Ancient Iraq

by Georges Roux

  If a surgeon performed a major operation on an awêlum with a bronze lancet and has caused the death of this man… they shall cut off his hand (§ 218).

  If an architect built a house for an awêlum but did not make his work strong, and if the house that he built collapsed and has caused the death of its owner, that architect shall be put to death (§ 229).

  If it has caused the death of a slave of the owner, he shall give slave for slave to the owner of the house (§ 231).

  Cruel as it sometimes appears to civilized minds, the Code of Hammurabi, in many of its laws is surprisingly close to our modern ideas of justice. The laws concerned with family and property, in particular, represent a remarkable effort to protect women and children from arbitrary treatment, poverty and neglect, and if penalties, in this section also, are exceedingly severe, their application is mitigated by the admission of forgiveness and extenuating circumstances. The wife's adultery is punished by death, but the husband may pardon his spouse and the king her lover, thus saving them from being ‘bound together and thrown into the river’ (§ 129). The prisoner's wife who, in her husband's absence, has ‘entered the house of another man’ incurs no punishment if she has done so because ‘there was nothing to eat in her house’ (§ 134). A man may divorce his wife without giving her anything if she misbehaved (§ 141), but if he divorces her because she has not borne him sons, ‘he shall give her money to the value of her bridal gift and shall make good to her the dowry which she has brought from her father's house’19 (§ 138). The husband of a diseased woman may marry another woman, but he must keep his wife in his house and maintain her ‘so long as she lives’ (§ 148). When a man dies his property is divided between his sons, but his widow has the usufruct of this property (§ 171) and may dispose freely of any ‘field, plantation, house or chattel’ he may have given her (§ 150). When a woman dies her dowry does not return to her father, but goes to her sons (§ 162). Similar dispositions protect the sons of the ‘first wife’ against those of the ‘slave-girl’ or concubine and guarantee the children's rights against undeserved disherison (§ 168).

  Another point of general interest in the Code is the frequent reference to the institution called ilkum (§§ 26 – 41). Apparently, persons of certain professions, such as the rêdum (gendarme), the ba'irum (sailor) or the nash biltim (literally ‘tribute-bearer’) received from the king corn, land, sheep and cattle in return for certain duties, the most explicit of which is military service. The fief (ilkum) thus acquired remained the personal property of the fief-holder throughout his life and was divided between his heirs after his death. It could not be sold nor assigned by the holder to his wife or daughters, though it could be used to pay his ransom if he was captured in the service of the king, or forfeited to a substitute if he refused to fulfil his military duties or deserted. Clearly then, the granting of an ilkum was not a simple reward for services rendered to the crown, but a measure probably introduced by Hammurabi himself20 to tie firmly to the land a number of his subjects and to create between them and the king a bond comparable to the feudal bond which, in medieval Europe, attached lord and liegeman.

  Such are, very briefly, some of the main features of this famous Code. Less original perhaps than it was thought, it remains unique by its length, by the elegance and precision of its style and by the light it throws on the rough, yet highly civilized society of the period. Written in the last years of Hammurabi, it crowns his long and successful reign. Looking at this achievement, the King of Babylon could proudly proclaim:

  I rooted out the enemy above and below;

  I made an end of war;

  I promoted the welfare of the land;

  I made the people rest in friendly habitations;

  I did not let them have anyone to terrorize them.

  The great gods called me,

  So I became the beneficent shepherd whose sceptre is righteous;

  My benign shadow is spread over my city.

  In my bosom I carried the people of the land of Sumer and Akkad;

  They prospered under my protection;

  I have governed them in peace;

  I have sheltered them in my strength.21

  CHAPTER 13

  IN THE DAYS OF HAMMURABI

  No matter how fascinating the ever-changing spectacle of political and economic situations, there are times which call for a pause; there are periods so richly documented that the historian feels compelled to leave aside monarchs and dynasties, kingdoms and empires, wars and diplomacy, and to study the society in a static condition as it were. How did people live? What did they do in everyday life? These are questions which come naturally to mind and deserve an answer.1

