History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 3 — 35 - Ch. 3: Chaldaean Civilization, pt. 8

[Illustration: 294-text.

jpg] If we knew more of the internal history of the great Chaldaean cities, we should no doubt come to see what an important part the servile element played in them; and could we trace it back for a few generations, we should probably discover that there were few great families who did not reckon a slave or a freedman among their ancestors.

It would be interesting to follow this people, made up of such complex elements, in all their daily work and recreation, as we are able to do in the case of contemporary Egyptians; but the monuments which might furnish us with the necessary materials are scarce, and the positive information to be gleaned from them amounts to but little.

We are tolerably safe, however, in supposing the more wealthy cities to have been, as a whole, very similar in appearance to those existing at the present day in the regions which as yet have been scarcely touched by the advent of European civilization.

Sinuous, narrow, muddy streets, littered with domestic refuse and organic detritus, in which flocks of ravens and wandering packs of dogs perform with more or less efficiency the duties of sanitary officers; whole quarters of the town composed of huts made of reeds and puddled clay, low houses of crude brick, surmounted perhaps even in those times with the conical domes we find later on the Assyrian bas-reliefs; crowded and noisy bazaars, where each trade is located in its special lanes and blind alleys; silent and desolate spaces occupied by palaces and gardens, in which the private life of the wealthy was concealed from public gaze; and looking down upon this medley of individual dwellings, the palaces and temples with their ziggurats crowned with gilded and painted sanctuaries.

In the ruins of Uru, Eridu, and Uruk, the remains of houses belonging doubtless to well-to-do families have been brought to light.

They are built of fine bricks, whose courses are cemented together with a thin layer of bitumen, but they they are only lighted internally by small appertures pierced at irregular distances in the upper part of the walls: the low arched doorway, closed by a heavy two-leaved door, leads into a blind passage, which opens as a rule on the courtyard in the centre of the building.

[Illustration: 208a.

jpg Chaldean houses at Uru.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by Taylor.

[Illustration: 208b plans of houses excavated at Eridu and Ubu.

] These plans were drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from sketches by Taylor.

The houses reproduced to the left of the plan were those uncovered in the ruins of Uru; those on the right belong to the ruins of Eridu.

On the latter, the niches mentioned in the text will be found indicated.

In the interior may still be distinguished the small oblong rooms, sometimes vaulted, sometimes roofed with a flat, ceiling supported by trunks of palm trees;* the walls are often of a considerable thickness, in which are found narrow niches here and there.

The majority of the rooms were merely store-chambers, and contained the family provisions and treasures; others served as living-rooms, and were provided with furniture.

The latter, in the houses of the richer citizens no less than in those of the people, was of a very simple kind, and was mostly composed of chairs and stools, similar to those in the royal palaces;

the bedrooms contained the linen chests and the beds with their thin mattresses, coverings, and cushions, and perhaps wooden head-rests, resembling those found in Africa,** but the Chaldaeans slept mostly on mats spread on the ground.

* Taylor, _Notes on the Ruins of Mugeyer_, in the _Journ.

of the Royal As.

Soc_, vol. xv.

p. 266, found the remains of the palm-tree beams which formed the terrace still existing.

He thinks (_Notes on Tel-el-Lahm_, etc. , in the _Journ, of the Royal As.

Soc.

_, vol. xv.

p. 411) with Loftus that some of the chambers were vaulted.

Cf.

upon the custom of vaulting in Chaldaean houses, Piereot-Cupiez, _Histoire de l’Art_, vol. ii.

p. 163, et seq.

** The dressing of the hair in coils and elaborate erections, as seen in the various figures engraved upon Chaldaean intaglios (cf.

what is said of the different ways of arranging the hair on p. 262 of this volume), appears to have necessitated the use of these articles of furniture;

such complicated erections of hair must have lasted several days at least, and would not have kept in condition so long except for the use of the head-rest.

An oven for baking occupied a corner of the courtyard, side by side with the stones for grinding the corn; the ashes on the hearth were always aglow, and if by chance the fire went out, the fire-stick was always at hand to relight it, as in Egypt.

The kitchen utensils and household pottery comprised a few large copper pans and earthenware pots rounded at the base, dishes, water and wine jars, and heavy plates of coarse ware; metal had not as yet superseded stone, and in the same house we meet with bronze axes and hammers side by side with the same implements in cut flint, besides knives, scrapers, and mace-heads.

* * Implements in flint and other kinds of stone have been discovered by Taylor, and are now in the British Museum.

The bronze implements come partly from the tombs of Mugheir, and partly from the ruins explored by Loftus at Tell-Sifr--that is to say, the ancient cities of Uru and Larsam: the name of Tell-Sifr, the “mound of copper,” comes from the quantity of objects in copper which have been discovered there.

[Illustration: 300. jpg CHALDAEAN HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS IN TERRA-COTTA] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by G. Rawlinson, and the heliogravure in Heuzey-Sarzec.

At the present day the women of the country of the Euphrates spend a great part of their time on the roofs of their dwellings.

* They install themselves there in the morning, till they are driven away by the heat;

as soon as the sun gets low in the heavens, they return to their post, and either pass the day on neighbouring roofs whilst they bake, cook, wash and dry the linen; or, if they have slaves to attend to such menial occupations, they sew and embroider in the open air.

* Olivier, _Voyage dans l’Empire Othoman,_ vol. ii.

pp. 356, 357, 381, 382, 392, 393. They come down into the interior of the house during the hottest hours of the day.

In most of the wealthy houses, the coolest room is one below the level of the courtyard, into which but little light can penetrate.

