138 THEO. G. PITCHES, ESQ., NOTES UPON SOME OP THE 



donbtedly buried their dead, but the Babylonian and Assyrian 



inscriptions seem to show that they also burned them. Many 

 of the ancient kings of Babylonia seem to have been burned 

 when dead.* The Akkadian words for funeral-pile seem to 

 have been kuku, giskuru, kibir and giskibir, and the Semitic 

 Babylonian words esseu, makaddu, Jcaddu, hum, and kibirmi 

 (the last two borrowed from Akkadian). Time alone will 

 show how far cremation was practised with the Akkadian and 

 Semitic inhabitants of ancient Babylonia. Our text testifies 

 to the fact that the Eastern custom of employing professional 

 mourners was in vogue among the Akkadians, and this may 

 also be gathered from the legend of the descent of the god- 

 dess Istar into Hades, where male and female mourners for 

 Tammuz her husband are referred to. 



Whether the Akkadians were a law-abiding people or 

 not there is but little to show, but it may safely be said, 

 that they were a law-loving people. The paragraph where 

 reference is made to litigation shows what their character 

 was in that respect, and this love for legal forms probably 

 lasted to the end. We know, from the many law-tablets 

 of the later Babylonians, how great their love for legal 

 formalities was, and we may suppose that this was inherited 

 from their Akkadian forefathers. 



Like the whole Babylonian race, the Akkadians were, in 

 their way, very religious, and superstitious withal. To this 

 the whole inscription testifies. The part which attracts our 

 attention, however, the most, is probably that where Gudea 

 gives command to his statue to invoke "the statue of his 

 king." If this translation be the correct one, he practically 

 calls on his own statue to represent him in the temple, and 

 probably intends thereby, that it should intercede for him 

 with the god whom he worshipped, when he should be 

 absent from the fane — indeed, he may have intended it to 

 represent him in this way when he should have departed 

 this life. 



The power of the daughter to represent a house in which 

 there was no son, testifies to the honour paid by the Akkadians 

 to women in a part of the world where she was, and still is, 

 regarded, more or less, as a chattel. This Akkadian custom 

 seems to have had its influence even to the latest times of 

 the Babylonian empire, as we see from the part which 



* See Geo. Smith's article in the third volume of the Transactions of the 

 Society of Biblical Arclmology, pp. 374-376 (11. 27, [32], and 37). 



