VIII.] THE NORTHERN MONGOLS. 28 1 



all are judged by the goddess Beltis-Allat, who, however, is little 

 influenced by the good or bad lives led by the departed. Almost 

 everything depends on their attitude towards the gods, including 

 Allat herself; they are punished for having neglected the service 

 of the temples, and rewarded in proportion to the sacrifices and 

 offerings made at the shrines of the gods. 



How the family expands through the clan and tribe into the 

 nation, is clearly seen in the Chaldasan social system, 

 in which the inhabitants of each city were still te m cial Sys 

 " divided into clans, all of whose members claimed 

 to be descended from a common ancestor who had flourished at a 

 more or less remote period. The members of each clan were by 

 no means all in the same social position, some having gone down 

 in the world, others having raised themselves; and amongst them 

 we find many different callings from agricultural labourers to 

 scribes, and from merchants to artisans. No natural tie existed 

 among the majority of these members except the remembrance 

 of their common origin, perhaps also a common religion, and 

 eventual rights of succession or claims upon what belonged to 

 each one individually 1 ." The god or goddess, it is suggested, 

 who watched over each man, and of whom each was the son, was 

 originally the god or goddess of the clan (its totem). So also in 

 Egypt, the members of the community were all supposed to come 

 of the same stock (pdif), and to belong to the same family (pditu), 

 whose chiefs (ropditu) were the guardians of the family, several 

 groups of such families being under a ropditu-hd, or head chief 2 . 



Amongst the local institutions, it is startling to find a fully 

 developed ground-landlord system, though not quite so bad as 

 that still patiently endured in England, already flourishing ages 

 ago in Babylonia. "The cost of repairs fell usually on the lessee, 

 who was also allowed to build on the land he had leased, in which 

 case it was declared free of all charges for a period of about ten 

 years; but the house and, as a rule, all he had built, then reverted 

 to the landlord 3 ." 



In many other respects great progress had been made, and it 



1 Dawn of Civilization, p. 733. 

 - Ibid. p. 71. 

 3 Ibid. p. 752. 



