Rise of a Complex Urban Civilization
THE NAME BABYLON EVOKES A SENSE OF MYSTERY AND REMOTENESS. EVEN THE name is poetic: it means “gateway of the gods.” Today little remains of the city except some brownish, crumbling ruins and partial reconstruction dating from the era of Saddam Hussein. To the Greeks, however, Babylon was a place of astonishing, legendary wonders, such as the hanging gardens, which they described in travel guides. Herodotus, the famous Greek historian who lived in the 400s BCE, found Babylon impressive, but his colorful account had many exaggerations and inaccuracies. For instance, he erroneously stated that women were required to prostitute themselves at temples to strangers, which added to the image of Babylon as a place of sexual license. Then to the Jews, Babylon was a place of alienation and oppression, to which they had been deported forcibly, and they feared assimilation into a foreign culture with a polytheistic religion. Our vision of Babylon remains that of an infamous city, doomed for its extravagance and excess. Many people today associate Babylon with biblical stories like the destruction of the Tower of Babel or the account of Belshazzar’s feast, when divine handwriting appeared on the wall of the palace, foretelling the collapse of the Babylonian monarchy. Over time, these episodes were imaginatively represented in the visual arts, opera, and film, thereby the way we perceive ancient Babylon. Even the television science fiction series Babylon 5 used the themes of religion, dreams, prophecies, power, conflict, and destruction that have become associated with ancient Babylon. Today the city’s name still stands as a cautionary reminder of the dangers inherent in urban society driven toward expansion and consumption of resources.
I first became captivated by Mesopotamia through works of mystery novelist Agatha Christie, who was married to an archaeologist and wrote vividly of her adventures on digs in Iraq, even setting some of her novels in the region. What really made the ancient culture come to life for me, though, was the discovery of a small collection of Babylonian cuneiform tablets hidden away in our university archives. In the 1920s, a president had purchased them as a teaching tool so that students from rural south Georgia could “touch the Holy Land”; like others of his era, our president thought of Mesopotamia mainly in connection to places mentioned in the Bible. Although Babylonia did have biblical connections, these tablets tell a different kind of story. They are transactions of average people doing ordinary, everyday business and record keeping. The new archivist at our university wanted to use the tablet collection for teaching once again. My students always enjoy seeing the oldest texts in our library, and one young man even exclaimed, “Wow! They look just like Post-it Notes!” In fact, the tablets are like Post-it Notes in the sense that they are memoranda from a long gone civilization. Through them we encounter the day-to-day transactions that underpinned a civilization that has been shrouded in legend.
Any bureaucrat who has ever traveled on an expense account can perhaps identify with an ancient courier who was paid in rations. The tablets opened up an entire world. Mesopotamia became fascinating to me precisely because it was so remote, and elusive. Despite being written, first-hand sources, ancient tablets are sometimes vague. Surviving accounts do not cover all aspects of every period in Mesopotamian history. Because of this, scholars disagree and contradict one another on many aspects of Mesopotamian history. There are discrepancies in dating systems and chronologies. What’s more, because scholars of Mesopotamia are such highly trained specialists, much of what they write is incomprehensible to non-specialists. I wanted to discover the accessible, human side to Mesopotamia.
I found it in the celebrated Epic of Gilgamesh. The friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, as well as Gilgamesh’s grief over his friend’s painful death, is moving. Furthermore, it is not only the first “buddy story” in which two men brawl with each other and end up friends but also the first instance of the “best friend dying” motif so beloved of Hollywood. Perhaps my favorite episode in the story is when Gilgamesh, in his quest to understand life and death, encountered the ale brewer Siduri. She told him how to find the man who held the key to immortality but also reminded the distraught hero that death is part of the human condition. Maybe this is the first example of somebody like a bartender dispensing solace and advice! I was even more intrigued to discover that before the era of Hammurabi, women did, in fact, participate in ale and beer manufacture, and were protected by special patron goddesses, like Ninkasi. In short, the study of Mesopotamia is fascinating because it keeps raising interesting questions, and like Gilgamesh, the student of Babylon keeps on searching for answers.
To gain some perspective on Mesopotamia, we must look at it in relation to other civilizations of the Bronze Age. Like Mesopotamia, Egypt and India developed sophisticated civilizations in fertile river valleys. Along the Nile, Egypt prospered as a civilization of small villages, united under a monarchy. In the region that today is Pakistan and northern India, Harappan or Indus Valley civilization flourished. Cities like Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa (ca. 2600–1700 BCE) offered impressive urban planning and elaborate water storage facilities. Unfortunately, the language of the Indus Valley civilization remains un-deciphered, so the details of city life and social organization are not accessible to us. Babylon was a unique city of its era, so it is no wonder that it acquired an enduring legendary mystique. From roughly 3700 to 539 BCE, Mesopotamia saw the rise of a complex urban civilization and the development of territorial kingdoms and empires.
BABYLON AND THE WORLD: A City of Many Historical Firsts
To us in the twenty-first century, the names and places of ancient Mesopotamia only exist in connection to contemporary wars. Yet Babylonia offers some of the oldest written records in the world. The beginning of written communication distinguishes history from prehistory, so Babylonia is a place where we encounter many historical “firsts.” We can see some of the earliest attempts of people to meet the challenges of living in large cities and dealing with complex social, professional, economic, and political systems. Babylonians voiced some of the first lamentations over the destructiveness of war, made some of the first observations of stars and planets, and wrestled with concepts of what justice meant, both in the cosmic and social sense. They created the sweeping epic as a form of storytelling that is still the basis of our adventure, fantasy, and science fiction stories today.
