005. II. The Babylonian Background Of Early Hebrew History

II THE BABYLONIAN BACKGROUND OF EARLY HEBREW HISTORY

I. The Dawn of History. The combined evidence of archaeology, anthropology and geology indicate that man has existed on the earth at least twenty-five thousand and possibly one hundred thousand years. Back of the highly advanced civilization, disclosed by the excavations in the oldest ruins, lie millenniums, marked by slow but progressive development. Human history began at about the same time in the two most favored centres of the ancient Semitic world, the lower Tigris-Euphrates and the Nile valleys. The oldest records found in Babylonia and Egypt may be approximately dated between 5000 and 4000 B.C.

II. Early Babylonian Systems of Writing. Babylonia was the first to evolve a civilization that burst its natural boundaries and became a conquering force throughout the Semitic world. As the earliest inscriptions and archaeological remains reveal the life of that far-away age and people, the historian is impressed by the remarkable progress already made in the art of writing. All important events were recorded on stone or clay by means of picture-characters. Thus, for example, a star represented the gods and heavens, a circle the sun, the crescent moon growth, the arm strength, and the fore leg walking. By the combination of these signs even most complex ideas were expressed. In time these pictures were represented by conventional characters, consisting simply of straight lines ending in a wedge (Latin, cuneus; hence called, cuneiform), made in the plastic clay by the sharp comer of a cube in the hand of the scribe. Many of these signs were also used, not only to represent ideas, but syllables, so that it was possible with these to spell out individual words and to make the record clear and exact.

III.Different Industries. By careful cultivation and irrigation the lower Tigris-Euphrates basin was made to bear far more than the needs of the people required. The surplus gave the Babylonians the material with which to trade with surrounding nations. The ancient arts and crafts were also highly developed. Sculptors, brickmakers, smiths, including those who worked in gold and silver, jewellers, potters, carpenters, masons, miners, weavers and leather-workers, are all mentioned on the monuments. Most of these trades were also organized at that early day into guilds or unions.

IV.Merchants and Commerce. The rich products of that ancient world, and the great highways on land and water, which led southward to Arabia and India and westward to Phoenicia and Egypt, made the inhabitants of Babylonia a nation of traders. The merchants soon became a rich and powerful class in the community. Some also became bankers, loaning money at a high rate of interest (25 per cent, per annum and up), and transmitting their business to their children from generation to generation.

V.Effect of Commerce on Institutions. The needs of commerce gave a great impetus to the use of writing, for every important transaction was recorded. Thousands of such records remain to testify to the great activity of the early scribes. In time, trade also made necessary a fixed standard of value. The coinage of money came much later; but in ancient Babylonia bars and rings of gold and silver of standard weight were early used in trade. Half an ounce avoirdupois made a shekel, sixty shekels a mina, and sixty minas a talent. The needs of trade likewise led to the early development of law and judicial institutions in Babylonia. If commerce is to prosper, it must be protected. As business relations became more complex, thousands of cases of dispute arose. The decisions constituted precedents which in time became the basis of laws. These were regarded as possessing divine authority and were rigorously enforced. The result was that in time individual rights were as carefully guarded by law in ancient Babylonia as they are to-day in America or Europe.

VI.Scientific Knowledge. In the field of the mechanical arts great progress had been attained. The lever, the inclined plane and the arch were in common use. The length of the solar year (365 ¼ days) was known, and eclipses were often accurately predicted. In other respects the scientific knowledge of the Babylonians was exceedingly crude. They knew little about the human body and the treatment of diseases. The earth was thought of as an inverted dish, resting in the great watery deep, and the firmament above as a larger inverted bowl. Beneath the firmament moved the sun and moon and stars. Above the firmament were the great encircling waters; above these the bright abode of the immortal gods; while in the dark, beneath the earth, dwelt the dead.

VII.Organization of Society. The unit of this ancient society was the family. The father was the head of the household. The mother of children enjoyed an honored place, and her rights as wife or widow were carefully guarded by law. In later times, when conquering kings returned with captives, the slave class increased very rapidly. Whether the slaves belonged to a family or a temple, they appear to have been well cared for, and could even hold property in their own name. The king was the supreme head of the state, the commander-in-chief of the army, the judge to whom disputed cases were ultimately referred, the chief priest of the nation, and the protector of his subjects. The nobles shared his authority. In return for their service and tribute, he divided the land among them. Within their own domain they ruled as petty kings, renting the land in turn to the common people who were their tenants.

