History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 3 — 38 - Ch. 3: Chaldaean Civilization, pt. 11

They paid on account of it a tax which varied at different epochs, but which was always burthensome; but when they had once satisfied this exaction, and paid the dues which the temples might claim on behalf of the gods, neither the State nor any individual had the right to interfere in their administration of it, or put any restrictions upon them.

Some proprietors cultivated their lands themselves--the poor by their own labour, the rich by the aid of some trustworthy slave whom they interested in the success of his farming by assigning him a certain percentage on the net return.

Sometimes the lands were leased out in whole or in part to free peasants who relieved the proprietors of all the worry and risks of managing it themselves.

A survey of the area of each state had been made at an early age, and the lots into which it had been divided were registered on clay tablets containing the name of the proprietor as well as those of his neighbours, together with such indications of the features of the land, dykes, canals, rivers, and buildings as would serve to define its boundaries: rough plans accompanied the description, and in the most complicated instances interpreted it to the eye.

This survey was frequently repeated, and enabled the sovereign to arrange his scheme of taxation on a solid basis, and to calculate the product of it without material error.

Gardens and groves of date-palms, together with large regions devoted to rough attempts at vegetable culture, were often to be met with, especially in the neighbourhood of towns; these paid their contributions to the State, as well as the owners’rent, in kind--in fruit, vegetables, and fresh or dried dates.

The best soil was reserved, for the growth of wheat and other cereals, and its extent was measured in terms of corn;

corn was also the standard in which the revenue was reckoned both in public and private contracts.

Such and such a field required about fifty litres of seed to the arura.

Another needed sixty-two or seventy-five according to the fertility of the land and its locality.

Landed property was placed under the guardianship of the gods, and its transfer or cession was accompanied by formalities of a half-religious, half-magical character: the party giving delivery of it called down upon the head of any one who would dare in the future to dispute the validity of the deed, imprecations of which the text was inserted on a portion of the surface of an egg-shaped nodule of flint, basalt, or other hard stone.

These little monuments display on their cone-shaped end a series of figures, sometimes arranged in two parallel divisions, sometimes scattered over the surface, which represent the deities invoked to watch over the sanctity of the contract.

It was a kind of representation in miniature of the aspect which the heavens presented to the Chaldaeans.

The disks of the sun and moon, together with Venus-Ashtar, are the prominent elements in the scene: the zodiacal figures, or the symbols employed to represent them, are arranged in an apparent orbit around these--such as the Scorpion, the Bird, the Dog, the Thunderbolt of Ramman, the mace, the horned monsters, half hidden by the temples they guard, and the enormous Dragon who embraces in his folds half the entire firmament.

“If ever, in the course of days, any one of the brothers, children, family, men or women, slaves or servants of the house, or any governor or functionary whatsoever, arises and intends to steal this field, and remove this landmark, either to make a gift of it to a god, or to assign it to a competitor, or to appropriate it to himself; if he modifies the area of it, the limits and the landmark; if he divides it into portions, and if he says: ‘The field has no owner, since there has been no donation of it; ‘--if, from dread of the terrible imprecations which protect this stele and this field, he sends a fool, a deaf or blind person, a wicked wretch, an idiot, a stranger, or an ignorant one, and should cause this stele to be taken away,* and should throw it into the water, cover it with dust, mutilate it by scratching it with a stone, burn it in the fire and destroy it, or write anything else upon it, or carry,it away to a place where it will be no longer seen,--this man, may Anu, Bel, Ea, the exalted lady, the great gods, cast upon him looks of wrath, may they destroy his strength, may they exterminate his race.

” All the immortals are associated in this excommunication, and each one promises in his turn the aid of his power.

* All the people enumerated in this passage might, in ignorance of what they were doing, be induced to tear up the stone, and unconsciously commit a sacrilege from which every Chaldaean in his senses would have shrunk back.

The formula provides for such cases, and it secures that the curse shall fall not only on the irresponsible instruments, but reach the instigator of the crime, even when he had taken no actual part in the deed.

[Illustration: 322. jpg THE MICHAUX STONE (left)] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin.

The original is in the medal cabinet of the Bibliotheque Nationale.

[Illustration: 323. jpg THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MICHAUX STONE (right)] Merodach, by whose spells the sick are re stored, will inflict upon the guilty one a dropsy which no incantation can cure.

Shamas, the supreme judge, will send forth against him one of his inexorable judgments.

Sin, the inhabitant of the brilliant heavens, will cover him with leprosy as with a garment.

Adar, the warrior, will break his weapons; and Zamama, the king of strifes, will not stand by him on the field of battle.

Eamman will let loose his tempest upon his fields, and will overwhelm them.

The whole band of the invisibles hold themselves ready to defend the rights of the proprietor against all attacks.

In no part of the ancient world was the sacred character of property so forcibly laid down, or the possession of the soil more firmly secured by religion.

In instruments of agriculture and modes of cultivation Chaldaea was no better off than Egypt.

The rapidity with which the river rose in the spring, and its variable subsidence from year to year, furnished little inducement to the Chaldaeans to entrust to it the work of watering their lands; on the contrary, they were compelled to protect themselves from it, and to keep at a distance the volume of waters it brought down.