For a long time Babylon was part of a lost civilization. Much of the built environment of Mesopotamia was mud brick, so it did not survive over the centuries, and the ancient languages fell from use. Fortunately, travelers and antiquarians remained curious about places like Babylon and Nineveh, whose names endured. Most sites were simply mounds of stratified rubble called tells. Correctly identifying and mapping them was difficult. Many ancient texts survived, though, and as competitive European states expanded their commercial and imperial interests in the Middle East, Europeans began to take an active interest in the history and artifacts of Mesopotamia. By the mid-nineteenth century, scholars had deciphered enough of the ancient languages that the civilization became recognized for its impressive cultural achievement. France, England, and Germany plunged into archaeological rivalry to excavate the famous sites. Owning pieces of the first cities and empires gave a cachet of power and cultural prestige to the industrial nations, who perhaps saw Mesopotamia as the ancestor of their own cities and empires.
The best way to understand the world of ancient Babylon is to look at its geographic setting within the larger region of the ancient Near East. The city was located in southern Mesopotamia, a Greek term that means “Land between the rivers.” (See Map 3.1.) The two rivers that defined Mesopotamia are the Tigris and the Euphrates, and southern Mesopotamia is known as Babylonia. Its environment is characterized by hot, parched plains, and, near the coast of the Persian Gulf, marshes. Here, the volatility of the rivers, especially the Tigris, made irrigation a necessity for agriculture and urban life. Northern Mesopotamia is called Assyria, and its landscape features hills and fertile plains watered by rainfall. Generally speaking, ancient Mesopotamia encompassed most of modern-day Iraq, plus parts of Iran, Turkey, and Syria. Because of its location between the Mediterranean area and Central Asia, Mesopotamia has always been at the intersection of many civilizations.
Proximity to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as well as the Persian Gulf had an important impact on the development of Mesopotamian civilization. Some scholars speculate that the shoreline of the Persian Gulf was closer to the southern cities before the climate started to become drier around 3700 BCE.
Mesopotamian people interacted with those of the Levant (the east coast of the Mediterranean) to the west, Anatolia to the north, the Iranian Plateau to the east, and the Persian Gulf to the south. Much of the contact came through commerce. Trade was vital, because Babylonia lacked many resources. It sought tin from Asia Minor and lumber from Lebanon and Syria. Late in the third millennium BCE Mesopotamia traded with Dilmun, probably the modern island of Bahrain, Magan or Makan, (a source of copper), what is northern Oman today, and Meluhha, identified as the sophisticated Indus Valley, or Harappan, civilization. Moreover, because much of Mesopotamia consisted of plains with few natural barriers, various groups, especially nomads from surrounding regions, were attracted to the area. Though Mesopotamian sources often depict the arrival of nomads as invasions that caused instability and the collapse of empires, these arrivals added to the dynamism of the region and became part of the fabric of the civilization. Amorites, for instance, established dynastic, monarchical rule that first made Babylon a powerful city and empire. Kassite rulers became the first people in Mesopotamia to breed horses specifically for chariot warfare. Thus terms like Mesopotamia and Babylonia do not refer to a single ethnicity or kingdom, but instead added to a dynamic culture in which people shared traditions, religious beliefs, and social organization. Mesopotamia saw political unity only when ambitious rulers arose and built empires.
Mesopotamia is part of the broad region sometimes dubbed the “Fertile Crescent” that curved in an arc north from the Persian Gulf down to the coast of the East Mediterranean. In this area the domestication of foodstuffs like wheat, barley, lentils, rye, sheep, pigs, and cattle began around 9000 BCE. As a result, small agricultural communities appeared in northern Mesopotamia by 6000 BCE. Between 6000 and 4000 BCE, Mesopotamians began to make pottery and use mud brick as a construction material. By the fourth millennium BCE, they were using the potter’s wheel. The first metal that humans worked was copper. Around 3000 BCE, Middle Eastern metallurgists learned how to combine tin and copper to form bronze, which was stronger than copper alone. The resulting proliferation of bronze tools and weapons marked the beginning of the Bronze Age in the Middle East. During the Bronze Age was when Babylonian civilization began to flourish.
City, Kingdom, and Empire
The most intriguing aspect of Babylonia is that it offers us a glimpse of the first urban culture. The city was at its heart. The urban revolution—when towns grew into cities—began in the southern plains of Babylonia near the Persian Gulf around 3700 BCE. We refer to this region as Sumer and the civilization as Sumerian, even though there was no ethnically distinct group of people identifiable as Sumerian. Scholars debate the details of who the peoples of Sumer were, how their language evolved, where they came from, and when they arrived in the south, but they agree that Sumerian civilization laid the foundation for subsequent Mesopotamian cultural traditions.
The inhospitable environment of Babylonia required significant human alteration to make it suitable for living. Experts used to believe that mastering irrigation projects like draining marshes and digging canals contributed to the rise of cities, but more recent archaeology indicates that urbanization preceded such large-scale projects. Land reclamation enabled agricultural surpluses, which in turn contributed to population growth. Scholars debate the exact reasons why urban expansion occurred in southern Mesopotamia. The arrival of outsiders, perhaps because of climate change, also might have contributed to this demographic growth. Regardless, urban centers flourished and grew into independent, complex city-states, with the early cities having populations of perhaps 10,000 to 50,000. Each city-state had a dynastic leader called an ensi (governor) or lugal (usually translated as king) who oversaw centralized institutions that organized society and the economy. Uruk, called Warka today, has often been called the first true city. Scholars debate whether it is literally the oldest urban center, but nonetheless, it was an impressive site. Its walls stretched for six miles and were protected by hundreds of towers. Uruk had a variety of private houses whose construction and embellishment reflected differences in wealth. It was an economic center and also boasted monumental temples. The city of Eridu was also extremely ancient and emerged as a principal religious center, with a shrine that dates back to around 5000 BCE. Another important early city was Ur, which was once a coastal city, in a prime location for trade with Arabia. In the 1920s, the noted archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered a cemetery filled with spectacular treasures at Ur, reflecting the wealth enjoyed by the elite. Famously, according to tradition, Ur was the original home of the biblical figure Abraham, who is recognized by Jews, Christians, and Muslims as a founding patriarch.
