592 A SKETCH OF BABYLONIAN SOCIETY. 



directly under their own management from proprietors. The picture 

 of the economic relations of Babylon which we can thus sketch by the 

 help of the contracts, resembles throughout that of Italy in recent 

 centuries, whose political development, indeed, presents besides many 

 striking analogies to that of Babylon. Fully to show this in detail, 

 however, would lead me far beyond the limits of my essay. 



Production was directed primarily toward the gaining of the neces- 

 saries of life. If the accounts of the Greeks had not already taught 

 us this, the indigenous inscriptions would, immediately upon their 

 decipherment, have shown that the main stress of social activity in 

 Babylonia was placed upon a quite extraordinarily intensive cultiva- 

 tion of the soil. Innumerable are the receipts for the delivery of grain, 

 of dates, of date litter, date wine, sesame, and garlic, which are found 

 cited here, just as in the accounts of the Egpytian pyramids. And on 

 this subject the accounts of the temples, of which the storehouses 

 appear to have ruled the market, speak more clearly than anything 

 else. At the same time, the arrangement is especially peculiar, accord- 

 ing to which live stock appears not to have been pastured upon the 

 owner's land nor under the owner's direction, but to have been given 

 into the charge of contractors, who undertook to pasture the herds of 

 various owners, engaged to guard and care for them, and were paid for 

 their services. Here the influx of nomad tribes, with property con- 

 sisting mainly of herds, and the resulting forms of collective owner- 

 ship of large tracts of arable land appears to have led very early to 

 certain compromises with the perfected private ownership of real estate. 



The consumption of these products, so far as they were not claimed 

 by the producers themselves, musi have taken place in the cities ; and 

 since exportation could probably have taken place only on a limited 

 scale — for as far as Arabia the neighboring provinces seem to have 

 produced their own grain — a conclusion as to the size of these cities is 

 thereby justified. But then it is unavoidable to assume a highly flourish- 

 ing condition of industry in these cities ; and, indeed, the textile fabrics 

 of Babylon must have been known and celebrated throughout the whole 

 world of that time. The smith's and carver's arts had likewise attained 

 a high degree of perfection. While, however, the materials for these 

 arts — as metals, stone, and ivory — were not produced in the country, 

 but entered it as objects of exchange for the products of Babylon, the 

 material for weaving was in part obtained in the country. There are 

 yet preserved for us many copies of orders by warrant, of which the 

 temple workers received wool from the temple warehouses in order to 

 make cloth of it; and this wool came not only from the possessions of 

 the Babylonians themselves, but doubtless also from the flocks of the 

 nomadic Aramaeans, who became, by reason of having a market for 

 their products, ever more firmly attached to the regions of the Euphrates 

 and the Tigris through which they roamed. It is clear how there may 

 and must have arisen through this development conditions which led 