  In Mesopotamia the days of Hammurabi – or, more exactly, the century which begins sixty years before his reign (1850 – 1750 B.C. in round figures) – is one of these periods. Here our sources, both archaeological and literary, are particularly copious. It is true that we know very little about the capital cities of southern Iraq: Isin and Larsa have just begun to yield their secrets, and eighteen years of excavations at Babylon have barely scratched the surface of the huge site, the height of the water-table having prevented the German archaeologists from digging much below the Neo-Babylonian level (609 – 539 B.C.). In the small area where deep soundings were possible only a few tablets and fragments of walls pertaining to the First Dynasty were found, some twelve metres below the surface. But on other sites other archaeologists have been more fortunate. The monuments they have unearthed – the royal palace of Mari, the palace of the rulers at Tell Asmar, the temples and private houses of Ur, to mention only the most important – are perhaps not very numerous, but they are of outstanding quality. As regards written documents we are even better provided, for not only do we have the Code of Hammurabi, but his correspondence, the royal archives of Mari, Tell Shimshara and Tell al-Rimah,2 and many legal, economic, administrative, religious and scientific texts from Mari, Larsa, Sippar, Nippur, Ur, Tell Harmal and various other sites; in all, perhaps thirty or forty thousand tablets. Indeed, it can be said without exaggeration that Mesopotamia 1, 800 years before Christ is much better known to us than any European country a thousand years ago, and it would be in theory possible for historians to draw a fairly complete and detailed picture of the Mesopotamian society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries B.C. As this would go far beyond the boundaries of the present work, we shall limit ourselves to the sketching of the three main aspects of this society: the god in his temple, the king in his palace, the citizen in his house.

  The God in his Temple

  The temples – the ‘houses’ (bitu) of the gods as they were called – varied in size and layout. Some were small wayside chapels which were part of a block of houses and consisted of hardly more than an open courtyard with an altar and a pedestal for the divine statue,3 others were larger detached or semi-detached buildings, comprising several courtyards and rooms,4 and finally, there were the enormous temple-complexes of the greater gods, which often included several shrines for the minor deities of their household and retinue.5 These temples no longer retained the admirable simplicity of the early Sumerian sanctuaries (see Chapter 4). Throughout the ages they had increased in complexity to incorporate the numerous services of a strongly organized religious community. Moreover, their plan reflects a high degree of specialization in the performance of the cult, and it appears that a distinction was made between the parts of the temple open to the public and those reserved for the priests, or perhaps for certain categories of priests only. Whether the concept that the great gods could only be approached by degrees was developed by the Sumerians or introduced by the Semites is a much debated problem which cannot be discussed here.

  All the main Mesopotamian temples had in common certain features.6 They all comprised a large courtyard (kisalmahhu) surrounded by small rooms which served as lodgings, libraries and schools for the priests, offices, workshops, stores, cellars and stables. During the great feasts the statues of the gods brought fr
om other temples were solemnly gathered in this courtyard, but on ordinary days it was open to all, and we must imagine it not as an empty and silent space, but as a compromise between a cloister and a market-place, full of noise and movement, crowded with people and animals, unceasingly crossed by the personnel of the temple, the merchants who did business with it and the men and women who brought offerings and asked for help and advice. Beyond the kisalmahhu was another courtyard, usually smaller, with an altar in its middle, and finally, the temple proper (ashirtu), the building to which none but the priests called erib bîti (‘those who enter the temple’) had access. The temple was divided by partitions into three rooms, one behind the other: vestibule, ante-cella and cella (holy of holies). The cella contained the statue of the god or goddess to whom the temple was dedicated. Usually made of wood covered with gold leaves, it stood on a pedestal in a niche cut in the back-wall of the cella. When all doors were open the statue could be seen shining faintly in the semi-darkness of the shrine from the small courtyard but not from the large one, as it was at a right angle with the temple doorway, or hidden behind a curtain, depending on the layout of the temple. Flower pots and incense burners were arranged at the god's feet, and low brick benches around the cella and ante-cella supported the statues of worshippers, together with royal steles and various ex-votos. A two-step altar, a table for the sacred meals, basins of lustral water, stands for insignia and dedicated weapons made up the rest of the temple furniture. Rare and expensive materials were used in the construction of the building: cedar beams supported its roof, and its doors were made of precious wood, often lined with copper or bronze sheets. Lions, bulls, griffins or genii made of stone, clay or wood guarded the entrances. At the corners of the

  The temple of Ishtar-kititum at Ischâli (Diyala valley). First half of the second millennium B.C.

