mesopotamia the earliest civilization known—faint traces of child-sacrifice—laws for women and children—census figures in stones—code of hammurabi—the story of sargon.
our great grandfathers who accepted the chronology of the good bishop usher, by which the creation of the world was placed neatly and exactly at 4004 years before christ, would never have dreamed of such periods of time as those the ethnologist, in his search for the natural history of man, compasses today in the annals of a single family, like the so-called, and at present discredited, aryan. nor yet would it have seemed possible to our grandfathers, that modern arch?ology would have made it possible for our savants and scientists to be today correcting the mistakes of herodotus, and showing by their decipherings of new-found inscriptions and monuments, that before the earliest greeks, the egyptians, and even the semitic peoples who inhabited babylon and assyria, there was another people,—a people whose origin it is not possible to place even now,—the sumerians and akkadians,91 who in the fourth millennial period b. c. were already a cultured and civilized people.
recent excavations have changed the entire historical attack. instead of beginning with the homeric age as an age of legend, “civilization may now be traced beyond the mycen?an epoch, through the different stages of ?gean culture back into the neolithic age.”121 in egypt we can now go back before the pyramid builders to the earliest dynastic kings, even to neolithic egyptians of whom there are no written records. back of the known civilization of assyria and babylon, there has been discovered an even older civilization.
“on the northern and eastern confines of the babylonian culture-system, new nations pass within our ken; vannic men of armenia, ruled by powerful kings; kassites of the zagros, whose language seems to contain elements which if really aryan are probably the oldest known monuments of indo-european speech (c. 1600 b. c.); strange tongued elamites, also, akin neither to iranian nor semite. nor does it seem to us remarkable that we should read the trilingual proclamations of darius hystaspis to his peoples in their original tongues, although an eighteenth century philosopher would have regarded the prospect of our ever being able to do so as the wildest of chimeras!”122
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recent excavations have established the fact that the earliest known civilization was in what afterwards came to be known as mesopotamia, between the euphrates and the tigris, and that groups of people living in cities and calling themselves, in the lower section of the country, the sumerians, and in the upper section, the akkadians, dwelt in civilized state until they were conquered by the semitic peoples. the semites in their conquest of the greeks, as we now know, took from the conquered the culture of the race that was physically weaker, as indeed the gauls did from the romans.
in government, law, literature, and art the sumerians were the superior people, and though the semites improved on their models, the impulse, says king, came from the sumerians.123 it is now known that hammurabi’s code of laws, which influenced in so marked a degree the mosaic legislation, was of sumerian origin, and the later religions and mythological literature from which the hebrews borrowed so freely, was also of sumerian origin.
even with the excavations that are now going on and the discoveries that are being made almost daily, our evidence is still too scanty and imperfect, the gaps in it are too numerous,124 as professor sayce says, apropos of the babylonian religion, to make it possible for us to discuss with any definite93ness the attitude of these first civilized peoples toward children. years will pass before the tablets already in the museums will have been deciphered, to say nothing of those that are being dug out now. a library of 30,000 tablets was discovered by m. de srazec at telloh in northern babylonia, at nippur in the great temple of bel, and five times as many were discovered later by the american excavators. once the british museum was the sole repository of these treasures, containing everything from business contracts to prayers to the gods, but now they are in the louvre, the berlin museum, the museum of constantinople, the university of pennsylvania, and even in private collections.
from these semitic conquerors of the sumerians, however, there came the first civilization and the first humanization, for in this rich valley with its abundance of water and its rich soil, the nomads became an agricultural people; there was plenty for all, and the germ of human tolerance that the world was to show later toward the child, was there in that long ago pre-semitic civilization of babylonia.
