Part 18 (2/2)
No great tombs were erected in Sumeria. The coffins were usually laid in brick vaults below dwellings, or below temples, or in trenches outside the city walls. On the ”stele of victory”, which belongs to the period of Eannatum, patesi of Lagash, the dead bodies on the battlefield are piled up in pairs quite naked, and earth is being heaped over them; this is a specimen of mound burial.
According to Herodotus the Babylonians ”buried their dead in honey, and had funeral lamentations like the Egyptians”.[261] The custom of preserving the body in this manner does not appear to have been an ancient one, and may have resulted from cultural contact with the Nile valley during the late a.s.syrian period. So long as the bones were undisturbed, the spirit was supposed to be a.s.sured of rest in the Underworld. This archaic belief was widespread, and finds an echo in the quaint lines over Shakespeare's grave in Stratford church:--
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare To dig the dust enclosed heare; Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.
In Babylonia the return of the spirits of the dead was greatly dreaded. Ishtar once uttered the terrible threat: ”I will cause the dead to rise; they will then eat and live. The dead will be more numerous than the living.” When a foreign country was invaded, it was a common custom to break open the tombs and scatter the bones they contained. Probably it was believed, when such acts of vandalism were committed, that the offended spirits would plague their kinsfolk.
Ghosts always haunted the homes they once lived in, and were as malignant as demons. It is significant to find in this connection that the bodies of enemies who were slain in battle were not given decent burial, but mutilated and left for birds and beasts of prey to devour.
The demons that plagued the dead might also attack the living. A fragmentary narrative, which used to be referred to as the ”Cuthean Legend of Creation”,[262] and has been shown by Mr. L.W. King to have no connection with the struggle between Merodach and the dragon,[263]
deals with a war waged by an ancient king against a horde of evil spirits, led by ”the lord of heights, lord of the Anunaki (earth spirits)”. Some of the supernatural warriors had bodies like birds; others had ”raven faces”, and all had been ”suckled by Tiamat”.
For three years the king sent out great armies to attack the demons, but ”none returned alive”. Then he decided to go forth himself to save his country from destruction. So he prepared for the conflict, and took the precaution of performing elaborate and therefore costly religious rites so as to secure the co-operation of the G.o.ds. His expedition was successful, for he routed the supernatural army. On his return home, he recorded his great victory on tablets which were placed in the shrine of Nergal at Cuthah.
This myth may be an echo of Nergal's raid against Eresh-ki-gal. Or, being a.s.sociated with Cuthah, it may have been composed to encourage burial in that city's sacred cemetery, which had been cleared by the famous old king of the evil demons which tormented the dead and made seasonal attacks against the living.
CHAPTER X.
BUILDINGS AND LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF BABYLON
Decline and Fall of Sumerian Kingdoms--Elamites and Semites strive for Supremacy--Babylon's Walls, Gates, Streets, and Ca.n.a.ls--The Hanging Gardens--Merodach's Great Temple--The Legal Code of Hammurabi--The Marriage Market--Position of Women--Marriage brought Freedom--Vestal Virgins--Breach of Promise and Divorce--Rights of Children--Female Publicans--The Land Laws--Doctors legislated out of Existence--Folk Cures--Spirits of Disease expelled by Magical Charms--The Legend of the Worm--”Touch Iron”--Curative Water--Magical Origin of Poetry and Music.
The rise of Babylon inaugurated a new era in the history of Western Asia. Coincidentally the political power of the Sumerians came to an end. It had been paralysed by the Elamites, who, towards the close of the Dynasty of Isin, successfully overran the southern district and endeavoured to extend their sway over the whole valley. Two Elamite kings, Warad-Sin and his brother Rim-Sin, struggled with the rulers of Babylon for supremacy, and for a time it appeared as if the intruders from the East were to establish themselves permanently as a military aristocracy over Sumer and Akkad. But the Semites were strongly reinforced by new settlers of the same blended stock who swarmed from the land of the Amorites. Once again Arabia was pouring into Syria vast hordes of its surplus population, with the result that ethnic disturbances were constant and widespread. This migration is termed the Canaanitic or Amorite: it flowed into Mesopotamia and across a.s.syria, while it supplied the ”driving power” which secured the ascendancy of the Hammurabi Dynasty at Babylon. Indeed, the ruling family which came into prominence there is believed to have been of Canaanitic origin.
Once Babylon became the metropolis it retained its pre-eminence until the end. Many political changes took place during its long and chequered history, but no rival city in the south ever attained to its splendour and greatness. Whether its throne was occupied by Amorite or Ka.s.site, a.s.syrian or Chaldean, it was invariably found to be the most effective centre of administration for the lower Tigro-Euphrates valley. Some of the Ka.s.site monarchs, however, showed a preference for Nippur.