  Reconstruction by H. D. Hill. From H. Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient, 1954.

  temple precinct and buried under the pavement were brick boxes containing bronze or clay ‘nails’, royal inscriptions and the statuettes of the kings who had founded or restored the sanctuary. These ‘foundation deposits’ (temenu) authenticated the sacred ground, marked its limits and kept the netherworld demons at bay.7

  Every day throughout the year religious ceremonies were performed in the temple: the air vibrated with music,8 hymns and prayers; bread, cakes, honey, butter, fruit were laid on the god's table; libations of water, wine or beer were poured out into vases; blood flowed on the altar, and the smoke of roasting flesh mixed with the fumes of cedar-wood, cyprus-wood or incense filled the sanctuary. The main object of the cult was the service of the gods, the dullu. The gods were supposed to live a physical life and had daily to be washed, anointed, perfumed, dressed, attired and fed, the regular supply of food being ensured by ‘fixed offerings’ established once and for all by the king as supreme chief of the clergy, and by pious foundations. In addition, certain days of the month considered as sacred or propitious – the days when the moon appeared or disappeared, for instance – were devoted to special celebrations.9 There were also occasional ceremonies of purification and consecration, and of course the great New Year Festival celebrated in some cities in the spring and the autumn. But the priests also served as intermediaries between men and gods. Better than anyone else they knew the proper way of approaching the great gods; on behalf of the sick, the sorrowful, the repentant sinner they would offer sacrifices, recite prayers and lamentations, sing hymns of grace and psalms of contrition; and as they alone could read into the mysterious future, there was no king nor commoner who, on frequent occasions, would not consult them and ask for an omen. For each of these acts of cult a strict and complicated ritual was laid down. Originally prayers and incantations were in Sumerian, but under the First Dynasty of Babylon the Akkadian language was allowed into the Temple, and we possess, for instance, a ‘Ritual for the Covering of the Temple Kettle-drum’, where it is said that a certain prayer should be whispered ‘through a reed tube’ in Sumerian into the right ear of a bull and in Akkadian into its left ear.10

  The chief administrator of the temple was the shanga, a high dignitary who, in the reign of Hammurabi, was appointed by the king himself. He was assisted by inspectors and scribes who registered all that entered or went out of the temple stores and commanded low-grade employees, such as guards, cleaners and even barbers. The wheat and barley fields of the temple were run by ishakku's (Akkadian for ensi, which shows how low this once prestigious title had fallen), and were worked by farm hands and sometimes corvées which involved the entire population of the town or district.

  A large number of priests were attached to the main temples.11 Sons and grandsons of priests, they were brought up in the sanctuary and received a thorough education in the temple school, or bît mummi (literally ‘House of Knowledge’). At their head was the high-priest, or enum (Akkadian form of the Sumerian word en, ‘lord’) and the urigallum originally the guardian of the gates but now the main officiant. Among the specialized members of the clergy, the mashmashshum who recited incantations, the pashîshum who anointed the gods and laid their table, the ramkum who washed the statues of the gods, the nishakum who poured out libations and the kâlum who chanted incantations but also fulfilled some mysterious functions, were the most important. These priests were assisted by the sacrificer (nash patri, ‘sword bearer’), as well as by singers and musicians. Although he took part in religious ceremonies, the ashipum (exorcist) cannot be considered a priest in the narrow sense of the term, since he served the public and notably the sick. The same remark applies to the sha'ilum, who interpreted dreams, and even more the barûm or diviner, a very busy and rich man in a society where divination was part of everyday life. Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about the temples of female deities. There is no doubt, however, that the temples of Ishtar, the goddess of carnal love, were the sites of a licentious cult with songs, dances and pantomimes performed by women and transvestites, as well as sexual orgies. In these rites, which may be found shocking but were sacred for the Babylonians, men called assinu, kulu‘u or kurgarru – all passive homosexuals and some of them perhaps castrates – participated together with women who are too often referred to as ‘prostitutes’. In fact, the true prostitutes (harmâtu, kezrêtu, shamhâtu), such as the one who seduced Enkidu (page 118), were only haunting the temple surrounds and the taverns. Only those women who were called ‘votaress of Ishtar’ (ishtarêtu) or ‘devoted’ (qashshatu) were probably part of the female clergy.12