traces there are, however, of an earlier attitude, when the first-born was sacrificed. speaking of a babylonian text, that he believed established the fact that there were sacrifices of the first-born among the sumerians, professor sayce said:
“my interpretation of the text has been disputed, but it still appears to me to be the sole legitimate one. the text is bilingual, in both sumerian and semitic, and therefore probably goes94 back to sumerian times. literally rendered, it is as follows: ‘let the abgal proclaim: the offspring who raises his head among men, the offspring for his life he must give; the head of his head among men, the offspring for the head of the man he must give, the neck of the offspring for the neck of the man he must give, the breast of the offspring for the breast of the man he must give.’” it is difficult to attach any other meaning to this than that which makes it refer to the sacrifice of children.125
further corroboration of this belief of professor sayce was furnished by the recently dug up stele of the vultures, now in the louvre. here there is a representation of a wicker cage, filled with captives who are waiting to be put to death by the god ningirsu, who holds in his hand the heraldic emblem of the city of lagash. the stele of the vultures records the triumph of the king of lagash, the great eannatum, over the men of umma who are undoubtedly the captives and are about to be sacrificed.126 these few examples of human sacrifice indicate, however, that the practice had disappeared at an early date, but, as we shall see, it did not entirely disappear, or rather reappeared among the semites of palestine at a later period.127
a pomeioc chieftain’s wife and child
(from the original water-colour drawing in the british museum by john white, governor of virginia in 1587.)
eskimo mother carrying infant in her hood
(from original water-colour drawing in british museum by john white, governor of virginia, 1587.)
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more positive knowledge, however, we have of the sumerian laws, laws it should be remembered that tell of a civilization 1000 years before the chinese.
that there was a sense of justice in sumer and akkad long before the period of hammurabi, is evident from the inscriptions found at tello by gerzec. inscriptions of the year 3500 b. c., according to cuq, and about the year 2800, according to kang, show that hammurabi was indebted to the reform king, urukagina, for many of his laws. urukagina declared that the people had rights, and even went so far as to say that if the king bought the property of a subject, he must pay for it. we have many tablets telling of the wonderful things that he did, but the one reform which indicates that he had a regard for the family, and consequently, there was probably more care for children, is that provision of his laws which deals with divorce.
in telling of his reforms in these inscriptions, urukagina records the fact that under the old régime, if a man put away his wife, he paid the patesi five shekels of silver and gave one to the grand vizir.
undoubtedly in the beginning, the object of these fees was to prevent the nobles, and through them by force of example, the plain people, from putting away their wives too easily. in other words there was a desire to hold together the old sumerian family. in the course of time, however,96 this became merely a bribe, for as the economic conditions improved, the money became not so much a deterrent as a bribe. one of the things that urukagina did was to abolish the fees of divorce, and to attempt to stamp out practices that were growing up.
tablets of the time of urukagina and his predecessor, lugalanda, translated by m. de genouillac, give some indication of what the family condition was, although we still have to guess as to what was the real attitude toward children. women were important; they could hold property and they were protected in their property rights by law. this in itself might indicate that there were no such primeval practices as exposing or drowning female children. among these tablets of tello, is a series telling what provision was made for the women who were attached to the temple of bau, the goddess to whom the great ruler prays, as:
“... the one that grantest life unto the land....
“thou art the queen, the mother that founded lagash.”128 in these tablets the name of each woman is followed with the number of infants belonging to her family, and their sex. in all, two hundred and twenty-nine infants are enumerated, of which ninety-seven are boys and one hundred and thirty-two, girls. five hundred and fifty-two women are named, but before coming to a conclusion as to the percentage this shows of children97 to mothers, it is well, as de genouillac points out,129 to remember that among these five hundred and fifty-two women there were many young girls. some idea of the size of the sumerian family may be obtained from the fact that the number of infants charged to a single mother is seldom more than four. once the number seven occurs, but this is in connection with the wife of the king, and two of these children would seem to have been adopted.
