History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 3 — 33 - Ch. 3: Chaldaean Civilization, pt. 6

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Layard.

The constitution of the family was of a complex character.

It would appear that the people of each city were divided into clans, all of whose members claimed to be descended from a common ancestor, who had flourished at a more or less remote period.

The members of each clan were by no means all in the same social position, some having gone down in the world, others having raised themselves; and amongst them we find many different callings--from agricultural labourers to scribes, and from merchants to artisans.

No mutual tie existed among the majority of these members except the remembrance of their common origin, perhaps also a common religion, and eventual rights of succession or claims upon what belonged to each one individually.

The branches which had become gradually separated from the parent stock, and which, taken all together, formed the clan, possessed each, on the contrary, a very strict organization.

It is possible that, at the outset, the woman occupied the more important position, but at an early date the man became the head of the family,* and around him were ranged the wives, children, servants, and slaves, all of whom had their various duties and privileges.

* The change in the condition of women would be due to the influence of Semitic ideas and customs in Chaldaea.

He offered the household worship to the gods of his race, in accordance with special rites which had come down to him from his father; he made at the tombs of his ancestors, at such times as were customary, the offerings and prayers which assured their repose in the other world, and his powers were as extensive in civil as in religious matters.

He had absolute authority over all the members of his household, and anything undertaken by them without his consent was held invalid in the eyes of the law; his sons could not marry unless he had duly authorized them to do so.

For this purpose he appeared before the magistrate with the future couple, and the projected union could not be held as an actual marriage, until he had affixed his seal or made his nail-mark on the contract tablet.

It amounted, in fact, to a formal deed of sale, and the parents of the girl parted with her only in exchange for a proportionate gift from the bridegroom.

One girl would be valued at a silver shekel by weight, while another was worth a mina, another much less;* the handing over of the price was accompanied with a certain solemnity.

When the young man possessed no property as yet of his own, his family advanced him the sum needed for the purchase.

On her side, the maiden did not enter upon her new life empty handed; her father, or, in the case of his death, the head of the family at the time being, provided her with a dowry suited to her social position, which was often augmented by considerable presents from her grandmother, aunts, and cousins.

** * Shamashnazir receives, as the price of his daughter, ten shekels of silver, which appears to have been an average price in the class of life to which he belonged.

** The nature of the dowry in ancient times is clear from the Sumero-Assyrian tablets in which the old legal texts are explained, and again from the contents of the contracts of Tell-Sifr, and the documents on stone, such as the Micliaux stone, in which we see women bringing their possessions into the community by marriage, and yet retaining the entire disposition of them.

The dowry would consist of a carefully marked out field of corn, a grove of date-palms, a house in the town, a trousseau, furniture, slaves, or ready money; the whole would be committed to clay, of which there would be three copies at least, two being given by the scribe to the contracting parties, while the third would be deposited in the hands of the magistrate.

When the bride and bridegroom both belonged to the same class, or were possessed of equal fortunes, the relatives of the woman could exact an oath from the man that he would abstain from taking a second wife during her lifetime; a special article of the marriage agreement permitted the woman to go free should the husband break his faith, and bound him to pay an indemnity as a compensation for the insult he had offered her.

This engagement on the part of the man, however, did not affect his relations with his female servants.

In Chaldaea, as in Egypt, and indeed in the whole of the ancient world, they were always completely at the mercy of their purchaser, and the permission to treat them as he would had become so much of a custom that the begetting of children by their master was desired rather than otherwise: the complaints of the despised slave, who had not been taken into her master’s favour, formed one of the themes of popular poetry at a very early period.

When the contract tablet was finally sealed, one of the witnesses, who was required to be a free man, joined the hands of the young couple; nothing then remained to be done but to invite the blessing of the gods, and to end the day by a feast, which would unite both families and their guests.

The evil spirits, however, always in quest of an easy prey, were liable to find their way into the nuptial chamber, favoured by the confusion inseparable from all household rejoicing: prudence demanded that their attempts should be frustrated, and that the newly married couple should be protected from their attacks.

The companions of the bridegroom took possession of him, and, hand to hand and foot to foot, formed as it were a rampart round him with their bodies, and carried him off solemnly to his expectant bride.

He then again repeated the words which he had said in the morning: “I am the son of a prince, gold and silver shall fill thy bosom; thou, even thou, shalt be my wife, I myself will be thy husband;” and he continued: “As the fruits borne by an orchard, so great shall be the abundance which I shall pour out upon this woman.

” * The priest then called down upon him benedictions from on high: “Therefore, O ye (gods), all that is bad and that is not good in this man, drive it far from him and give him strength.

As for thee, O man, exhibit thy manhood, that this woman may be thy wife; thou, O woman, give that which makes thy womanhood, that this man may be thy husband.

” On the following morning, a thanksgiving sacrifice celebrated the completion of the marriage, and by purifying the new household drove from it the host of evil spirits.

** * This part of the ceremony is described on a Sumero- Assyrian tablet, of which two copies exist, discovered and translated by Pinches.

The interpretation appears to me to result from the fact that mention is made, at the commencement of the column, of impious beings without gods, who might approach the man; in other places magical exorcisms indicate how much those spirits were dreaded “who deprived the bride of the embraces of the man.

