Babylonians and Assyrians: Life and Customs

Abstract

THIS little book belongs to a projected series of volumes which we gather are intended to deal with the Babylonians and Assyrians and other allied Semitic races, “the object of the series” being, according to the prospectus, “to state its results in popularly scientific form.” The volume assigned to Prof. Sayce, which is the first of the series to make its appearance, describes the life and customs of the Babylonians and Assyrians, a subject which offers many points of interest to the general reader. Moreover, within recent years much new material has been published which has thrown considerable light on the social condition of the Babylonians and Assyrians during both the earlier and the later periods of their history. Thousands of clay tablets, which were unearthed at Telloh in Southern Babylonia and have found their way into the museums of Europe, contain temple-records, lists and inventories, receipts and tablets of accounts, and furnish a glimpse of the daily life of the early inhabitants of Babylonia at about 2500 B.C. The letters and commercial documents of the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon enable us to form a still more intimate acquaintance with the life of the Babylonians under some of the earliest of their Semitic kings; while the systematic publication of the legal and epistolary literature in the great collection of tablets from Kouyunjik has increased our knowledge of the social condition of Mesopotamia under the later Assyrian kings. Finally, the large collections of tablets of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods, which are now available for study, make it possible to trace the development of laws and customs down to the latest periods of Babylonian history. There is, therefore, no lack of material on which to base a sketch of the manners and customs of the Babylonians and Assyrians.

Babylonians and Assyrians: Life and Customs.

By the Rev. A. H. Sayce. The Semitic Series. Vol. vi. Pp. x + 273. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1900.)