Because each city-state was autonomous, they were often rivals who fought one another over water and agricultural land. Shifting power was a characteristic of these early cities. For instance, Nippur came to replace Eridu as a holy city. Some scholars believe that in the 2000s BCE cities formed a league or confederation, perhaps to confront threats from external enemies. Around 2340 BCE, a ruler known as Sargon from the area of Akkad, which was just to the north of Sumer, built an empire that lasted roughly two hundred years and forced a degree of unity on the Sumerian city-states. The Akkadian empire was the first regional state in Mesopotamia. It expanded to encompass the Persian Gulf area, part of Asia Minor, and part of the Levant. It was the first multiethnic, polyglot (multilingual) empire in recorded history. Akkadians spoke a language from the Semitic language family (the same family as Hebrew and Arabic), which was quite different from the somewhat mysterious Sumerian language. The empire made Akkadian the official language of governing and business in Mesopotamia.
Sargon forged his empire by military conquest and governed by placing Akkadian governors in charge of Sumerian city-states. He built infrastructure to facilitate trade, but ultimately held his conquests together by force. The concept of unified empire was new to Mesopotamia, and the city-states of Sumer clung to their local identities. The moment imperial power weakened, Sumerian city-states asserted autonomy. After the demise of Sargon’s empire, the Sumerian city of Ur enjoyed supremacy in the south around 2100 BCE. Rulers of this Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. 2112–2004 BCE), like Ur-Nammu and his son Shulgi, built the first multilevel ziggurats, like the one dedicated to the moon god Nanna at Ur. Religious architecture reflects how central religion was to Mesopotamian life. A ruler’s power to govern was believed to come directly from the gods, and Mesopotamian art often shows rulers interacting with gods. For instance, the top portion of the Hammurabi Code visually illustrates Hammurabi receiving power from Shamash, the sun god. The whole institution of monarchy was believed to have been divinely created.
To show their power and piety, rulers built, expanded, or maintained temples. Mesopotamians conceived of gods as anthropomorphic (looking like humans) and immortal. Gods controlled all aspects of nature, like weather and fertility, which were of great importance to an agricultural society. Further, gods were unpredictable and required reverence from their human servants. During religious celebrations, deities manifested themselves in their temples to accept offerings. Each deity resided in the temple of his or her particular city and also could be represented by statues in temples in other cities. The temple was the center of the divine presence that protected and maintained the life, prosperity, and security of each city-state. After a century, however, famine, ecological problems, and invasions ended Ur’s power. A famous piece of poetry, the “Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur,” depicts the goddess of Ur, Ningal, beseeching the leading gods of the pantheon, to no avail, to spare her city from invasion.
Meanwhile, a new group of semi-nomadic, Semitic-speaking people called Amorites, moved into Mesopotamia from the north and west. Amorites adopted Mesopotamian culture, and some established themselves as rulers of city-states. Under an Amorite dynasty, Babylon first achieved prominence. Though the town already existed, during the era of the famous Amorite King Hammurabi and his dynasty (ca.1800–1600 BCE) it grew into an important city and the center of a thriving empire. Hammurabi was a conqueror who brought southern Mesopotamia under his control. Today, scholars use the term Babylonia to designate the southern portion of Mesopotamia. With Babylonian expansion, the city’s deity, Marduk, gained prominence in the Mesopotamian pantheon and came to be seen as the king of the gods who had vanquished the primeval forces of chaos during the creation of the cosmos. Marduk possessed great wisdom and magical powers that could be used against evil forces in the cosmos. Most importantly, Marduk was believed to have built Babylon as an earthly abode for the gods. Babylon became the religious heart of Mesopotamia and the locus of the cultural traditions that had developed from the time of the Sumerians. Babylonian scribes compiled important literary works, like the famous Epic of Gilgamesh.
In addition to literature, Hammurabi’s reign is very well documented with records of trade and diplomacy. The most famous written source from Babylonia that gives us insight into the structure of that society is the Hammurabi Code. Though it is not the earliest Babylonian law code, it is the most complete. Scholars disagree about the Code’s function in the everyday practice of law, but agree that it reflects a society in which the king stood between the gods who empowered him and the people he ruled. The law code shows Hammurabi receiving power from Shamash, the god of justice, and the prologue depicts the king as powerful, pious, and a protector of the oppressed. However, the code was not a law code in the modern sense; it offered no general or universal principles. Instead, it is a compilation of specific rulings. Some scholars have interpreted it as a political testament, a summary of Hammurabi’s reign or a literary model to train scribes. It was remarkably comprehensive, covering criminal law and civil matters such as business, property, slavery, inheritances, marriage, and family relations. By modern standards, these laws were harsh; for instance, breaking into a house was punishable by death. To Babylonians, justice meant retribution, or what is called Talon Law. The most famous example of Talon Law from the Hammurabi Code is the concept of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Hammurabi’s laws were not like modern statutes, and existing records of legal cases do not refer to his code specifically. Scholars continue to debate how the famous code was used in the society. It is also important to remember, that what constituted an appropriate retaliation depended entirely on a person’s social status. If a person of a higher rank did bodily harm to one of lower rank, the guilty party merely paid a fine. The legal status of Babylonians depended on social rank (royal, landowner, or commoner), gender, and whether they were free or slaves. Babylonian society was stratified, with social mobility an option only for those near the top. There was no sense that people had rights. They received protection from the king, who presented himself as a father figure and shepherd of his flock.
