring an action and claims against Zil-Assur, shall be fined 10 manehs of silver. Witnessed by Susanqu-khatna-nis, Murmaza the official, Rasuh the sailor, Nebo-dur-uzur the champion, Murmaza the naval captain, Sin-sar-uzur, and Zidqa (Zedekiah). The sixteenth of Sivan during the year of office of Zaza, the governor of Arpad (692 B.C.).” It is noticeable that the first witness has a Syrian name.
One of the characteristics of the Assyrian deeds is that so few of the parties who appear in them are able to write their names. Nail-marks take the place of seals even in the case of persons who hold official positions and who are shown by the contracts to have been men of property. In this respect Assyria offers a striking contrast to Babylonia, where “the nail-mark” seldom makes its appearance. Closely connected with this inability to write is the absence of the seal-cylinder, which was part of the ordinary dress of the Babylonian gentleman. In the Assyrian contracts, on the other hand, it is conspicuous by its absence. The use of it in Assyria was an imitation of Babylonian manners, and was confined for the most part to the scribes and higher official class, who had received a literary education.
Land in Assyria was measured by homers rather than by feddans or acres as in Babylonia. In 674 B.C. an estate of 35 homers, in the town of Sairi, was sold for 5 manehs, any infringement of the contract being punished by a fine of 10 manehs of silver or one of gold, to be paid into the treasury of the temple of Istar. We learn incidentally from this that the value of gold to silver at the time was as one to ten. Five years previously 6 homers of land in another small Assyrian town had been let at an annual rent of 1 maneh of silver “according to the standard of Carchemish.” In the reign of Assur-bani-pal a homer of corn-land was rented for six years for 10 shekels a year. The land was calculated to produce 9 qas of grain, and at the end of the first three years it was stipulated that there should be a rotation of crops. About the same time two fields, enclosing an area of 3⅔ homers, were leased by a certain Rimu-ana-Bel of Beth-Abimelech, whose father's name, Yatanael, shows that he was of Syrian origin. The steward of “the son of a king” took them for six years at an annual rent of 12 shekels. One of the fields contained a well, and yielded 15 qas of grain to each homer. It is stated in the contract that the fields had no mortgage upon them, and that the lessee had a right to the whole of the crop which they produced.
It was not in Assyria only that plots of ground could be leased and sold in accordance with the provisions of Assyrian law. Conquest had brought landed property into the hands of Assyrians in other parts of the Eastern world, and it could be put up to auction at Nineveh, where the proprietors lived. About 660 B.C., for instance, a considerable estate was thus sold in the oasis of Singara, in the centre of Mesopotamia. It lay within the precincts of the temple of Istar, and contained a grove of 1,000 young palms. It included, moreover, a field of 2 homers planted with terebinths, house-property extending over 6 homers, a house with a corn-field attached to it, and another house which stood in the grove of Yarkhu, the Moon-god. The whole was sold for 4 shekels of silver “according to the standard of Carchemish,” and the penalty for any infringement of the contract was again to be the payment of a maneh of gold (£90) to the treasury of the goddess Istar. When one of the parties to the contract was of Aramean descent, it was usual to add an explanatory docket in Aramaic to the deed of sale. Indeed, this seems to have been sometimes done even where there were no Arameans in the case, so thoroughly had Aramaic become the common language of trade. Thus in the year of Sennacherib's office as eponym (687 B.C.) we hear of the sale of three shops in Nineveh on the part of a certain Dain-kurban, whose name is written in Aramaic letters on the outer envelope of the deed of sale. Thirty shekels were paid for them, and a fine of 10 manehs imposed upon anyone who should attempt to invalidate the sale. The shops seem to have been situated in the Syrian quarter of the city, as we are told that they were opposite the tenement of Nakharau, “the man of Nahor.”