596 A SKETCH OF BABYLONIAN SOCIETY. 



forced to mortgage their lauds in order to procure money. Nay more, 

 there even exists a document by which a Babylonian in straits mort- 

 gaged his harvest on the stalk. 



The necessity of obtaining ready money arose not, perhaps, from 

 private needs alone. The public institutions must many times have 

 cooperated in this respect, as in Rome at the time of the Eepublic. 

 For, although as already recouuted at the outset, the temple imposts 

 and even the direct State taxes were still usually delivered in the form 

 of produce, and accordingly little was at first converted into fixed 

 sums of money, there was another consideration which compelled the 

 use of money. And this was the obligation which rested upon the 

 individual estates to furnish soldiers and their equipment, and likewise 

 to provide for their maintenance. This obligation was probably derived 

 from conditions in which the landowner, as yet a peasant himself, held 

 himself in readiness for service in arms in defense of the country. But, 

 indeed, a mercenary soldiery must have developed in Babylon very 

 early, especially because of the changing foreign rule. 



Thus we find documents in which money is appropriated directly to 

 serve for the equipment or maintenance of soldiers. Moreover, this 

 explains the occurrence of the designation of qashtu for certain pieces 

 of property; these were just such as had to furnish archers. 



Other exactions, to mention these also which, indeed, did not demand 

 a direct expenditure of money, resulted from the public works. For 

 this the organs of administration could constrain the laborers of the 

 temple estates as well as those of private ownership to a kind of corvee, 

 in which their maintenance was furnished by the possessors of the 

 estate. 



In Babylon a very important industrial life had developed very 

 early. Of raw products for this, the country had only clay, asphalt 

 and reed in the best quality. All else, for instance, skins of animals, 

 wool, so far as this was not furnished by the tribes which roamed 

 through the country had to be imported. On this account the kings 

 were very often led to undertake military expeditions toward the 

 Amanus, both in order to keep the way open for traffic and to obtain 

 as tribute what they could not buy. Babylon must, indeed, have been 

 a gigantic thoroughfare for the trade between the Mediterranean and 

 the Indian Ocean. About this we can learn nothing directly from the 

 cuneiform inscriptions, though we can learn it indirectly, by inferences, 

 and, moreover, from the Greek authors. One thing is nevertheless 

 clear, that great amounts of raw products lay in the storehouses of 

 Babylon. 



Production was divided into the work of trades and that of factories. 

 I call trades the activity of free or unfree laborers, because they were 

 entitled to take apprentices and teach them their trade, an institution 

 which fully corresponds to that of our modern trades. We have to look 

 upon the temple and the industrial establishments of the rich citizens 