It is paved with plaques of polished gypsum, which resembles our finest grey-and-white marble, and the walls are covered with a coat of delicate plastering, smooth to the touch and agreeable to the eye.

This is watered several times during the day in hot weather, and the evaporation from it cools the air.

The few ruined habitations which have as yet been explored seem to bear witness to a considerable similarity between the requirements and customs of ancient times and those of to-day.

Like the modern women of Bagdad and Mosul, the Chaldaean women of old preferred an existence in the open air, in spite of its publicity, to a seclusion within stuffy rooms or narrow courts.

The heat of the sun, cold, rain, and illness obliged them at times to seek a refuge within four walls, but as soon as they could conveniently escape from them, they climbed up on to their roof to pass the greater part of their time there.

Many families of the lower and middle classes owned the houses which they occupied.

They constituted a patrimony which the owners made every effort to preserve intact through all reverses of fortune.

* The head of the family bequeathed it to his widow or his eldest son, or left it undivided to his heirs, in the assurance, no doubt, that one of them would buy up the rights of the others.

* A house could be let for various lengths of time--for three months, for a year, for five years, for an indefinite term, but with a minimum of six months, since the rent is payable at the beginning and in the middle of each year.

The remainder of his goods, farms, gardens, corn-lands, slaves, furniture, and jewels, were divided among the brothers or natural descendants, “from the mouth to the gold;” that is to say, from the moment of announcing the beginning of the business, to that when each one received his share.

In order to invest this act with greater solemnity, it took place usually in the presence of a priest.

Those interested repaired to the temple, “to the gate of the god;” they placed the whole of the inheritance in the hands of the chosen arbitrator, and demanded of him to divide it justly; or the eldest brother perhaps anticipated the apportionment, and the priest had merely to sanction the result, or settle the differences which might arise among the lawful recipients in the course of the operation.

When this was accomplished, the legatees had to declare themselves satisfied; and when no further claims arose, they had to sign an engagement before the priestly arbitrator that they would henceforth refrain from all quarrelling on the subject, and that they would never make a complaint one against the other.

By dint of these continual redistributions from one generation to another, the largest fortunes soon became dispersed: the individual shares became smaller and smaller, and scarcely sufficed to keep a family, so that the slightest reverse obliged the possessor to have recourse to usurers.

The Chaldaeans, like the Egyptians, were unacquainted with the use of money, but from the earliest times the employment of precious metals for purposes of exchange was practised among them to an enormous extent.

Though copper and gold were both used, silver was the principal medium in these transactions, and formed the standard value of all purchaseable objects.

It was never cut into flat rings or twists of wire, as was the case with the Egyptian “tabnu;” it was melted into small unstamped ingots, which were passed from hand to hand by weight, being tested in the scales at each transaction.

“To weigh” was in the ordinary language the equivalent for “payment in metal,” whereas “to measure” denoted that the payment was in grain.

The ingots for exchange were, therefore, designated by the name of the weights to which they corresponded.

The lowest unit was a shekel, weighing on an average nearly half an ounce, sixty shekels making a mina, and sixty minas a talent.

It is a question whether the Chaldaeanns possessed in early times, as did the Assyrians of a later period, two kinds of shekels and minas, one heavy and the other light.

Whether the loan were in metal, grain, or any other substance, the interest was very high.

* A very ancient law fixed it in certain cases at twelve drachmas per mina, per annum--that is to say, at twenty per cent.

--and more recent texts show us that, when raised to twenty-five per cent.

, it did not appear to them abnormal.

* We find several different examples, during the Second Chaldaeann Empire, of an exchange of corn for provisions and liquids, or of beams for dates.

As a fact, exchange has never completely died out in these regions, and at the present day, in Chaldaea, as in Egypt, corn is used in many cases either to pay Government taxes or to discharge commercial debts.

The commerce of the chief cities was almost entirely concentrated in the temples.

The large quantities of metals and cereals constantly brought to the god, either as part of the fixed temple revenue, or as daily offerings, accumulated so rapidly, that they would have overflowed the storehouses, had not a means been devised of utilizing them quickly: the priests treated them as articles of commerce and made a profit out of them.

* Every bargain necessitated the calling in of a public scribe.

The bill, drawn up before witnesses on a clay tablet, enumerated the sums paid out, the names of the parties, the rate per cent.

, the date of repayment, and sometimes a penal clause in the event of fraud or insolvency; the tablet remained in the possession of the creditor until the debt had been completely discharged.

The borrower often gave as a pledge either slaves, a field, or a house, or certain of his friends would pledge on his behalf their own personal fortune; at times he would pay by the labour of his own hands the interest which he would otherwise have been unable to meet, and the stipulation was previously made in the contract of the number of days of corvee which he should periodically fulfil for his creditor.

If, in spite of all this, the debtor was unable to procure the necessary funds to meet his engagements, the principal became augmented by a fixed sum--for instance, one-third--and continued to increase at this rate until the total value of the amount reached that of the security:** the slave, the field, or the house then ceased to belong to their former, master, subject to a right of redemption, of which he was rarely able to avail himself for lack of means.

*** * It was to the god himself--Shamash, for example--that the loan was supposed to be made, and it is to him that the contracts stipulate that the capital and interest shall be paid.

It is curious to lind among the most successful money- lenders several princesses consecrated to the sun-god.

** It is easy to foresee, from the contracts of the New Assyrian or Babylonian Empire, how in this manner the original sum lent became doubled and trebled; generally the interest accumulated till it was quadrupled, after which, no doubt, the security was taken by the creditor.

They probably calculated that the capital and compound interest was by then equal in value to the person or object given as a security.