Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs by Archibald Henry Sayce (trending books to read .txt) 📕

which was artificially hardened when in use. Emery powder or sand was also used, and the lathe had long been known. When iron was first introduced into the workshops of Babylonia is doubtful. That the metal had been recognized at a very early period is clear from the fact that in the primitive picture-writing of the country, out of which the cuneiform syllabary developed, it was denoted by two characters, representing respectively "heaven" and "metal." It would seem, therefore, that the first iron with which the inhabitants of the Babylonian plain were acquainted was of meteoric origin.

In the age of the Egyptian empire in Asia, at the beginning of the seventeenth century B.C., iron was passing into general use. Objects of iron are referred to in the inscriptions, and a couple of centuries later we hear of iron chariots among the Canaanites, and of ironsmiths in Palestine, who repair the shattered vehicles of Egyptian travellers in that country. It must have been at this time that the bronzesmith in Babylonia became transformed into an ironsmith.

Carving in ivory was another trade followed in Babylonia and Assyria. The carved ivories found on the site of Nineveh are of great beauty, and from a very early epoch ivory was used for the handles of sceptres, or for the inlaid work of wooden furniture. The "ivory couches" of Babylonia made their way to the West along with the other products of Babylonian culture, and Amos (vi. 4) denounces the wealthy nobles of Israel who "lie upon beds of ivory." Thothmes III. of Egypt, in the sixteenth century B.C., hunted the elephant on the banks of the Euphrates, not far from Carchemish, and, as late as about 1100 B.C., Tiglath-pileser I. of Assyria speaks of doing the same. In the older period of Babylonian history, therefore, the elephant would have lived on the northern frontier of Babylonian domination, and its tusks would have been carried down the Euphrates along with other articles of northern trade.

Quite as old as the trade of the carver in ivory was that of the porcelain-maker. The walls of the palaces and temples of Babylonia and Assyria were adorned with glazed and enamelled tiles on which figures and other designs were drawn in brilliant colors; they were then covered with a metallic glaze and fired. Babylonia, in fact, seems to have been the original home of the enamelled tile and therewith of the manufacture of porcelain. It was a land of clay and not of stone, and while it thus became necessary to ornament the plain mud wall of the house, the clay brick itself, when painted and protected by a glaze, was made into the best and most enduring of ornaments. The enamelled bricks of Chaldea and Assyria are among the most beautiful relics of Babylonian civilization that have survived to us, and those which adorned the Persian palace of Susa, and are now in the Museum of the Louvre, are unsurpassed by the most elaborate productions of modern skill.

Our enumeration of Babylonian trades would not be complete without mention being made of that of the brick-maker. The manufacture of bricks was indeed one of the chief industries of the country, and the brick-maker took the position which would be taken by the mason elsewhere. He erected all the buildings of Babylonia. The walls of the temples themselves were of brick. Even in Assyria the slavish imitation of Babylonian models caused brick to remain the chief building material of a kingdom where stone was plentiful and clay comparatively scarce. The brick-yards stood on the outskirts of the cities, where the ground was low and where a thick bed of reeds grew in a pond or marsh. These reeds were an important requisite for the brick-maker's art; when dried they formed a bed on which the bricks rested while they were being baked by the sun; cut into small pieces they were mixed with the clay in order to bind it together; and if the bricks were burnt in a kiln the reeds were used as fuel. They were accordingly artificially cultivated, and fetched high prices. Thus, in the fourteenth year of Nabonidos, we hear of 2 shekels being given for 200 bundles of reeds for building a bridge across a canal, and a shekel for 100 bundles to be made into torches. At the same time 55 shekels were paid for 8,000 loads of brick. The possession of a bed of reeds added to the value of an estate, and it is, therefore, always specified in deeds relating to the sale of property. One, situated at Sippara, was owned by a scribe, Arad-Bel, who has drawn up several contracts, as we learn incidentally from a document dated in the seventh year of Cyrus, in which Ardi, the grandson of "the brick-maker," agrees to pay two-thirds of the bricks he makes to Arad-Bel, on condition of being allowed to manufacture them in the reed-bed of the latter. This is described as adjoining "the reed-bed of Bel-baladan and the plantation of the Sun-god."

The brick-maker was also a potter, and the manifold products of the potter's skill, for which Babylonia was celebrated, were manufactured in the corner of the brick-field. Here also were made the tablets, which were handed to the professional scribe or the ordinary citizen to be written upon, and so take the place of the papyrus of ancient Egypt or the paper of to-day. The brick-maker was thus not only a potter, but the provider of literary materials as well. He might even be compared with the printer of the modern world, since texts were occasionally cut in wood and so impressed upon moulds of clay, which, after being hardened, were used as stamps, by means of which the texts could be multiplied, impressions of them being mechanically reproduced on other tablets or cylinders of clay.

