A SKETCH OF BABYLONIAN SOCIETY. 1 



By F. E. Peiser. 



The preparation of a history of Babylonian culture is surrounded with 

 so many difficulties that only those but slightly acquainted with its 

 aspects would dare to undertake the task. In fact, the most necessary 

 preliminary studies have been begun only within the last few years. 

 Historical works on the subject show a disregard or ignorance of the 

 elements of the history of. culture, while the preliminary works which 

 have appeared lack more or less the bond of interrelationship. It is, 

 therefore, not an unimportant work to give for a part of the history of 

 culture an outline, or skeleton, about which the scattered and discon- 

 nected studies, thus far attempted, may rally, and thus make it pos- 

 sible to proceed more methodically in the consideration of individual 

 questions. 



For these reasons I have decided to condense several lectures written 

 some years ago into the present publication, which neither claims 

 completeness nor to pronounce the final word. On the contrary, I 

 hope that sharp criticism will be aroused by this sketch, through which 

 the common aim or object may be advanced. As this is really a sketch 

 of the subject I have refrained from citing and collating authorities 

 which are to find their place in monographs to follow; and this also 

 explains why I have taken up society as a unit, and scarcely more than 

 indicated its development. The work is based mainly upon the condi- 

 tions of Babylon in the sixth and seventh centuries before the Christian 

 era. In going still farther backward, the task is to unravel the close- 

 meshed fabric of Babylonian culture and to study the history of its 

 development along the individual strands. 



In the activity of thousands of years the Euphrates and the Tigris 

 have built up from alluvial drift the territory between their arms. Sand 

 and stones, stripped by the melting snow from the Armenian Moun- 

 tain peaks, have formed deposits which pushed the Persian Gulf ever 

 farther back toward the south and east. Thus we have in the south 

 a province with no mountainous formations, but only plains and hills 

 of sand, with but few stones. The plain is traversed by the two rivers 



1 Translated from Mitteilungeu der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, Berlin, 1896. 



579 



