L. W. King

“ Of no other period in the history of Babylon have we so intimate a knowledge as that of the West-Semitic kings under whom the city first attained the rank of capital. It was a time of strenuous growth, in the course of which the long struggle with regard to language and racial dominance was decided in favour of the Semite. But the victory involved no break of continuity, for all the essential elements of Sumerian culture were preserved, the very length of the struggle having proved the main factor in securing their survival. ”

“ CHAPTER VI THE CLOSE OF THE FIRST DYNASTY OF BABYLON AND THE KINGS FROM THE COUNTRY OF THE SEA
In the closing years of Hammurabi's reign Babylon had reached the climax of her early power. The proud phraseology of the Prologue to his Code conveys the impression that the empire was solidly compact, and its component cities the willing recipients of his royal clemency and favour. And there can be no doubt that he owed his success in great measure to the efficient administration he had established under his personal control. ”

“ It may thus appear a paradox to assert that the civilization, with which the name of Babylon is associated, was not Babylonian. But it is a fact that for more than a thousand years before the appearance of that city as a great centre of culture, the civilization it handed on to others had acquired in all essentials its later type. In artistic excellence, indeed, a standard had been already reached, which, so far from being surpassed, was never afterwards attained in Mesopotamia. ”

“ Moreover, she always regarded the Assyrians as an upstart people, who had borrowed her culture, and whose land had been a mere province of her kingdom at a time when her own political influence had extended from Elam to the borders of Syria. Even in her darkest hour she was buoyed up by the hope of recovering her ancient glory, and she let no opportunity slip of striking a blow at the northern kingdom. She was consequently always a drag on Assyria's advance to the Mediterranean, for, when the latter's armies marched westward, they left Babylon and Elam in their rear. ”

“ Thus the West-Semitic Dynasty of Babylon may have been brought to an end by these Hittite conquerors, and Samsu-ditana himself may have fallen in defence of his own capital. But there is no reason for supposing that the Hittites occupied Babylon for long. Even if their success was complete, they would soon have returned to their own country, laden with heavy spoil; and they doubtless left some of their number in occupation of Khana on their withdrawal up the Euphrates. ”

“ Thanks to recent excavation Babylon has ceased to be an abstraction, and we are now able to reconstitute the main features of one of the most famous cities of the ancient world. Unlike Ashur and Nineveh, the great capitals of Assyria, Babylon survived with but little change under the Achæmenian kings of Persia, and from the time of Herodotus onward we possess accounts of her magnificence, which recent research has in great part substantiated. It is true that we must modify the description Herodotus has left us of her size, but on all other points the accuracy of his information is confirmed. ”

“ That Sin-muballit, the son of Apil-Sin, did not combine with Nîsin to expel the invader from Babylonian soil, may have played at first into the hands of the Elamites. But it is not to be forgotten that the Western Semites of Babylon were still a conquering aristocracy, and their sympathies were far from being involved in the fate of any part of Sumer. Both Elam and Babylon must have foreseen that the capture of Nîsin would prove a decisive advantage to the victor, and each was content to see her weakened in the hope of ultimate success. ”

“ We have seen how the streets of Babylon followed the same lines throughout the whole of her dynastic period, and a similar spirit of conservatism no doubt characterized her architectural development. Temples were rebuilt again and again on the old sites, and even in the Neo-Babylonian period they retained the mud-brick walls and primitive decoration of their remote predecessors. Indeed, the conditions of life in Babylonia precluded any possibility of drastic change. ”

“ Thanks to Babylon's misfortunes at this time, we have recovered some of her finest memorials, including the famous Stele of Narâm-Sin, Hammurabi's Code of Laws, and an important series of the Kassite kudurrus, or boundary-stones, which, as we have seen, throw considerable light upon the economic condition of the country. These doubtless represent but a small proportion of the booty secured by Elam at this period, but they suffice to show the manner in which the great Babylonian cities were denuded of their treasures. ”

“ Perhaps the most serious defect from which Babylonian chronology has suffered hitherto has been the complete absence of any established point of contact between the Babylonian dynasties and those earlier lines of rulers who exercised authority in cities other than Babylon. On the one hand, with the help of the Babylonian List of Kings, we could build up from below a scheme of the rulers of Babylon itself. ”

“ In their work at Babylon the excavators have, of course, employed modern methods, which differ considerably from those of the age when Layard and Botta brought the winged bulls of Assyria to the British Museum and to the Louvre. The extraordinary success which attended those earlier excavators has, indeed, never been surpassed. But it is now realized that only by minuteness of search and by careful classification of strata can the remains of the past be made to reveal in full their secrets. ”

“ The great trade-route up the Euphrates and into Syria was no longer blocked by military outposts and fortifications, placed there in the vain attempt to keep back the invasion of Amorite tribes; and the trade in pottery with Carchemish, of which we have evidence under the later kings of the First Dynasty, [28] is significant of the new relations established between Babylonia and the West. The great merchants were, as a body, members of the upper class, and while they themselves continued to reside in Babylon, they employed traders who carried their goods abroad for them by caravan. ”

“ The new-comers probably owed their speedy success in Babylonia in great part to the fact that many of the immigrant tribes had already acquired the elements of Babylonian culture. During their previous residence within the sphere of settled civilization they had adopted a way of life and a social organization which differed but little from that of the country into which they came. That they should have immigrated at all in a south-easterly direction, in preference to remaining within their own borders, was doubtless due to racial pressure to which they themselves had been subjected. ”

“ Again, if a slave were captured by the enemy and taken to a foreign land and sold, and were then brought back by his new owner to his own country, he could claim his liberty without having to pay compensation to either of his masters. Moreover, a slave could acquire certain rights while still in slavery. Thus, if the owner of a female slave had begotten children by her, he could not use her as payment for a debt ”