Of its early history little is known. It was overshadowed in turn by Kish and Umma, Lagash and Erech, and may have been little better than a great village when Akkad rose into prominence. Sargon I, the royal gardener, appears to have interested himself in its development, for it was recorded that he cleared its trenches and strengthened its fortifications. The city occupied a strategic position, and probably a.s.sumed importance on that account as well as a trading and industrial centre. Considerable wealth had acc.u.mulated at Babylon when the Dynasty of Ur reached the zenith of its power. It is recorded that King Dungi plundered its famous ”Temple of the High Head”, E-sagila, which some identify with the Tower of Babel, so as to secure treasure for Ea's temple at Eridu, which he specially favoured. His vandalistic raid, like that of the Gutium, or men of Kutu, was remembered for long centuries afterwards, and the city G.o.d was invoked at the time to cut short his days.
No doubt, Hammurabi's Babylon closely resembled the later city so vividly described by Greek writers, although it was probably not of such great dimensions. According to Herodotus, it occupied an exact square on the broad plain, and had a circ.u.mference of sixty of our miles. ”While such is its size,” the historian wrote, ”in magnificence there is no other city that approaches to it.” Its walls were eighty-seven feet thick and three hundred and fifty feet high, and each side of the square was fifteen miles in length. The whole city was surrounded by a deep, broad ca.n.a.l or moat, and the river Euphrates ran through it.
”Here”, continued Herodotus, ”I may not omit to tell the use to which the mould dug out of the great moat was turned, nor the manner in which the wall was wrought. As fast as they dug the moat the soil which they got from the cutting was made into bricks, and when a sufficient number were completed they baked the bricks in kilns. Then they set to building, and began with bricking the borders of the moat, after which they proceeded to construct the wall itself, using throughout for their cement hot bitumen, and interposing a layer of wattled reeds at every thirtieth course of the bricks. On the top, along the edges of the wall, they constructed buildings of a single chamber facing one another, leaving between them room for a four-horse chariot to turn. In the circuit of the wall are a hundred gates, all of bra.s.s, with brazen lintels and side posts.”[264] These were the gates referred to by Isaiah when G.o.d called Cyrus:
I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut: I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces the gates of bra.s.s, and cut in sunder the bars of iron.[265]
The outer wall was the main defence of the city, but there was also an inner wall less thick but not much inferior in strength. In addition, a fortress stood in each division of the city. The king's palace and the temple of Bel Merodach were surrounded by walls.
All the main streets were perfectly straight, and each crossed the city from gate to gate, a distance of fifteen miles, half of them being interrupted by the river, which had to be ferried. As there were twenty-five gates on each side of the outer wall, the great thoroughfares numbered fifty in all, and there were six hundred and seventy-six squares, each over two miles in circ.u.mference. From Herodotus we gather that the houses were three or four stories high, suggesting that the tenement system was not unknown, and according to Q. Curtius, nearly half of the area occupied by the city was taken up by gardens within the squares.
In Greek times Babylon was famous for the hanging or terraced gardens of the ”new palace”, which had been erected by Nebuchadnezzar II.
These occupied a square which was more than a quarter of a mile in circ.u.mference. Great stone terraces, resting on arches, rose up like a giant stairway to a height of about three hundred and fifty feet, and the whole structure was strengthened by a surrounding wall over twenty feet in thickness. So deep were the layers of mould on each terrace that fruit trees were grown amidst the plants of luxuriant foliage and the brilliant Asian flowers. Water for irrigating the gardens was raised from the river by a mechanical contrivance to a great cistern situated on the highest terrace, and it was prevented from leaking out of the soil by layers of reeds and bitumen and sheets of lead.
s.p.a.cious apartments, luxuriously furnished and decorated, were constructed in the s.p.a.ces between the arches and were festooned by flowering creepers. A broad stairway ascended from terrace to terrace.
The old palace stood in a square nearly four miles in circ.u.mference, and was strongly protected by three walls, which were decorated by sculptures in low relief, representing battle scenes and scenes of the chase and royal ceremonies. Winged bulls with human heads guarded the main entrance.
Another architectural feature of the city was E-sagila, the temple of Bel Merodach, known to the Greeks as ”Jupiter-Belus”. The high wall which enclosed it had gates of solid bra.s.s. ”In the middle of the precinct”, wrote Herodotus, ”there was a tower of solid masonry, a furlong in length and breadth, upon which was raised a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight. The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path which winds round all the towers. When one is about halfway up, one finds a resting-place and seats, where persons are wont to sit some time on their way to the summit. On the topmost tower there is a s.p.a.cious temple, and inside the temple stands a couch of unusual size, richly adorned, with a golden table by its side. There is no statue of any kind set up in the place, nor is the chamber occupied of nights by anyone but a single native woman, who, as the Chaldaeans, the priests of this G.o.d, affirm, is chosen for himself by the deity out of all the women of the land.”
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