The social structure of Babylon was complex, and the details of social hierarchies and social interactions are not explained in documents. Terminology for social groups that appears in records depends on specific context or relationship between the persons described. For instance, a highly ranked, elite palace official could still be referred to as the “slave” of the king. The term “house,” which appears in Babylonian records as a description of social relationship, had a variety of meanings. It could refer to a single nuclear family household, a manufacturing establishment, an institution such as a temple estate, the household of the king, or to a clan or tribe. The Hammurabi Code mentions three specific social categories: free man (awilum); dependent (mushkenum), and slave (wardum); scholars do not know the precise nuances of these terms and what they meant to people of Hammurabi’s time. One aspect of Babylonian society is quite clear, though: it was patriarchal. Women were under the control of their fathers until they married, at which time they came under the control of their husbands. Children belonged to their father’s family. A man had complete control over his wife and children. Though marriage was usually monogamous, a childless woman was required to allow her husband to take a second wife in order to produce heirs. However, women could apparently retain some control over their dowries after marriage and also could accumulate property of their own through investments. A woman whose husband abandoned her could remarry after five years.
Babylon Reaches Its Height
Hammurabi’s empire did not survive long after his death around 1750 BCE. Despite upheaval, invasion, and a sack of the city by Hittites from Anatolia (ca. 1595), Babylon endured. Kassites, originally from the Zagros Mountains, had moved into Mesopotamia in the 1700s BCE. By approximately 1475, they controlled Babylonia and ruled for nearly four hundred years of relative stability. They embraced the culture of Babylonia, and continued many of the achievements of Hammurabi’s era, such as the development of a unified, regional monarchy as opposed to independent city-states. They participated in trade networks, providing items like horses and chariots in exchange for gold and timber. Late in the Kassite Era, civilizations of the east Mediterranean region experienced a variety of crises. During the Bronze Age, expansive trade networks emerged for the exchange of tin and copper needed to make bronze, as well as a variety of other goods connected the East Mediterranean, Aegean, Egypt, and western Asia. Goods traded included gold, timber, minerals, precious stones, and shells. Various trade routes that extended from the Indus Valley through the Iranian Plateau to Anatolia, Cyprus, Crete, and southern Greece passed through Mesopotamia. (See Map 3.2.) Between roughly 1200 and 1100 BCE, however, the trade networks that had characterized the Bronze Age disintegrated, and many regions in the Middle East faced severe pressures. Scholars vigorously argue over what caused the end of the Bronze Age, but they agree that it involved conflict, disruption of trade, and population migrations. The Hittite Empire collapsed, and Egypt faced invasion. Elamites, who lived to the east of Babylonia, sacked the city and carried the famous law code of Hammurabi back to their capital, Susa. Then, after 1100 BCE, Arameans, semi-nomadic pastoralists of unclear origin, raided Mesopotamia. Food shortages and inflation added to the general chaos.
By the 800s BCE, the center of power in Mesopotamia moved northward. Ashur or Assur, to the north of Babylon, had emerged around 1809 BCE as an independent kingdom with a king. Its process of expansion to become the Assyrian Empire was slow and characterized by setbacks. Assyria survived the collapse of the Bronze Age relatively intact, and gradually built a powerful army that used new iron technology along with bronze for weapons. Further, an important innovation was incorporation of cavalry into the army. Horses allowed mounted warriors to maneuver rapidly on rough terrain. The Assyrian Empire employed the first large-scale army, which included military engineers skilled in siege craft. Assyria is chiefly remembered for its military might and forceful treatment of subject peoples. Defeated populations were often deported so as to break up regional ties. Assyrian art and propaganda tended to emphasize military conquest and brutal punishment of enemies.
When Assyria launched its formidable imperial venture in the 700s BCE, Babylonia fell to its might. Assyrian cities like Assur and Nineveh became the new sites of political power. At its height the Assyrian Empire stretched from Sumer, north into Syria, down the coast of the Mediterranean, and into Egypt. Babylonia, however, retained its religious and cultural prestige.
Then, with the collapse of the Assyrian Empire in 605 BCE, power shifted back to Babylonia. The city of Babylon reached its apogee as the center of a splendid civilization and the cultural and religious center of the Near East (ca. 604–560 BCE). It was the center of the last great empire originating in Mesopotamia. Today, we call this period and empire Chaldean, after a people who first appeared in historical records in the 800s BCE and quickly became important in Babylonia. The city was very wealthy and cosmopolitan, with residents from the Levant, Persia, and Egypt engaging in trade. Many successful family businesses flourished. A few large-scale family enterprises even dealt in slave trading, real estate, and major commercial transactions throughout Babylonia and into West Iran.
Map 3.2. Trade Networks Through Mesopotamia, 3500–500 BCE
Mesopotamia’s location made it an important link in key trade networks that flourished between Central Asia and the Mediterranean. Open frontiers allowed migrants, such as Arameans, to enter the region easily, and Mesopotamian city-states and kingdoms engaged in a variety of relations with neighboring civilizations.
Babylon also became a center of scholarship, especially in mathematics and astronomy. Sumerians had developed a mathematical system based on sixty (sexagesimal system). They developed the concept of a 360-degree circle and 60-minute hour, which we still use today. They used cuneiform symbols for numbers, and, over time, Babylonians worked out practical problems relevant to commerce and engineering. Mathematical tables allowed them to work out square roots, cube roots, and exponential functions. Though they never developed underlying theories to explain mathematics, they laid the foundation for the later Greek and Muslim achievements in that field. The belief that heavenly bodies were deities and that celestial phenomena influenced human activities encouraged Babylonians to observe the skies. Though motivated by belief in the supernatural, the observations that Babylonian astronomers made enabled them to calculate movements of the sun, moon, and planets, even predicting lunar and solar eclipses. They also developed a lunar calendar composed of twelve months of thirty days. Egyptians, too, used sophisticated astronomy to develop both a 360- and a 365-day calendar to align the pyramids and determine the annual flooding of the Nile. During the Hellenistic Era (ca. 323-30 BCE) Egyptian and Babylonian astronomy converged in the famous Egyptian city of Alexandria, laying the foundation for much Western understanding about the heavens up until the time of Copernicus and Galileo. Babylonians can be credited with developing mathematical astronomy, and were so well known for this skill in this field that later Greeks and Romans used the term “Chaldean” as a synonym for astronomer.