“ Arabia, like the plains of Central Asia, was, in fact, one of the main breeding-grounds of the human race, and during the historic period we may trace four great migrations of Semitic nomad tribes, which successively broke away from the northern margin of the Arabian pasture-lands and spread over the neighbouring countries like a flood. The first great racial movement of the kind is that of which the effects were chiefly apparent in Akkad, or Northern Babylonia, where the Semites first obtained a footing when overrunning the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. ”

“ The list of cities is not drawn up with any administrative object, but from a purely religious standpoint, a recital of his treatment of each city being followed by a reference to what he has done for its temple and its city-god. Hence the majority of the cities are not arranged on a geographical basis, but in accordance with their relative rank as centres of religious cult. Nippur naturally heads the list, and its possession at this time by Babylon had, as we shall see, [96] far-reaching effects upon the development of the mythology and religious system of the country. ”

“ It was at the time of the Eighth Dynasty that the renaissance of Assyria took place, which culminated in the victories of that ruthless conqueror Ashur-nasir-pal and of his son Shalmaneser III. Its effect was first felt in Babylon in the reign of Shamash-mudammik, who suffered a serious defeat in the neighbourhood of Mt. Ialman at the hands of Adad-nirari III., Ashur-nasir-pal's grandfather. Against Nabû-shum-ishkun I., the murderer and successor of Shamash-mudammik, Adad-nirari secured another victory, several Babylonian cities with much spoil falling into his hands. ”

“ It is unlikely, therefore, that any mistake should have been made in the number of years assigned to separate rulers, the date-formulæ and records of whose reigns would have been easily accessible for consultation by the compiler. The long reign of sixty-one years, with which Rîm-Sin is credited, must be accepted as correct, for it does not come to us as a tradition incorporated in a Neo-Babylonian document, but is attested by a scribe writing within two years of the time when, as we have seen, Rîm-Sin was not only living but fighting against the armies of Babylon. ”

“ No penalty appears to have been enacted if the patient were a member of the middle class, but should the slave of such a man die as the result of an operation, the surgeon had to give the owner another slave; and, in the event of the slave losing his eye, he had to pay the owner half the slave's value. There was, of course, no secular class in the population which corresponded to the modern doctor, for the medicinal use of herbs and drugs was not separated from their employment in magic. ”

“ The fact that under her West-Semitic kings Babylon should have taken rank as the capital city does not in itself account for her permanent enjoyment of that position. The earlier history of the lands of Sumer and Akkad abounds with similar examples of the sudden rise of cities, followed, after an interval of power, by their equally sudden relapse into comparative obscurity. The political centre of gravity was continually shifting from one town to another, and the problem we have to solve is why, having come to rest in Babylon, it should have remained there. ”

“ Finally, coming down to the sixth century, we find the Achæmenian kings inventing a cuneiform sign-list to express the Old Persian language, in order that their own speech might be represented in royal proclamations and memorials beside those of their subject provinces of Babylon and Susiania.
These illustrations of Babylonian influence on foreign races are confined to one department of culture only, the language and the system of writing. But they have a very much wider implication. For when a foreign language is used and written, a certain knowledge of its literature must be presupposed. ”

“ In the religious sphere, the rise of Babylon to the position of capital led to a number of important changes, and to a revision of the Babylonian pantheon. Marduk, the god of Babylon, from being a comparatively obscure city-god, underwent a transformation in proportion to the increase in his city's importance. The achievements and attributes of Enlil, the chief Sumerian deity, were ascribed to him, and the old Sumerian sagas and legends, particularly those of the creation of the world, were rewritten in this new spirit by the Babylonian priesthood. ”

“ Intellect dominated and controlled the passions of the primeval but highly gifted people, and in particular one form of intellectual conception based on a scientific knowledge of astronomy. It is postulated that a purely astronomical theory of the universe lay at the root of their civilization, and governed their whole thought and conduct. This was no teaching of a learned priesthood, but was a universally held belief which permeated every branch of the national and individual life. ”

“ Merodach-baladan, a Chaldean chief of Bît-Iakin [38] at the head of the Persian Gulf, now laid claim to the throne of Babylon. By himself he would not have been formidable to Assyria, but he was backed by an unexpected and dangerous ally. Elam had not meddled in Babylonian affairs for centuries, but she had gradually become alarmed at the growth of Assyrian power. So Khumbanigash, the Elamite king, allying himself with Merodach-baladan, invaded Babylonia, laid siege to the frontier fortress of Dêr or Dûr-ilu on the Lower Tigris, and defeated Sargon and the Assyrian army before its walls. ”

“ After the evidence of actual contact with other races has been established in detail, it will be possible to form a more confident judgment upon questions which depend for their solution solely on a balancing of probabilities. The estimate of Babylon's foreign influence has therefore been postponed to the closing chapter of the volume. But before considering the historical sequence of her dynasties, and the periods to which they may be assigned, it will be well to inquire what recent excavation has to tell us of the actual remains of the city which became the permanent capital of Babylonia. ”

“ It was under the Neo-Babylonian kings that the Hebrew race first came into close contact with her culture, and there can be no doubt that the Jews, in the time of their captivity, renewed their interest in her mythology when they found it presented some parallels to their own. But in the course of this history it has been shown that, during far earlier periods, the civilization of Babylon had penetrated throughout a great part of Western Asia. ”

“ The conquest of Kazallu, winch Sumu-abum carried out in the last year but one of his reign, was the most important of Babylon's early victories, for it marked an extension of her influence beyond the limits of Akkad. The city appears to have lain to the east of the Tigris, and the two most powerful empires in the past history of Babylonia had each come into active conflict with it during the early years of their existence. Its conquest by Akkad was regarded in Babylonian tradition as the most notable achievement of Sargon's reign ”