II.

Babylonian Civilization

The Babylonian civilization, which flourished from the 18th until the 6th century bc, was, like the Sumerian that preceded it, urban in character, although based on agriculture rather than industry. The country consisted of a dozen or so cities, surrounded by villages and hamlets. At the head of the political structure was the king, an absolute monarch who exercised legislative, judicial, and executive powers. Under him was a group of appointed governors and administrators. Mayors and councils of city elders were in charge of local administration.

The Babylonians modified and transformed their Sumerian heritage to suit their own culture and ethos. The resulting way of life proved to be so effective that it underwent relatively little change for about 1,200 years. It influenced the neighbouring countries, especially the kingdom of Assyria, which adopted Babylonian culture almost in its entirety. Fortunately, a large body of Babylonian literature has been found through excavation and made available to scholars. One of the most important works is the remarkable collection of laws often called the Code of Hammurabi, which date from the 18th century bc and which, together with other documents and letters belonging to different periods, provide a comprehensive picture of Babylonian social structure and economic organization.

A.

Society

Babylonian society consisted of three classes represented by the awilu, a free person of the upper class; the wardu, or slave; and the mushkenu, a free person of low estate, who ranked legally between the awilu and the wardu. Most slaves were prisoners of war, but some were recruited from the Babylonian population. For example, free people might be reduced to slavery as punishment for certain offences; parents could sell their children as slaves in time of need; or a man might even surrender his entire family to creditors in payment of a debt, but for no longer than three years. Slaves were the property of their master, like any other chattel. They could be branded and flogged, and they were severely punished if they attempted to escape. On the other hand, because it was to the advantage of the master that slaves remained strong and healthy, they were usually well treated. Slaves had certain legal rights and could engage in business, borrow money, and buy their freedom. If a slave married a free person and had children, the latter were free. The sale price of a slave varied according to the state of the market and the attributes of the individual involved; the average price for a grown man was usually 20 shekels of silver, a sum that could buy about 35 bushels of barley.

A.1.

The Mushkenu

The position of the mushkenu in society can be inferred from a number of legal provisions in the Code of Hammurabi. To cite comparative examples, if a mushkenu suffered an injury to eye or limb, he was indemnified by the payment of a mina (roughly 0.45 kg, or 1 lb, of silver); in the case of an awilu similarly injured, the law of retaliation (lex talionis) was applied; whereas for an injured slave, the indemnity was to be half the slave’s market value. If the injury required surgical treatment, the awilu had to pay a fee of 10 shekels, but the mushkenu paid 5 shekels; and, in the case of a slave, the master had to pay a fee of only 2 shekels.

A.2.

Family Life

The family was the basic unit of Babylonian society. Marriages were arranged by the parents, and the betrothal was recognized legally as soon as the groom had presented a bridal gift to the father of the bride; the marriage ceremony was usually concluded with a contract inscribed on a tablet. Although marriage was viewed primarily as a practical arrangement, there is some evidence to suggest that surreptitious premarital lovemaking was not altogether unknown. The Babylonian woman had certain important legal rights. She could hold property, engage in business, and act as a witness in a trial. The husband, however, could divorce her on relatively trivial grounds, or, if she had borne him no children, he could marry a second wife. Children were under the absolute authority of their parents, who could disinherit them or, as has already been mentioned, could even sell them into slavery. In the normal course of events, however, children were loved and, at the death of their parents, inherited all their property. Adopted children were not uncommon and were treated with care and consideration.

A.3.

Cities

The populations of the Babylonian cities cannot be estimated with any reasonable degree of accuracy, because the authorities, so far as extant documents reveal, took no census. The number of inhabitants of a city probably ranged between 10,000 and 50,000. The city streets were narrow, winding, and irregular, flanked by the high, windowless walls of houses. The streets were not paved or provided with drains. The average house was a small, one-storey, mudbrick structure, consisting of several rooms grouped round a courtyard. The house of a prosperous Babylonian, on the other hand, was probably a two-storey brick dwelling of about a dozen rooms, with plastered and whitewashed interior and exterior walls. The ground floor consisted of a reception room, kitchen, lavatory, servants’ quarters, and, sometimes, even a private room of worship. Furniture included low tables, high-backed chairs, and beds with wooden frames. Household vessels were made of clay, stone, copper, and bronze, and baskets and chests were of reed and wood. Reed mats, skin rugs, and woollen hangings covered the floors and walls.

Houses were often built above a mausoleum in which members of the family were buried. The Babylonians believed that the souls of the dead travelled to the next world, and that, at least to some extent, life continued there as on Earth. For this reason, pots, tools, weapons, and jewels were buried with the dead.

B.

Technology

The Babylonians inherited the technical achievements of the Sumerians in irrigation and agriculture. Maintaining the system of canals, dykes, weirs, and reservoirs constructed by their predecessors demanded considerable engineering knowledge and skill. Preparation of maps, surveys, and plans involved the use of levelling instruments and measuring rods. For mathematical and arithmetical purposes they used the Sumerian sexagesimal system of numbers, which featured a useful device of so-called place-value notation that resembles the present-day decimal system. Measures of length, area, capacity, and weight, standardized earlier by the Sumerians, remained in use. Farming was a complicated and methodical occupation requiring foresight, diligence, and skill. A recently translated document written in Sumerian but used as a textbook in Babylonian schools is a veritable farmer’s almanac; it records a series of instructions and directions to guide farm activities from the watering of the fields to the winnowing of harvested crops.

Babylonian artisans were skilled in metallurgy, in the processes of fulling, bleaching, and dyeing, and in the preparation of paints, pigments, cosmetics, and perfumes. In the field of medicine, surgery was well known and often practised, judging from the Code of Hammurabi, which devotes several paragraphs to the surgeon. Pharmacology doubtless also developed, although the only significant evidence of this comes from a Sumerian tablet written several centuries before the reign of Hammurabi.

C.

Legal System and Writing

Law and justice were key concepts in the Babylonian way of life. Justice was administered by the courts, each of which had between one and four judges. The elders of a town often formed a tribunal. The judges could not reverse their decisions for any reason, but appeals against their verdicts could be directed towards the king. Evidence consisted either of statements from witnesses or of written documents. Oaths, which played an important role in the administration of justice, could be either promissory, declaratory, or exculpatory. The courts inflicted penalties ranging from capital punishment and mutilation to flogging, reduction of social status to slavery, and banishment. Awards for damages ranged from 3 to 30 times the value of the object to be restored.

To ensure that their legal, administrative, and economic institutions functioned effectively, the Babylonians used the cuneiform system of writing developed by the Sumerians. To train their scribes, secretaries, archivists, and other administrative officials, they adopted the Sumerian system of formal education, under which secular schools served as the cultural centres of the land. The curriculum consisted primarily of copying and memorizing both textbooks and Sumero-Babylonian dictionaries containing long lists of words and phrases, including the names of trees, animals, birds, insects, countries, cities, villages, and minerals, as well as a large and diverse assortment of mathematical tables and problems. In the study of literature, the pupils copied and imitated various types of myths, epics, hymns, lamentations, proverbs, and essays in both the Sumerian and the Babylonian languages.