Chaldean Babylon is best remembered for its monumental building. The great ziggurat (elaborate temple tower, perhaps three hundred feet high) called Etemenanki, dedicated to Marduk, inspired the biblical account of the Tower of Babel. Greek writers immortalized and perhaps exaggerated the Hanging Gardens as one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The shining, blue glazed-brick Ishtar Gate decorated with lions, dragons, and bulls that once adorned the city’s Processional Way is now reconstructed in a museum in Berlin, where it still dazzles visitors (a replica stands on the original site). Some of the city’s great monuments date from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, the last great Babylonian king. The last ruler of Chaldean Babylon, Nabonidus (556–539 BCE), offended high officials and the priests of Marduk by favoring the moon god over Babylon’s traditional deity. Factions within the city began secretly favoring Cyrus II of Persia, who was building his own empire. Cyrus captured Babylon in 539 BCE with little resistance and few reprisals.
Because the city enjoyed such prestige as a cultural and religious center in the Near East, Cyrus presented himself as having been chosen by Marduk to restore Babylon’s religious heritage, and this use of divine justification for his conquest fit within the tradition of Mesopotamian kingship. The first empire builder, Sargon, explained his rise to power in religious terms by stating that he received the favor of the goddess Ishtar. Cyrus then made his son, Cambyses, king of Babylon. The city continued to flourish, prosper, and serve as a center of scholarship and religion under the Persian Achaemenid Dynasty (ca. 620–330 BCE), despite some economic strain and occasional revolts. It was not until the Hellenistic Era (ca. 323–30 BCE), after the death of Alexander of Macedon, (popularly called Alexander the Great), in 323 BCE, that Babylonia stagnated economically and the fabled city began to pass into legend.
Literature and Religion
Ancient Mesopotamia comes alive through its written legacy. Although scholars still debate the origins of writings, in Babylonia, writing emerged near the end of the fourth millennium BCE, and the full details of the process are unknown. As the first city-states grew in size and complexity, writing became a practical necessity for keeping records. From simple pictographs Sumerians developed complex signs in a script that modern scholars call cuneiform, meaning “wedge shaped.” Clay was abundant along the river banks, so it became the principal writing material. Scribes used a reed stylus to press wedge-shaped symbols into damp clay tablets. The tablets were then sun dried or oven baked, which made them more durable. Cuneiform script was also used for inscriptions on monuments.
Though ruling elites kept extensive records, the majority of the population was illiterate. Only scribes from wealthy families who received rigorous training at a “tablet house” learned to read and write the hundreds of signs that evolved over time. Akkadians then adapted cuneiform to their language. Akkadian cuneiform became the common medium for diplomatic correspondence in the Middle East, and surviving examples, like the famous Amarna Letters, offer insight into the way ancient states interacted with one another. For instance, some of the correspondence includes requests from Kassite kings to Pharaoh Amenhotep IV of Egypt for things like a marriage alliance or better treatment of Babylonian merchants in Egypt. Rulers kept well-organized, extensive libraries and archives of information they considered important, including literature, dictionaries, and information about religious rituals. Temples and businesses also kept accounts of their activities. Although much writing was for administrative or sacred purposes, Babylonians were creative and devised clever satires about the socially pretentious, offered maxims of advice, and formulated love charms to assure sexual and romantic success.
Of all the written works that comes from Babylonia, the Epic of Gilgamesh is the most enduring, with its themes still central to culture today. Gilgamesh is the oldest recorded story about a hero who searched for the meaning of human existence, encountered death, and withstood many trials in the course of his quest. Gilgamesh was the semi-legendary king of Uruk, believed to have been two-thirds divine. The earliest parts of the story date back to Sumer, but in Hammurabi’s Babylon was where a writer compiled the ancient tales into a single, unified epic. Later a Kassite poet, Sin-lequ-unninni, prepared the standard version we know today, with its emphasis on friendship, grief, fear of death, and learning life’s lessons through hardship.
Gilgamesh was an abusive king, so the gods sent Enkidu, a “wild man” from the steppes beyond the city, to challenge him. Scholars frequently interpret Enkidu as representing nomads. His process of civilization through seduction by the beautiful temple priestess Shamhat is perhaps an early form of the “beauty and the beast” myth. The two men fought in a contest of masculine strength, but then became best friends. Later, in the course of the adventures they shared, they offended the powerful goddess Ishtar, so Enkidu sickened and died as punishment. Following the death of his friend, the grief-stricken Gilgamesh began to seek the reason for human mortality. In one of the most famous episodes of the tale, Gilgamesh sought wisdom from Utnapishtim, the only man to have survived the great flood that had destroyed the world. He revealed to Gilgamesh the secret of a plant that would confer immortality. Gilgamesh found the plant, but a snake seized and ate it while he was bathing. Thus, in the end, the hero discovered that immortality was reserved exclusively for the gods. Gilgamesh did not despair completely, though. He had gained much wisdom about the human condition through his mythic journeys and returned to Uruk a better king who was glad to see his splendid city once again.
Gilgamesh experienced his adventures in a world of volatile gods who often seemed vengeful or inscrutable. As the hero learned, humans were made of clay to serve the gods. Divine rewards and punishments for human conduct occurred in this life. Thus in one form or another, religious beliefs permeated Babylonian society. Rudimentary temples were central to the earliest Sumerian cities, and they became increasingly elaborate. At first, temples were simply raised above ground on a platform. Eventually, however, the multilevel, stepped ziggurat that reached the heavens came to characterize urban religious complexes. Ziggurats were artificial mountains that that allowed priests to climb nearer to the realm of the gods. The temple was literally the household of the patron deity and housed a cult statue. Temple communities were part of the social and governing elite, owned land, conducted business, and participated in the economic life of cities. A large temple like the Esagila, the temple of Marduk at Babylon, had thousands of staff workers and owned hundreds of acres of agricultural land. As such, Babylonian society is often described as theocratic because religious and civil institutions were interconnected. Children of royal or wealthy families became priests and priestesses, like Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon, who was appointed priestess of the moon god Nanna at Ur. Sometimes entire families worked at temple communities.