“the education of a large number of infants,” concluded de genouillac, “was encouraged by the pension for mothers.” here indeed was progress!—at a time when there was nothing but barbarism everywhere else in the world.
it is interesting to note in these same tablets the fact that the wife of the king or the patesi was of great importance, for all documents signed by lugalanda bear the name of his wife, barnamtarra, and those under urukagina have the signature of his wife, sagsag. it is more than likely too, that the service mentioned above as being for the temple of bau, was for the goddess’s representative, the queen sagsag. another tablet, in which are set forth the expenses of the servants who were apparently more attached to the queen, speaks of thirty infants to fifty-seven women,130 and in this and other tablets the frequent reference to the orphans who were being98 taken care of, shows that there was provision for the infant whose immediate protectors had passed away.
in the imperial museum at constantinople two tablets show that parents were free to sell their children and that these sales were frequent matters of legal adjudication four centuries before hammurabi. tablet no. 830, excavated at tello, is imperfect, but there is enough of it to show us that in the month of the fête of the goddess bau, the daughter of ab-ba-gi-na was sold by her father, and the sale was confirmed and properly sworn to and then registered. in tablet no. 925, we have the sale of a daughter to a cook, by a widow who was probably in hard straits. the daughter tries to break the contract and the mother stands by her, but the cook brings two witnesses who prove that the sale took place and was a proper one; as a result of this attempted fraud, the master then inflicts punishment on the slave.131
as a further evidence of the humanity of the sumerians, we have the fact that, like the egyptians, they had a god who presided over the accouchements, a god who corresponded in some ways to the hera of the greeks and the juno of the latins, but who had other and more kindly functions, and was there to ameliorate pain and apparently to protect the young. among the greeks and romans the young were never thought of except as the property of adults, whose interest always came99 first. in fact, among the babylonians and egyptians, there was this essential difference, that the goddess was really a midwife. among the sumerians, she was known as belitile, and was afterwards identified with mama, the goddess of the young; and in two texts translated by p. dhorme,132 the two are referred to as one. later on the two goddesses were absorbed by the all-powerful istar.
it was in december, 1901, that m. j. de morgan, director-general of the expedition sent out by the french government, while excavating the acropolis of susa, found three large fragments of a block of black diorite among the debris.133 when fitted together these three fragments formed a stele eight feet high, on the upper end of the front side of which was a bas-relief showing the sun-god, shamash, presenting the code of laws to the king, hammurabi.
under this bas-relief was the longest cuneiform semitic inscription yet recovered, having sixteen columns of text of which four and a half formed the prologue. on the reverse of the stele there were twenty-eight columns, the entire inscription being estimated by johns to contain “forty-nine columns four thousand lines, and eight thousand words.”134
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hammurabi, identified by assyriologists as the amraphael of genesis xiv., 1, was the sixth king of the dynasty of babylon, reigning over fifty-five years, about 2250 b. c., and the first king to consolidate the semitic empire, making babylon the capital.135
there are two periods in the history of humanity: one when the morals make the laws, and one when the laws change the morals. the code of hammurabi, the oldest known code in the world, belongs to the second period.136
while it appears from the prologue and epilogue of the code that hammurabi was deeply devoted to religion and was, in addition to being king, a pious, god-fearing man, one who destroyed his enemies north and south, the code is strictly devoted to civil and secular affairs. nevertheless, scarcely anything is known of the laws of the time dealing with crimes, nothing having been discovered to show how murder or theft was treated.137
hammurabi’s code is undoubtedly a compilation and, while he enacted fresh laws, he built for the most part on the foundations of other men.
in the sumerian days that preceded these semitic kings, of whom hammurabi, sargon i., and lugalzaggisi were the greatest, there were codes of laws101 on which hammurabi doubtless built. the attitude taken toward children in this period is indicated in extracts from the series called ana ittisu, the seven tablets of the series giving the following seven laws:
“i. if a son has said to his father, ‘you are not my father,’ he may brand him, lay fetters upon him, and sell him.
“ii. if a son has said to his mother, ‘you are not my mother,’ one shall brand his forehead, drive him out of the city, and make him go out of the house.
“iii. if a father has said to his son, ‘you are not my son,’ he shall leave house and yard.
“iv. if a mother has said to her son, ‘you are not my son,’ he shall leave house and property.
“v. if a wife hates her husband and has said, ‘you are not my husband,’ one shall throw her into the river.
“vi. if a husband has said to his wife, ‘you are not my wife,’ he shall pay half a mina of silver.