Each property, whether of square, triangular, or any other shape, was surrounded with a continuous earth-built barrier which bounded it on every side, and served at the same time as a rampart against the inundation.

[Illustration: 324. jpg TWO ROWS OF SHADUFS ON THE BANK OF A RIVER.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from Koyunjik.

Rows of shadufs installed along the banks of the canals or streams provided for the irrigation of the lands.

* The fields were laid out like a chess-board, and the squares, separated from each other by earthen ridges, formed as it were so many basins: when the elevation of the ground arrested the flow of the waters, these were collected into reservoirs, whence by the use of other shadufs they were raised to a higher level.

* In Mesopotamia and Chaldaea there may still be seen “everywhere ruins of ancient canals; and there are also to be met with, in many places, ridges of earth, which stretch for considerable distances in a straight line, and surround lands perfectly level.

” (Olivier).

The plough was nothing more than an obliquely placed mattock, whose handle was lengthened in order to harness oxen to it.

Whilst the ploughman pressed heavily on the handle, two attendants kept incessantly goading the beasts, or urging them forward with voice and whip, and a third scattered the seed in the furrow.

A considerable capital was needed to ensure success in agricultural undertakings: contracts were made for three years, and stipulated that payments should be made partly in metal and partly in the products of the soil.

[Illustration: 325. jpg CHALDAEAN FARMING OPERATIONS.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio reproduced in Layard.

The original is in the cabinet of medals in the Bibliotheque Nationale.

The farmer paid a small sum when entering into possession, and the remainder of the debt was gradually liquidated at the end of each twelve months, the payment being in silver one year, and in corn the two following.

The rent varied according to the quality of the soil and the facilities which it afforded for cultivation: a field, for instance, of three bushels was made to pay nine hundred measures, while another of ten bushels had only eighteen hundred to pay.

In many instances the peasant preferred to take the proprietor into partnership, the latter in such case providing all the expenses of cultivation, on the understanding that he should receive two-thirds of the gross product.

The tenant was obliged to administer the estate as a careful householder during the term of his lease: he was to maintain the buildings and implements in good repair, to see that the hedges were kept up, to keep the shadufs in working order, and to secure the good condition of the watercourses.

He had rarely enough slaves to manage the business with profit: those he had purchased were sufficient, with the aid of his wives and children, to carry on ordinary operations, but when any pressure arose, especially at harvest-time, he had to seek elsewhere the additional labourers he required.

The temples were the chief sources for the supply of these.

The majority of the supplementary labourers were free men, who were hired out by their family, or engaged themselves for a fixed term, during which they were subject to a sort of slavery, the conditions of which were determined by law.

The workman renounced his liberty for fifteen days, or a month, or for a whole year; he disposed, so to speak, of a portion of his life to the provisional master of his choice, and if he did not enter upon his work at the day agreed upon, or if he showed himself inactive in the duties assigned to him, he was liable to severe punishment.

He received in exchange for his labour his food, lodging, and clothing; and if an accident should occur to him during the term of his service, the law granted him an indemnity in proportion to the injury he had sustained.

[Illustration: 327. jpg THE FARM OXEN] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a green marble cylinder in the Louvre.

His average wage was from four to six shekels of silver per annum.

He was also entitled by custom to another shekel in the form of a retaining fee, and he could claim his pay, which was given to him mostly in corn, in monthly instalments, if his agreement were for a considerable time, and daily if it were for a short period.

The mercenary never fell into the condition of the ordinary serf: he retained his rights as a man, and possessed in the person of the patron for whom he laboured, or whom he himself had selected, a defender of his interests.

When he came to the end of his engagement, he returned to his family, and resumed his ordinary occupation until the next occasion.

Many of the farmers in a small way earned thus, in a few weeks, sufficient means to supplement their own modest personal income.

Others sought out more permanent occupations, and hired themselves out as regular farm-servants.

The lands which neither the rise of the river nor the irrigation system could reach so as to render fit for agriculture, were reserved for the pasture of the flocks in the springtime, when they were covered with rich grass.

The presence of lions in the neighbourhood, however, obliged the husbandmen to take precautions for the safety of their flocks.

They constructed provisional enclosures into which the animals were driven every evening, when the pastures were too far off to allow of the flocks being brought back to the sheepfold.

The chase was a favourite pastime among them, and few days passed without the hunter’s bringing back with him a young gazelle caught in a trap, or a hare killed by an arrow.

These formed substantial additions to the larder, for the Chaldaeans do not seem to have kept about them, as the Egyptians did, such tamed animals as cranes or herons, gazelles or deer: they contented themselves with the useful species, oxen, asses, sheep, and goats.

Some of the ancient monuments, cylinders, and clay tablets reproduce in a rough manner scenes from pastoral life.

The door of the fold opens, and we see a flock of goats sallying forth to the cracking of the herdsman’s whip: when they reach the pasture they scatter over the meadows, and while the shepherd keeps his eye upon them, he plays upon his reed to the delight of his dog.

In the mean time the farm-people are engaged in the careful preparation of the evening meal: two individuals on opposite sides of the hearth watch the pot boiling between them, while a baker makes his dough into round cakes.

[Illustration: 329a.

jpg COOKING: A QUARREL.

]