Each city had a local patron deity. An, the sky god, was the patron of Uruk. Ur was the home of Nanna, the moon god, whereas Nippur, which became an important religious center, was sacred to Enlil, the god of air and storms. Enlil was the king of the gods and the agent who bestowed authority to govern on mortal rulers. When Babylon rose to preeminence, the Babylonian creation epic, the “Enuma Elish,” explained how Babylon’s god, Marduk, replaced Enlil as the head of the pantheon. Leaders of cities and rulers of empires had to oversee religious rituals to assure prosperity and divine protection. There were numerous, cyclical public observances on the Babylonian calendar. The New Year’s festival, which came to be celebrated at the spring equinox during the Chaldean era, was an especially important civic function. Although many of its elaborate ceremonies involved the ruler and priests exclusively, ordinary people encountered the divine presence by joining together to watch public processions in which a statue of the god was carried along a parade route. However, scholars do not know exactly what role ordinary people played in these celebrations or how they perceived them because records about religion come from the literate, priestly elite.
Aside from official functions, Mesopotamians saw omens and supernatural forces at work in their daily lives. Perhaps because they lived in a harsh physical environment and faced periods of upheaval, people understandably viewed their world as terrifying. They believed that personal suffering and sickness were punishment for sin. They also believed in a variety of demons, ghosts, and monsters that interacted with humans. Numerous charms, spells, prayers, and incantations protected individuals against the omnipresent fear of evil and helplessness.
While Babylonians experienced the supernatural on a daily basis, a group of people with a different set of religious beliefs encountered important religious transformations in Babylon. Ethical monotheism had begun to evolve with early Hebrew and Israelite beliefs and practices, influenced by contact with Canaanite and Mesopotamian civilizations. For instance, the concept of a flood that destroyed creation was Mesopotamian in origin. The term Eden, as in the Garden of Eden, derives from the Sumerian word edin, for wild steppe land beyond the urban built environment. The earliest account of a divinely ordained flood that destroyed creation is Sumerian. Over time religious practices of Hebrews and Israelites took on distinctive features and became increasingly monotheistic. Hebrew religious reformers emphasized the belief that their deity, Yahweh, required sincere ethical conduct rather than priestly rituals from followers. Though wrathful, Yahweh was not capricious and could be swayed by moral, devout behavior.
When Nebuchadnezzar defeated the small Kingdom of Judah (in modern-day Israel) in 586 BCE, he maintained the Assyrian policy of deporting conquered peoples. As many deportees from Jerusalem to Babylon felt alienated in the foreign environment, they confronted these new challenges and subsequently adapted religious practices that built the foundation of Judaism. Prophets began to stress the idea that upheaval and military defeat were divine punishment. Though belief in divine retribution was common in Mesopotamian culture, Jews expressed it in the context of monotheism: Yahweh deliberately used Babylonian conquest to punish followers for lack of devotion. Thus, explicitly, there was only one, universal deity, Yahweh, in control of the actions of all peoples. More importantly, Yahweh came to be understood as an abstract deity who lived in the heavens and was not exclusively tied to the Temple in Jerusalem. Many modern religious scholars also suggest that while in Babylonia, Jews began to assemble previously written traditions into the Torah, the foundation of their sacred scriptures. The fundamental aspects of monotheism and the characteristics attributed to Yahweh in Jewish scripture became part of Christian and Muslim beliefs, so Babylon was a place of profound and enduring religious encounters.
GLOBAL ENCOUNTERS AND CONNECTIONS:
Babylonia as a Nexus Point for Civilization and Empire
Ironically, one of the most legendary encounters in the history of Babylon occurred well after the heyday of Mesopotamian-centered empires. The glamour, wealth and splendor of Babylon impressed the Greeks and in 331 BCE, Alexander of Macedon, whose life and career became the stuff of myth, entered the city during his rapid, dramatic conquest of the Persian Empire. As he took control of the Empire, Alexander increasingly acted like a Persian ruler and assumed the aura of divinely sanctioned power that had long been part of the Mesopotamian tradition. His sudden death from unknown causes, perhaps an acute disease, in Babylon in 323 BCE, while planning further conquests, added to the mystique of both Alexander and Babylon. Paradoxically, Greeks had gone to war against Persia because they viewed it as the ultimate “other,” the exact opposite of their own cultural values and traditions. In fact, the varied cultural traditions of Greece had connections to the diverse civilizations of the Near East; most famously, the Babylonian contribution to Greek math and astronomy has long been recognized. Though Babylonians did not devise abstract theories, they worked out calculations that Pythagoras and Euclid would later explain.
In the twentieth century scholars started to examine parallels between the adventures of Gilgamesh and tales of Greek heroes like Hercules, as well as the Homeric epics. Mesopotamian accounts of the origin of the gods, likely transmitted via the Hittites of Anatolia (Hittite New Kingdom ca. 1412–1200 BCE), perhaps influenced Greek views on the formation of their pantheon. After all, neither Greek civilization nor Mesopotamian civilization existed in a vacuum. Trade took people and ideas from both cultures into a wider world. The expansion of the Assyrian Empire into the Levant brought a major Mesopotamian empire to the coast of the Mediterranean, where Phoenician (Canaanite) cities played a role in wide-reaching trade networks that involved the Greeks. In the 1980s, scholars coined the term “orientalizing revolution” to describe the early interactions among Greeks and cultures of the Levant, Egypt, and Mesopotamia in the 800s and 700s BCE.