“vii. if a man has hired a slave and he dies, is lost, has fled, has been incapacitated, or has fallen sick, he shall measure out 10 ka of corn per diem as his wages.”138
from this it will be observed that if the son repudiates his parent, real or adoptive, he meets102 with a swift and heavy punishment. on the other hand, a father and mother have the power to drive the child out without any ceremony whatever. that such laws were the result of the disposition of foundling children is without question. we will see later that the roman empire in its endeavour to save the lives of children, was continually attempting legislative reforms for the purpose of giving men and women incentive to protect the helpless infant that had been deserted by its own parents.
adoption was an ancient institution, and the rights of the man who adopted the infant were protected in order that he might be paid for the trouble and expense of his charge.139
the adoption of children in the code of hammurabi is the subject of much minute regulation. in the code the endeavour to protect the father who picks up a child, is shown in paragraphs 185, 186, 187 and 188:
“185. if a man take in his name a young child as a son and rear him, one may not bring claim for that adopted son.
“186. if a man take a young child as a son, and, when he takes him, he is rebellious toward his father and mother (who have adopted him), that adopted son shall return to the house of his father.
“187. one may not bring claim for the son of103 a ner. se. ga, who is a palace guard, or the son of a devotee.
“188. if an artisan take a son for adoption and teach him his handicraft, one may not bring claim for him.”140
coming down to a later period, we may see the influence of other peoples on the babylonians in the assyrian doomsday book or liber censualis, copied from the cuneiform tablets of the seventh century, b. c.141 sixty-eight families are enumerated in these tablets, and to these sixty-eight husbands there are allotted ninety-four wives. seventy-four sons are mentioned and only twenty-six daughters, a proportion that is extremely suspicious. that there was no such slaughter of the females as we find in other countries, is shown by the fact that in some of the families enumerated there were as many as three daughters to one son, but the majority of the families were without female children and had one or two sons, an evenness of distribution which would lead one to surmise that the people of the district of harran, where this census was taken, were regulating the birthrate themselves.
of this period too, is the story of sargon the younger—a legend that is interesting not alone because of its similarity to that of moses, but because it shows that this section of the country104 had also fallen into the ways of the rest of the world. here, at the time of the legend, it was a common thing for a child to run the risks of exposure and death.
as an indication of the conditions a thousand years later, we may take the certificate of adoption cited by dr. rogers, of the time of king kurigalzu who reigned in babylon from about 1390 b. c. to 1375.
“ina-uruk-rishat, daughter of (mu) shallim, had no daughter and therefore she adopted etirtu, daughter of ninib-mushallim, as her daughter. seven shekels of gold she gave. she may give her to a husband, she may appoint her a temple slave, but she may not make her a servant. if she does make her a servant, etirtu shall go to her father’s house. as long as ina-uruk-rishat lives, etirtu shall pay her reverence. when ina-uruk-rishat dies, etirtu, as her daughter, shall offer the water libation. if ina-uruk-rishat should say, ‘thou art not my daughter,’ she shall lose the gold which she has paid. if etirtu should say, ‘thou art not my mother,’ she shall become a servant. there shall no claim be made. before ellil, ninib, nusku, and king kurigalzu they have made oath together.
“before damkum, her uncle on the mother’s side. before rabasha-ninib. before ellil-ibni, son of ellil-ishu. before etel-pi-azagshug, son of amel-marduk; before rish-marduk, son of ba’il-nusku; before arad-belit, the scribe, son of105 ninib-mushallim. the fifth day of shebat, the twenty-first year of kurigalzu, king of the world.”142
from another point of view we may also understand the babylonian morality. as a characteristic it is interesting to note “that the general modesty of the babylonian art, in the matter of clothes, is very marked,” says ward, “we never see any display of phallism.”143 that the influence and importance of the women had much to do with the character of these people is undoubtedly true.
they were a truly remarkable people of whom we are yet to learn a great deal. future excavations may reveal much, but up to now “the abundant literature of babylon,” says dussaud, “does not offer a single example of human sacrifice and yet one has the right to suppose that it was common among them.”
