275. If anyone has hired a (ferry-boat?) its hire is 3 SHE of silver a day.
276. If he has hired a freight boat, he shall give 2½ SHE of silver a day as its hire.
277. If anyone has hired a boat of 60 GUR he shall give one-sixth of a shekel of silver as its hire.
Regulations concerning the Buying of Slaves
278. If anyone has bought a man or woman slave and before the end of the month the bennu-sickness has fallen upon him, he shall return him to the seller, and the buyer shall take back the money which he paid.
279. If anyone has bought a man or woman slave and a complaint is made, the seller shall answer for the complaint.
280. If anyone has bought another man’s man or woman slave in a strange land; when he has come into the country and the owner of the man or woman slave recognises his property; if that man or woman slave are natives: without money he shall grant them their freedom.
281. If they are from another country, the buyer shall declare before God the money which he paid; the owner of the man or woman slave shall give to the merchant the money which he paid, and shall recover his man or woman slave.
282. If a slave has said to his master, “Thou art not my master,” one shall bring him to judgment as his slave, and his master shall cut off his ear.
Having presented this remarkable code in its entirety, it is hardly necessary to comment upon it at length. It will repay the closest examination on the part of anyone who is interested in the manners and customs of this remote period. Prior to the excavations in Mesopotamia, no historian could have dared hope that we should ever have presented to us so varied and so authoritative an exposition of the laws that governed society in any part of the world in the third millennium before our era. Thanks to the imperishable nature of the materials on which the Babylonians wrote, this seeming miracle has now come to pass, and we are in a fair way to have a much more precise and accurate knowledge of the culture of this ancient people than we are likely ever to possess regarding European nations of two thousand years later. The laws that governed the Greeks and Romans of the earlier period, and the details as to the practicalities of their civilisation, are for the most part preserved to us only through traditions that utterly lack the authenticity of such an original document as this code of Khammurabi. The sands of Egypt have recently given up to us a papyrus roll on which is inscribed the famous treatise on the constitution of Athens by Aristotle; and the eagerness with which this document has been scanned by students of Greek history is in itself an evidence of the paucity of authoritative documents regarding the classical world during this relatively recent period. It is peculiarly gratifying then to be able to go back to so much more remote a period and learn as it were at first hand such interesting details of the laws that governed the social intercourse of these forerunners of the Greeks. The fact that the earliest European civilisation undoubtedly deferred in many ways to this remoter civilisation of the Orient lends additional importance to these wonderful documents from old Babylonia.a
FOOTNOTES
[30] Small boats similarly constructed are, however, introduced into a bas-relief, which appears to represent a scene on an Assyrian river or lake.
[31] [The translation is based on those mentioned in the introduction together with a comparison of the Babylonian text as given in transcription by V. Scheil.g]
[32] [The Egyptians call this shaduf. It is an arrangement to draw water from the canal for irrigation, and is worked by hand, whereas the wheel for the same purpose (sakieh) is turned by an animal.]
CHAPTER VIII. THE RELIGION OF THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS
It is always extremely difficult for a writer of any nationality to appreciate the peculiar genius of another nation, even as regards its political and social history. And when we turn to the question of religion, the difficulty becomes well nigh an impassable barrier. Obviously the effort must be made, but we can never feel too secure in the results; certainly not unless we know the particular bias of the individual interpreter. Perhaps we cannot better illustrate the difficulties in question than by making two short quotations, each of which includes an estimate of Babylonian influence in general, and of its religious influence in particular.
One of these estimates runs thus:
“In spite of the skill and knowledge of the Babylonians, and their wonderful progress in arts and sciences, they had a religion of the lowest and most degrading kind. True insight into natural phenomena was prevented, and progress beyond the surface of things stopped by a religion which had a multitude of gods, which were supposed to bring about in an irregular and capricious manner all the changes in nature and all the misfortunes which happened to the people; thus foresight and medicine were neglected, and unavailing prayers and useless sacrifices offered to propitiate the deities, who were imagined to hold the destiny of the human race in their hands.”
The other estimate is quite different:
“The history of Babylonia has an interest of a wider kind than that of Egypt; from its more intimate connection with the general history of the human race, and from the remarkable influence which its religion, its science, and its civilisation have had on all subsequent human progress. Its religious traditions, carried away by the Israelites who came out from Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis xi. 31), have through this wonderful people become the heritage of all mankind, while its science and civilisation, through the medium of the Greeks and Romans, have become the basis of modern research and advancement.”
Now the curious thing is that these contradictory estimates occur in the same book, and only separated from one another by a few pages. They were probably not written by the same man, for the edition we are quoting is one published after the author’s death, and “edited and brought up to date” by another writer. George Smith was the author, A. H. Sayce the editor, and both alike have the highest rank as Assyriologists, and any quotation from either must be considered as having a high degree of authority. Which, then, is right? Had the Babylonians a “religion of the lowest and most degrading kind,” or was it a religion which has had a “remarkable influence upon all subsequent human progress” through having been adopted by the Hebrews, and through them becoming “the heritage of all mankind”?
Or, again, are the two citations less contradictory than they seem, each being a correct statement of a particular point of view? Did the Babylonian religion, which the Hebrews are said to have borrowed, really have elements both of greatness and of degradation, and was it, therefore, capable of being interpreted in one way or the other, according to the particular element for the moment considered? Perhaps this is the fairer view. Possibly these two phases might be found to pertain to every religion whatsoever. In any event, we shall have occasion often to quote contradictory views in attempting to get at the truth about the religions of the various peoples who come before us. And of a certainty we shall sometimes be left in doubt as to the real character of the religion in question. So long as the sects of Christendom cannot agree among themselves as to the correct interpretation of the particular records which form their common basis, we can hardly hope to interpret with full justice the religious contemplations of people of another genius.
The following account of Assyrian religion by Joachim Menant is based upon a study of documents from the library of Asshurbanapal, and, as will be seen, is an exposition of certain details of the subject, rather than an attempt at a comprehensive analysis. Nevertheless, its explicit depiction of these details will perhaps give the reader a clearer idea of the Assyrian religion than could be gained from a more general treatment. As already pointed out, any interpretation of the mysteries of an oriental religion must necessarily, in the present state of our knowledge, leave much to be desired.a