” As Pinches remarks, the formula is also found in the part of the poem of Gilgames, where Ishtar wishes to marry the hero, which shows that the rite and its accompanying words belong to a remote past.

** The text that describes these ceremonies was discovered and published by Pinches.

As far as I can judge, it contained an exorcism against the “knotting of the tag,” and the mention of this subject called up that of the marriage rites.

The ceremony commanded on the day following the marriage was probably a purification: as late as the time of Herodotus, the union of man and woman rendered both impure, and they had to perform an ablution before recommencing their occupations.

The woman, once bound, could only escape from the sovereign power of her husband by death or divorce; but divorce for her was rather a trial to which she submitted than a right of which she could freely make use.

Her husband could repudiate her at will without any complicated ceremonies.

It was enough for him to say: “Thou art not my wife!

” and to restore to her a sum of money equalling in value the dowry he had received with her;* he then sent her back to her father, with a letter informing him of the dissolution of the conjugal tie.

** But if in a moment of weariness or anger she hurled the fatal formula at him: “Thou are not my husband!

” her fate was sealed: she was thrown into the river and drowned.

*** * The sum is fixed at half a mina by the text of the Sumerian laws; but it was sometimes less, e. g. ten shekels, and sometimes more, e. g. a whole mina.

** Repudiation of a wife, and the ceremonial connected with it, are summarized, as far as ancient times are concerned, by a passage in the Sumero-Assyrian tablet, published by Rawlinson, and translated by Oppert-Menant.

Bertin, on the contrary, takes the same text to be a description of the principal marriage-rites, and from it he draws the conclusion that the possibility of divorce was not admitted in Chaldaea between persons of noble family.

Meissner very rightly returns to Oppert’s interpretation, a few details in which he corrects.

*** This fact was evident from the text of the so-called _Sumerian Laws concerning the Organization of the Family_, according to the generally received interpretation: according to that proposed by Oppert-Menant, it was the woman who had the right of causing the husband who had wronged her to be thrown into the river.

The publication of the contracts of Iltani and of Bashtum appear to have shown conclusively the correctness of the ordinary translation: uncertainty with regard to one word prevents us from knowing whether the guilty wife were strangled before being thrown into the water, or if she were committed to the river alive.

The adulteress was also punished with death, but with death by the sword: and when the use of iron became widespread, the blade was to be of that metal.

Another ancient custom only spared the criminal to devote her to a life of infamy: the outraged husband stripped her of her fleecy garments, giving her merely the loin-cloth in its place, which left her half naked, and then turned-her out of the house into the street, where she was at the mercy of the first passer-by.

Women of noble or wealthy families found in their fortune a certain protection from the abuse of marital authority.

The property which they brought with them by their marriage contract, remained at their own disposal.

* They had the entire management of it, they farmed it out, they sold it, they spent the income from it as they liked, without interference from any one: the man enjoyed the comforts which it procured, but he could not touch it, and his hold upon it was so slight that his creditors could not lay their hands on it.

* In the documents of the New Chaldaean Empire we find instances of married women selling their property themselves, and even of their being present, seated, at the conclusion of the sale, or of their ceding to a married daughter some property in their own possession, thus renouncing the power of disposing of it, and keeping merely the income from it; we have also instances of women reclaiming valuables of gold which their husbands had given away without their authorisation, and also obtaining an indemnity for the wrong they had suffered; also of their lending money to the mother-in-law of their brother; in fine, empowered to deal with their own property in every respect like an ordinary proprietor.

If by his own act he divorced his wife, he not only lost all benefit from her property, but he was obliged to make her an allowance or to pay her an indemnity;* at his death, the widow succeeded to these, without prejudice to what she was entitled to by her marriage contract or the will of the deceased.

The woman with a dowry, therefore, became more or less emancipated by virtue of her money.

As her departure deprived the household of as much as, and sometimes more than, she had brought into it, every care was taken that she should have no cause to retire from it, and that no pretext should be given to her parents for her recall to her old home; her wealth thus obtained for her the consideration and fair treatment which the law had, at the outset, denied to her.

* The restitution of the dowry after divorce is ascertained, as far as later times are concerned, from documents similar to that published by Kohler-Peiser, in which we see the second husband of a divorced wife claiming the dowry from the first husband.

The indemnity was fixed beforehand at six silver minae, in the marriage contract published by Oppert.

When, however, the wife was poor, she had to bear without complaint the whole burden of her inferior position.

Her parents had no other resource than to ask the highest possible price for her, according to the rank in which they lived, or in virtue of the personal qualities she was supposed to possess, and this amount, paid into their hands when they delivered her over to the husband, formed, if not an actual dowry for her, at least a provision for her in case of repudiation or widowhood: she was not, however, any less the slave of her husband--a privileged slave, it is true, and one whom he could not sell like his other slaves,* but of whom he could easily rid himself when her first youth was passed, or when she ceased to please him.

** * It appears, however, in certain cases not clearly specified, that the husband could sell his wife, if she were a shrew, as a slave.

** This form of marriage, which was of frequent occurrence in ancient times, fell into disuse among the upper classes, at least of Babylonian society.

A few examples, however, are found in late times.

It continued in use among the lower classes, and Herodotus affirms that in his time marriage markets were held regularly, as in our own time fairs are held for hiring male and female servants.