Of course the most extensive, well-documented encounters between Greeks and Babylonians occurred in the wake of Alexander’s Empire, during the Hellenistic Era, when Greek settlers and merchants came to the kingdoms of Alexander’s successors. In cities at least, a certain amount of syncretism, cultural mixing and borrowing, took place. Hellenistic Greek scholars encountered the Persian Mazdian priests, who passed on their knowledge of Babylonian astronomy and astrology. The Greeks also borrowed the term magi for these learned men, and it is the basis of our word magic. It is somehow appropriate that a word that conveys mystical power should have origins in remote encounters that take us back to the ancient ancestor of our own civilization.
With its open frontiers and geographic location close to the Levant, Egypt, the Iranian Plateau, and Anatolia, Mesopotamia was well situated to become a crossroads for wide-ranging trade networks. Trade for resources that were scarce, like metals, stone, and timber, brought Mesopotamians into contact with other peoples. In fact, control of trade routes may have been a factor that prompted Sargon to forge the first empire. As city-states vied with one another for supremacy and empires rose and fell, economic prosperity remained a constant, important factor in Mesopotamian life. Pastoral migrants were attracted to cities and absorbed Mesopotamian traditions. The wealth of cities allowed for the construction of monumental architecture, like temples. Urban elites created a literary tradition that preserved the memory of Mesopotamian culture.
Babylon stands out as the most memorable Mesopotamian city because of its powerful rulers, like Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, under whom the riches and prestige of the city increased. Although the Jews who had been forcibly deported to Babylon may have disliked the foreign culture, they were part of the process of cultural encounters, and some remained in Babylon after the Persian conquest. Whereas people remember the negative image of Babylon from the Bible, the Babylonian Talmud, an important piece of Jewish religious writing compiled in Babylon from the third to fifth centuries CE, is a reminder of the diverse interactions that speak to Babylon’s enduring mystique.
Although many written sources certainly exist for Babylonia, some are in poor condition or are incomplete. In addition, the language and writing style are very different from easy-to-read, flowing narratives. Scholars who read Sumerian and Akkadian are highly trained specialists and often have to guess what passages mean and then support their assertions with comparisons to similar ancient texts and references to interpretations of other modern scholars. Often, a significant amount of research is needed simply to translate a single sentence. Thus, translated works from Mesopotamia often seem stilted or fragmented to modern readers. So reading Babylonian texts requires imagination. The following selections illustrate aspects of life in Babylonia.
Commerce was central to the cities of Babylonia. Scholars use the term “redistributive economy” to describe systems in central institutions that gathered and stored circulated goods. Thousands of surviving tablets related to business and economic matters have been discovered around the remains of Ur, Nippur, and other sites in Babylonia. These tablets reveal information about transactions and exchanges in an era before coinage. Taxes and tribute, in the form of goods such as livestock, were sent to regional centers, for counting and redistribution. Some of the taxes, along with offerings, went to maintain temples and pay temple personnel. Other income was for workers, such as messengers, who were part of the bureaucratic hierarchy. Manufacturing establishments, such as textile workshops, also kept track of their payments to workers.
•What details about life and work in Babylonia can you glean from the following extracts from economic tablets?
•How did workers get paid?
•How did Babylonians date records?
•Can you think of any modern professional situations that compare to the differing payments and grades of status accorded to workers in the tablets?
•What does the excerpt illustrate about the hierarchical nature of the society?
One pot [ca. 20 liters] of dida beer, five sila [ca. 5 liters] of high quality beer, one ban [ca. 10 liters] of bread and two shekels [ca. 30cc] of oil and two shekels of alkali, three fish and three bunches of onions, Agu’a, the messenger sent to Persia. One pot of dida beer, six shekels of oil, one ban of bread, two shekels of oil, two shekels of alkali, three fish and three bunches of onions, Ilka the messenger. . . . Three sila of beer, two sila of bread, two shekels of oil, two shekels of alkalai, one fish, one bunch of onions, Dugamu the . . . Total: two pots of average quality dida beer [made with] one ban [of barley]; total: five liters of high quality beer; total: 6 shekels of oil; total 2 ban 2 sila of bread; total: six shekels of oil; total: six shekels of alkali; total: seven fish; total: seven bunches of onions. On the 7th day, month: “Bricks are placed in the moulds” [Month 2] The year after: “The boat of Enki was caulked.”
VALDOSTA TABLET NO. 7
. . . cows and five, . . . 28 sheep and 3 goats, . . . have been slaughtered for the kitchen, for the soldiers, on the second day; booked out of [account of] Duga, by means of Nur-Adad, the scribe. . . . Year: the boat [named] “’the ibex of the Abzu’” was caulked.”
VALDOSTA TABLET NO. 8
Six old small “weaver” garments, two old . . . garments . . . (for) the weavers. Two small “weaver” garments, one moth-eaten “weaver” garment.
Source: Valdosta State University Archives. The translations and notes in parentheses were done by cuneiform expert Dr. Cale Johnson for the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. This project puts translations of tablets from around the world on the Worldwide Web so that all scholars have access to them: www.valdosta.edu/library/find/arch/online_exhibits/babylonian/Cuneiform%20Digital%20Library%20Journal.htm. Dr. Johnson’s translation appears in the Cuneiform Digital Library Journal (2006), 2.
The Hammurabi code exists on a black stone stele (marker) that is on display in the Louvre Museum in Paris today. Translators are not certain about all of the nuances of the terms used as designations of social rank, but they agree that the Code is a valuable source on the social hierarchy of Babylon. The provisions in the Code take the form of a simple declaration stating an action and the consequence. There is little evidence to suggest if or how the Code reflected actual legal practice. The term “man” in this context probably means free man of at least moderate prosperity and possibly a landowner.
•Which excerpts show a concern for equality and justice and indicate that the king cared for the welfare of his people?
•Based on the following excerpts, how do you think women were regarded in Babylonian society?
•What excerpts best exemplify the concept of Talon Law?
•Why do you think laws were so harsh?
•How is the king presented?
•What kind of social structure do these laws reflect?
#14: If a man has stolen a man’s son under age, he shall be slain.