  In sharp contrast with all this were the nadîtu, who usually came from the best families and could marry but were not allowed to bear children so long as they remained in the temple ‘cloister’ (gagû) where they lived in communities. Loosely attached to the temple, the nadîtu were, in fact, remarkable business women who made fortunes from buying and letting out houses and land. On their death their wealth was left to their parents or relatives, thereby preventing the estates from being fragmented through the marriage of daughters.13

  All these people formed a closed society which had its own rules, traditions and rights, lived partly from the revenues of the temple land, partly from banking and commerce and partly ‘from the altar’,14 and played an important part in the affairs of the state and in the private life of every Mesopotamian. Yet the days when the temple controlled the entire social and economic life of the country were over, for the vital centre, the heart and brain of the state, was now the royal palace.

  The King in his Palace

  The importance given to the royal palace (Sum. é-gal, Akkad. ekallum, ‘great house’) is a striking feature of the Old Babylonian period. The concentration of authority in the hands of the monarch, the requirements of a centralized administration, the costly exigency of prestige had concurred to transform the king's residence – hitherto a relatively modest building – into a vast compound of apartments, reception rooms, offices, workshops and stores surrounded for safety reasons by strong defensive wal
ls. Mansion, castle and serai, the palace had become a city within the city.

  Of such royal abodes there is no finer example than the palace of Mari.15 Found in an excellent state of preservation, it is remarkable not only for its size – it measures some 200 by 150 metres and covers an area of about two and a half hectares – but for its intelligent and harmonious layout, the beauty of its decoration and the quality of its construction. Archaeologists have called it ‘the jewel of archaic Oriental architecture’,16 and such was its fame in antiquity that the King of Ugarit, on the Syrian coast, did not hesitate to send his son 600 kilometres inland for the sole purpose of visiting ‘the house of Zimri-Lim’.17

  The enormous outer wall of the palace (fifteen metres thick in places), laid on stone foundations and reinforced by towers, was pierced with only one gate on its northern side. Passing through a guarded vestibule, a small courtyard and a dark corridor, one would enter the great courtyard of the palace, a truly majestic open space (1617 square metres) flooded with sunlight and paved with gypsum slabs. On the side opposite the entrance three elegantly curved steps led to a high, oblong room which is now taken as being the chapel of the goddess Ishtar of the Palace. Through a door in the western wall of the ‘courtyard of honour’ and an L-shaped passage, royalties, ambassadors, high officials of the kingdom and other visitors of importance were introduced into another courtyard, smaller but particularly neat and attractive with its floor of hard, white plaster and its walls covered with frescoes, some of them sheltered from rain and excessive heat by a light canopy resting on wooden poles. The brightly coloured paintings, which have in part survived and are now the pride of the Louvre and Aleppo museums, represent religious state ceremonies: a bull brought to sacrifice, the King of Mari ‘touching the hand’ of Ishtar (a ritual of investiture performed during the New Year Festival), offerings and libations to a goddess and other fragmentary scenes.18 Beyond this courtyard were two long rooms, one behind the other. The first room contained a plastered and painted podium which once supported a statue – perhaps the ‘goddess with the flowing vase’ found nearby, beheaded and thrown down on the ground. The other room was the throne-room. At one end, against the wall, was a low stone pedestal which must have supported a wooden throne, while at the other end a long, magnificent flight of steps led to a raised platform where probably stood the statues of the king's ancestors. From another room started a staircase leading to the king's apartment overlying a large group of stores.