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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



name of the scribe who made the copy 

 given, but where the original was defect- 

 ive he wrote "broken." 



In more recent years temple and school 

 libraries have been found at Nippur, Sip- 

 par, Larsa, Babylon, and Erech. The 

 libraries of the first three sites belong 

 chiefly to the third millennium B. C. ; 

 those of the last two belong to later 

 periods. 



They are primarily temple school li- 

 braries, and contain also the tablets used 

 by the different priests in the temple 

 service, as hymns, prayers or liturgies, 

 omen or divination texts ; also syllabaries 

 or dictionaries, grammatical exercises, 

 mathematical texts, etc. At Nippur 

 school library material belonging to the 

 second millennium was also found. 



Besides these libraries immense ar- 

 chives of temple administrative docu- 

 ments belonging to all periods have been 

 found in practically all sites where ex- 

 cavations have been conducted by the 

 Occidental or by the illicit diggings of 

 the Oriental. 



GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTS CAREFULLY KEPT 



But especially large archives of these 

 documents, numbering several hundred 

 thousand and belonging to the third and 

 fourth millenniums B. C.. have been 

 found at Tello, Nippur, Drehem, Jokha, 

 and recently at Ur. 



These tablets record the payment into 

 the temple stores of tithes or offerings of 

 drink, vegetables, or animals, of taxes, 

 rents, loans, and also the disbursement of 

 this property. The temple stood in rela- 

 tion to the people as the State does in 

 modern times, and these are the records 

 of administration. 



Exhaustive accounts were kept of what 

 was received and what was disbursed. 

 Great storehouses held the income. 

 There were immense cattle yards, in 

 which the property of the temple in live 

 stock was cared for, as, for example, the 

 one at Drehem, close by the city of 

 Nippur. 



The cattle not disposed of were in- 

 trusted to herdsmen, with whom con- 

 tracts were made, setting forth their re- 

 sponsibilities and regulating their profits ; 

 documents referring to granaries, freight 

 boats, messengers ; to payments of temple 



officials ; in fact, records similar to the 

 business transactions such as are ordi- 

 narily found in the administrative offices 

 of our present-day institutions. 



Next to the temple documents, in point 

 of numbers, come the legal and business 

 documents of the Assyrians and Baby- 

 lonians. One hundred thousand tablets 

 of this character would be a reasonable 

 estimate of this class of literature in the 

 different museums and private collec- 

 tions, belonging to all the periods. These 

 documents are one of the most fruitful 

 sources of light thrown upon the every- 

 day life of the people, not to mention the 

 valuable historical and chronological data 

 gathered from them. 



AN ANCIENT MARRIAGE CONTRACT 



There are dowry and marriage con- 

 tracts, partnership agreements, records 

 of debts, promissory notes, leases of 

 lands, houses, or slaves, deeds of trans- 

 fer of all kinds of property, mortgages, 

 documents granting the power of attor- 

 ney, tablets dealing with the adoption of 

 children, divorce, bankruptcy, inherit- 

 ance ; in fact, almost every imaginable 

 kind of deed or contract is found among 

 them. Following is an example of a 

 marriage contract : 



"Xabu-nadin-akhi, son of Bel-akbe-iddin, 

 grandson of Ardi-Xergal, spoke thus to Shum- 

 ukina, son of Mushallimu : 'Give me thy Ina- 

 Esagila-banat, the virgin, to wife to Uballitsu- 

 Gula, my son.' Shum-ukina hearkened unto 

 him, and gave Ina-Esagila-banat, his virgin 

 daughter, to Uballitsu-Gula, his son. One mina 

 of silver, three female slaves, Latubashinnu, Ina- 

 silli-esabat and Taslimu, besides house furni- 

 ture, with Ina-Esagila-banat, his daughter, as a 

 marriage-portion he gave to Nabu-nadin-akhi. 

 Xana-Gishirst, the slave of Shum-ukina, in lieu 

 of two-thirds of a mina of silver, her full price 

 Shum-ukina gave to Nabu-nadin-akhi out of 

 the one mina of silver for her marriage-por- 

 tion. One-third of a mina, the balance of the 

 one mina, Shum-ukina will give Nabu-nadin- 

 akhi, and her marriage-portion is paid. Each 

 took a writing (or contract)." 



This is followed by the names of six 

 witnesses, that of the scribe, and the date. 



It is from the contract literature that 

 we become familiar with the life which 

 pulsated in the streets and the homes of 

 the ancients who lived in Babylonia and 

 Assyria so long ago. Through it we 

 learn to know the personalities of the 