#16: If a man has harboured in his house a fugitive male or female slave of the palace, or of a plebeian; and has not brought them to the order of the commandant, that householder will be slain.
#21: If a man has broken into a house, before the breach shall he be slain, and there buried.
#26: If a captain or a soldier has been ordered upon “the way of the king,” and has not gone, but has hired a substitute, that captain or soldier shall be slain. The substitute shall take his house.
#27: If a captain or a soldier has been taken in a “misfortune of the king,” and his field and garden given to another to administer; when he returns and regains his city, he shall receive back his field and garden and shall administer them.
#48: If a man is liable for interest, and the god Adad has flooded his field, or the harvest has been destroyed, or the corn has not grown through lack of water; then in that year he shall not pay corn to his creditor. He shall dip his tablet in water, and the interest of that year he shall not pay.
#129: If the wife of a man is found lying with another male, they shall be bound and thrown into the water; unless the husband lets his wife live, and the king lets his servant live.
#131: If a man’s wife is accused by her husband, but has not been found lying with another male, she shall swear by the name of God and return into her house.
#134: If a man has been taken prisoner, and there is food in his house, and his wife forsakes his house, and enters the house of another; then because that woman has not preserved her body, but has entered another house, then that woman shall be prosecuted, and shall be thrown into the water.
#142: If a woman hates her husband, and say “Thou shalt not possess me,” the reason for her dislike shall be inquired into. If she is careful, and has no fault, but her husband takes himself away and neglects her; then that woman is not to blame. She shall take her dowry and go back to her father’s house.
#150: If a man has given to his wife a field, garden, house, or goods, and has given her a sealed tablet; then after her husband [has gone to his fate] her children have no claim. The mother can give what she leaves behind to the children she prefers. To brothers she shall not give.
#154: If a man has known his daughter, that man shall be banished from his city.
#157: If a man after his father has lain in the breasts of his mother, both of them shall be burned.
#195: If a son has struck his father, his hands shall be cut off.
#196: If a man has destroyed the eye of a free man, his own eye shall be destroyed.
#198: If he has destroyed the eye of a plebeian, or broken the bone of a plebeian, he shall pay one mina of silver.
#199: If he has destroyed the eye of a man’s slave, or broken the bone of a man’s slave, he shall pay half his value.
#200: If a man has knocked out the teeth of a man of the same rank, his own teeth shall be knocked out.
#201: If he has knocked out the teeth of a plebeian, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver.
#202: If a man strike the body of a man who is above him, he shall receive sixty lashes with a cowhide whip in the assembly.
#209: If a man strike the daughter of a free man, and cause her foetus to fall, he shall pay ten shekels of silver for her foetus.
#210: If that woman die, his daughter shall be slain.
#213: If he has struck the slave of a man, and made her foetus fall; he shall pay two shekels of silver.
#229: If a builder has built a house for a man, and his work is not strong, and if the house he has built falls in and kills the householder, that builder shall be slain.
Source: Chilperic Edwards, The Oldest Laws in the World: Hammurabi (London: Watts & Co., 1906),
http://books.google.com/books?id=4gI3AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.
The Epic of Gilgamesh was originally written as a poem to be recited or perhaps sung at feasts, and would have had repeated certain passages extensively. In the first part of this excerpt, Enkidu has a dream in which he foresees himself in the land of the dead. In the second half, Gilgamesh has roamed the earth after the death of his friend, seeking the means to attain immortality. He encountered a woman tavern keeper at the edge of an ocean and she admonished him.
•Based on these excerpts, how did Mesopotamians understand life and death?
•How did they understand the place of humans in the cosmos?
•What factors might explain those views?
•Do you think that Mesopotamians can be characterized as completely pessimistic in their outlook? Why or why not?
•What does this passage indicate about the relationship between gods and humans?
•Compare and contrast these passages from Gilgamesh to other epic stories that you are familiar with from other eras or modern culture.
. . . Those who dwell there squat in the darkness,
dirt is their food, their drink is clay,
they are dressed in feathered garments like birds,
they never see light, and on the door and bolt
the dust lies thick. When I entered the house,
I looked, and around me were piles of crowns,
I saw proud kings who had ruled the land,
who had set out roast meat before the gods
and offered cool water and cakes for the dead.
I saw high priests and acolytes squatting,
exorcists and prophets, the ecstatic and the dull. . . .
. . . When the gods created mankind,
they also created death, and they held back
eternal life for themselves alone.
Humans are born, they live, then they die,
this is the order that the gods have decreed.
But until the end comes, enjoy your life,
spend it in happiness, not despair.
Savor your food, make each of your days
a delight, bathe and anoint yourself,
wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean,
let music and dancing fill your house,
love the child who holds you by the hand,
and give your wife pleasure in your embrace.
That is the best way for a man to live.
Source: Stephen Mitchell, Gilgamesh: A New English Version (New York: Free Press, 2006).
Bottero, Jean. Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Translated by Antonia Nevill. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Foster, Benjamin, ed. From Distant Days: Myths, Tales, and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1995.
Kramer, Samuel Noah. History Begins at Sumer: Thirty Nine Firsts in Recorded History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.
Leick, Gwendolyn. The Babylonians: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Nemet-Nejat, Karen Reha. Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002.
Roaf, Michael. Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East. New York: Facts on File, 2000.
Stiebing, William H. Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture, 2nd ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009.
Trustees of the British Museum. Babylon: Myth and Reality. London: The British Museum, 2009.
ABZU Bibliography, Electronic Tools and Ancient Near East Archives, www.etana.org.abzu/.
Babylonian Clay Tablets at South Georgia State Normal College (Valdosta State University), www.valdosta.edu/library/find/arch/online_exhibits/babylonian/babylonian.htm.
Iraq’s Ancient Past, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, www.penn.museum/sites/Iraq/?p=958.
Royal Graves of Ur, The British Museum, www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/article_index/r/the_royal_graves_of_ur.aspx.
