NATURE 



289 



THURSDAY, JULY 26, 1900. 



TRADE IN ANCIENT ASSYRIA. 

 Babylonians and Assyrians : Life and Customs. By the 

 Rev. A. H. Sayce. The Semitic Series. Vol. vi. 

 Pp. X + 273. (London : John C. Nimmo, 1900.) 



THIS little book belongs to a projected series of 

 volumes which we gather are intended to deal with 

 the Babylonians and Assyrians and other allied Semitic 

 races, " the object of the series " being, according to the 

 prospectus, " to state its results in popularly scientific 

 form." The volume assigned to Prof. Sayce, which is 

 the first of the series to make its appearance, describes 

 the life and customs of the Babylonians and Assyrians, 

 a subject which oflTers many points of interest to the 

 general reader. Moreover, within recent years much 

 new material has been published which has thrown 

 considerable light on the social condition of the Baby- 

 lonians and Assyrians during both the earlier and the 

 later periods of their history. Thousands of clay 

 tablets, which were unearthed at Telloh in Southern 

 Babylonia and have found their way into the 

 museums of Europe, contain temple-records, lists 

 and inventories, receipts and tablets of accounts, 

 and furnish a glimpse of the daily life of the 

 early inhabitants of Babylonia at about 2500 B.c. 

 The letters and commercial documents of the period of 

 the First Dynasty of Babylon enable us to form a still 

 more intimate acquaintance with the life of the Baby- 

 lonians under some 6f the earliest of their Semitic kings ; 

 while the systematic publication of the legal and epis- 

 tolary literature in the great collection of tablets from 

 Kouyunjik has increased our knowledge of the social 

 condition of Mesopotamia under the later Assyrian kings. 

 Finally, the large collections of tablets of the Neo- 

 Babylonian and Persian periods, which are now available 

 for study, make it possible to trace the development of 

 laws and customs down to the latest periods of Baby- 

 lonian history. There is, therefore, no lack of material 

 on which to base a sketch of the manners and customs 

 of the Babylonians and Assyrians. 



Prof. Sayce has written many popular books on this 

 subject, and he is well qualified for the task he has 

 undertaken ; but we cannot help wishing that in one 

 important point he had modified the plan on which he 

 has compiled his volume. The book deals largely with 

 small details, containing descriptions of sales of houses 

 and lands and property, deeds of partnership, marriage 

 contracts, receipts, records of loans, and numerous other 

 commercial and legal transactions drawn from the 

 thousands of " contract tablets " which have been pub- 

 lished in various monographs and in the transactions 

 and journals of different societies. Any book describing 

 the life and customs of the Babylonians must necessarily 

 draw upon this large and scattered literature in order to 

 illustrate the general conclusions which the writer 

 formulates. Prof. Sayce has made abundant use of this 

 material, quoting and describing tablets freely ; on p. 16, 

 for instance, in one short paragraph, he refers to no less 

 than nine separate documents of different dates. But 

 NO. 1604, VOL. 62] 



from the first page to the last he has not given a 

 single reference to the works in which the various tablets 

 have been published, or any indication by which they 

 might be identified ; in fact, not including Biblical 

 quotations, we have only found two references in the 

 book (on pp. I and 66), and these are to the opinions 

 of modern writers and not to original authorities. This 

 is perhaps not Prof. Sayce's fault, but a defect in the 

 general plan of the series, for it is possible that the 

 editor has ruled that references to authorities are in- 

 compatible with " a popularly scientific " treatment. 

 But, whoever may be responsible, this defect detracts 

 largely from the value of the book. No doubt the ex- 

 pert knows already where to look for the original texts 

 quoted, and can control the various statements for him- 

 self ; but the series is not meant for the expert. In the 

 editorial preface, we are expressly told that it is intended 

 to " be serviceable to students in colleges, universities, 

 and theological seminaries, to the clergy, and to in- 

 telligent lay readers." The object of the work is, there- 

 fore, essentially educational ; but without references it 

 can prove but a poor guide or introduction to the study 

 of the subject of which it treats. 



Although doubtless hampered by this deficiency in the 

 general plan of the work, Prof. Sayce has produced a very 

 readable, though perhaps a rather rambling, little book. 

 He has written attractively on the general character of 

 Babylonia and its inhabitants, the constitution of the 

 family, the system of education, commercial and social 

 life, laws and government, letter-writing and religion. 

 To treat all these subjects fully in some two hundred and 

 sixty octavo pages is, of course, impossible ; but the 

 author has touched his subjects lightly, and some of his 

 chapters contain valuable summaries, as, for example, 

 that in which he describes the legal condition of women 

 in Babylonia. The plan of writing vaguely without refer- 

 ence to authorities, however, is not conducive to strict 

 accuracy, and we occasionally meet with a rather mis- 

 leading generalisation. The statement on p. 102, for 

 instance, that 



"no deed was valid without the seal or mark of the 

 contracting parties" 



is not borne out by the facts, for many deeds of different 

 periods are extant which bear neither seal-impression nor 

 nail-mark. On p. 61 we are told that 



"the year was divided into twelve months of thirty days 

 each, an intercalary month being inserted from time to 

 time . . ." 



Even for the Assyrian period this statement is probably 

 not accurate, and it takes no account of the changes 

 which the calendar underwent in the long course of 

 Babylonian and Assyrian history. The arrangement of 

 the calendar and the method of harmonising the lunar 

 and solar years are not yet accurately known in many of 

 their details and are still subjects of controversy, but the 

 student would not gather this from Prof. Sayce's state- 

 ment. The evidence for cremation (pp. 62 ff.) among the 

 Babylonians and Assyrians is far from being conclusive, 

 and many scholars hold that it was not practised in 

 Mesopotamia before the Parthian period. The statement 



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