VIII.Period of Small City States (4500-3800B.C.). The earliest historical period in Babylonia may be dated between 4500 and 3800 B.C., and is known as the age of small city states. Six important cities were found in the north, Eridu, Ur, Lagash (Shirpurla), Uruk (Erech), Larsa, Isin or Nisin, and six in the south, Agade, Nippur, Sippar, Kutha, Kish and later Babylon. Each was originally independent and held sway over the adjacent territory. In this early day the non-Semitic Sumerian civilization was dominant in the southern group of cities; in the northern the Semitic type was beginning to gain the ascendency. The earliest inscriptions tell of the bitter wars that were frequently waged between these two rival races. The stronger city states also began to extend their rule beyond their own natural limits. The most significant ruler of this early period is Lugalzaggisi (about 3900 B.C.), who conquered Ur and Larsa and called himself “King of Uruk, King of the Totality.” He also states in his inscription that his god gave him tribute from the lower sea (the Persian Gulf) to the upper sea (the Mediterranean), indicating that even at this early date the influence of this eastern centre of civilization was beginning to be felt in distant Syria.

IX.Period of Unification and Expansion(3800-2100 B.C.). Separated by no natural boundaries and united by common interests, institutions and religion, it was inevitable that the different cities of the lower Tigris-Euphrates valley would in time unite under the rule of the strongest. If the chronology of the later Babylonian scribes can be accepted, it was about 3800 B.C. that such a union was established by the great Sargon I, king of Agade. Apparently rising from the ranks of the common people, he built up a mighty empire. The inscriptions tell of his conquest not only of Nippur, Shirpurla, Kish and Uruk, but also record his campaigns in Arabia on the south, Elam on the east, Armenia on the north, and the Mediterranean coast-lands on the west. This empire he handed down to his son Naram-Sin, one of whose inscriptions has been found on the distant island of Cyprus. A few centuries later the leadership passed to Shirpurla in the south; but for about five hundred years the ancient city of Ur, devoted to the worship of the moon god Sin, held sway at times over all Babylonia. Its earliest kings were famous for their building enterprises, as well as their conquests. At Ur they reared a temple to the moon god; at Uruk to the goddess Ishtar; at Larsa to Shamash, the sun god; and at Nippur they repaired the ancient temple of Bel. The rulers of the second great dynasty of Ur assumed the proud and suggestive title of “King of the Four Regions.” Contemporary tablets indicate that they carried their conquests into Elam, Arabia and Aram. The city of Larsa then enjoyed a brief period of supremacy. About 2000 B.C. it fell before the Elamite invaders from the east, who made it the centre from which they ruled over the cities of southern Babylonia.

X.Supremacy of Babylon (about2100-1700B.C.). It was at this time of humiliation at the hands of foreign invaders that the city which gave its name to the lower valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, first came to the front. About 2100 B.C. a strong dynasty arose at Babylon. The founders of this dynasty appear to have come from northern Arabia. The new blood and energy, thus infused into the already old civilization of Babylonia, found its noblest representative in the great Hammurabi, whose reign of forty-three years must now, in the light of a recently discovered royal chronicle, be dated not earlier than 2100 and probably about 1900 B.C. His deliverance of the southern cities from the Elamite yoke left him master of Babylonia. His two titles, “King of Shumer and Akkad” (northern and southern Babylonia) and “King of the Four Corners of the World,” imply that his authority extended beyond the Tigris-Euphrates valley. His chief glory, however, was as a builder and organizer. He enlarged the temples at Babylon and its western suburb Borsippa, and erected new ones at Larsa and Sippar. He connected the Tigris and Euphrates by a canal. For the purposes of irrigation he constructed the great Hammurabi canal along the Euphrates. He introduced improved methods of agriculture. At Babylon he built a vast granary.

XI.Effects of Hammurabi’s Policy. To ensure justice to all his subjects, he caused to be compiled and set up in public the remarkable civil code of two hundred and eighty laws recently discovered in the ruins of Susa. This code anticipates, by nearly a thousand years, many of the principles that underlie the Old Testament laws. It reveals not only a just, but also a humane ruler, eager for the welfare of his people. By his wise policy Hammurabi developed and bound together all parts of his great empire. He was the real founder of Babylonia’s political, commercial and religious supremacy. He made Babylon itself, even after it fell before foreign conquerors, the great centre of culture throughout the ancient world. Under his descendants, the rulers of the first Babylonian dynasty, the empire appears to have enjoyed, for over a century, peace and prosperity, largely as the result of his epoch- making work.

XII.Decline of Babylonia and Rise of Assyria(1700-1100 B.C.). During the later years of the first dynasty of Babylon the Kassites came down from the mountains to the northeast and conquered Babylonia. Their rule was maintained for several centuries. They adopted, rather than destroyed, the Babylonian culture which they found, so that its influence still went forth to all the world. Soon after the appearance of the Kassites (about 1700 B.C.), the subject city of Asshur on the east bank of the upper Tigris threw off the foreign yoke and laid the foundation of the great kingdom known as Assyria. Centuries of bitter, destructive conflict between the new power and the parent state followed, in which Babylon gradually lost strength and prestige. About 1100 B.C. the great Tiglath-pileser I, king of Assyria, entered upon his victorious campaigns in Babylonia, Elam and Mesopotamia. He also was the first conqueror to lead an Assyrian army into Syria. During this long period of Babylon’s decline, its ancient rival Egypt had become a conquering power and had succeeded to the political control of the rich territory along the eastern Mediterranean.