140 THEO. G. PINCHES, ESQ., NOTES UPON SOME OF THE 



goddess Nina, "lady of interpretation" (»-Jf- £jK| ■£-£§! 

 H^ ^Z lTT T 3T >wT Nina, nin induba-gi = Assyrian Nina, be lit 

 piristi), a portion of the city of Lagas, as well as the world- 

 renowned city of Nineveh, seem to have taken their names. 

 What connection, however, the Assyrian Nineveh may have 

 had with that of Babylonia, is unknown. 



Court-life in Babylonia at this early period was probably 

 of a very simple kind. The patesi or viceroy seems to have 

 been nothing more than a chief among his people, and was 

 most likely also chief priest, as were likewise the Babylonian, 

 Assyrian, and Egyptian rulers in general. We know from 

 the large number of letters which passed between the 

 Assyrian kings and their subjects, what the relations between 

 ruler and ruled were, and it is probable that, if we could 

 only light upon the Babylonian royal record-office, we should 

 find that nearly, if not quite, the same interest was taken by 

 the king in his subjects in Babylonia as in Assyria, in early 

 as in late times — though, as it is probable that fewer persons, 

 in the earlier ages, knew how to write, fewer records refer- 

 ring to this relationship would be found. History indicates, 

 too, that the Babylonian rulers always strove to make them- 

 selves popular, and, aside from the petty jealousies which 

 were sometimes rife in the land, seem to have succeeded 

 very well. 



II, 



From private documents of about 2300 B.C. 



We have obtained a few glimpses of life in Babylonia at 

 the very early period when Gudea was ruler, from one of 

 his royal inscriptions. Let us now briefly glance at it from 

 the people's point of view. 



In studying the tablets of the early Babylonian period, 

 mostly contracts, we are at once struck by a fact which has 

 already been noticed several times, namely, that whilst most 

 of the names are Semitic, yet the documents themselves are, 

 with few exceptions, in the Accadian language. The reason 

 of this is obvious when we examine the texts in question, for 

 it is only the documents whose contents are unusual that are 

 in Semitic Babylonian — almost all the others relate to sales 

 of land and similar things in which a set form of words is 

 used, and the time-honoured expressions employed by the 

 scribes were, as is usual in all cases of the kind, long in dying 