Another Babylonian trade which must be noticed was that of the vintner. Wine was made from dates as well as from grapes, while beer, called
sikaru , was also manufactured, probably from some cereal grain. Mention is found of a "wine" that was made from sesame. The vine was not a native of Babylonia, but must have been introduced into it from the highlands of Armenia at a very early date, as it was known there long before the days of Sargon of Akkad. Large quantities of wine and beer were drunk in both Babylonia and Assyria, and reference has already been made to the bas-relief in which the Assyrian King, Assur-bani-pal, and his Queen are depicted drinking wine in the gardens of his palace, while the head of his vanquished foe, the King of Elam, hangs from the branch of a neighboring tree. A receipt, dated the eleventh day of Iyyar, in the first year of Nabonidos, is for the conveyance of "75 qas of meal and 63 qas of beer for the sustenance of the artisans;" and in the thirty-eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar 20 shekels were paid for "beer," the amount of which, however, is unfortunately not stated. But two "large" casks of new wine cost 11 shekels, and five other smaller casks 10 shekels. Moreover, the inventory of goods to be handed over to the slave Khunnatu, in the sixth year of Cambyses, includes fifty casks of "good beer," which, together with the cup with which it was drawn, was valued at 60 shekels (£9).

Whether any grape-wine was made in Babylonia itself was questionable; at any rate, the greater part of that which was drunk there was imported from abroad, more especially from Armenia and Syria. The wines of the Lebanon were specially prized, the wine of Khilbunu, or Helbon, holding a chief place among them. The wines, some of which were described as "white," were distinguished by the names of the localities where they were made or in which the vines were grown, and Nebuchadnezzar gives the following list of them: The wine of Izalla, in Armenia; of Tuhimmu, of Zimmini, of Helbon, of Amabanu, of the Shuhites, of Bit-Kubati, in Elam; of Opis and of Bitati, in Armenia. To these another list adds: "The wine reserved for the king's drinking," and the wines of Nazahzê, of Lahû, and of the Khabur.

The wine was kept in wine-cellars, and among the Assyrian letters that have come down to us are some from the cellarers of the King. In one of them it is stated that the wine received in the month Tebet had been bottled, and that there was no room in the royal cellars in which it could be stored. The King is therefore asked to allow new cellars to be made.

The various trades formed guilds or corporations, and those who wished to enter one of these had to be apprenticed for a fixed number of years in order to learn the craft. As we have seen, slaves could be thus apprenticed by their owners and in this way become members of a guild. What the exact relation was between the slave and the free members of a trading guild we do not know, but it is probable that the slave was regarded as the representative of his master or mistress, who accordingly became, instead of himself, the real member of the corporation. We perhaps have a parallel in modern England, where a person can be elected a member of one of the "city companies," or trade guilds, without being in any way connected with the trade himself. Since women in Babylonia were able to carry on a business, there would be no obstacle to a slave being apprenticed to a trade by his mistress. Hence it is that we find a Babylonian lady named Nubtâ, in the second year of Cyrus, apprenticing a slave to a weaver for five years. Nubtâ engaged to provide the apprentice with clothing and 1 qa (nearly 2 quarts) of grain each day. As in ancient Greece a quart of grain was considered a sufficient daily allowance for a man, the slave's allowance would seem to have been ample. The teacher was to be heavily fined if he failed to teach the trade, or overworked the apprentice and so made him unable to learn it, the fine being fixed at 6 qas (about 10 quarts) per diem . Any infringement of the contract on either side was further to be visited with a penalty of 30 shekels of silver.

As 30 shekels of silver were equivalent to £4 10s., 6 qas of wheat at the time when the contract was drawn up would have cost about 1s. 3d. Under Nebuchadnezzar we find 12 qas , or the third part of an ardeb, of sesame sold for half a shekel, which would make the cost of a single quart a little more than a penny. In the twelfth year of Nabonidos 60 shekels, or £9, were paid for 6 gur of sesame, and since the gur contained 5 ardebs, according to Dr. Oppert's calculation, the quart of sesame would have been a little less than 1½d. When we come to the reign of Cambyses we hear of 6½ shekels being paid for 2 ardebs, or about 100 quarts, of wheat; that would give 2½d. as the approximate value of a single qa . It would therefore have cost Nubtâ about 2½d. a day to feed a slave.

It must, however, be remembered that the price of grain varied from year to year. In years of scarcity the price rose; when the crops were plentiful it necessarily fell. To a certain extent the annual value was equalized by the large exportation of grain to foreign countries, to which reference is made in many of the contract-tablets; the institution of royal or public store-houses, moreover, called sutummê , tended