That the army and navy should have been recruited from abroad was in accordance with that spirit of liberality toward the foreigner which had distinguished the Babylonians from an early period. It was partly due to the mixed character of the race, partly to the early foundation of an empire which embraced the greater portion of Western Asia, partly, and more especially, to the commercial instincts of the people. We find among them none of that jealous exclusiveness which characterized most of the nations of antiquity. They were ready to receive into their midst both the foreigner and his gods. Among Assyrian and Babylonian officials we meet with many who bear foreign names, and among the gods whose statues found a place in the national temples of Assyria were Khaldis of Armenia, and the divinities of the Bedâwin. The policy of deporting a conquered nation was dictated by the same readiness to admit the stranger to the rights and privileges of a home-born native. The restrictions placed upon Babylonian and Assyrian citizenship seem to have been but slight.
When Abraham was born at Ur of the Chaldees, Babylonia was governed by a dynasty of South Arabian origin whose names had to be translated into the Babylonian language. Throughout the country there were colonies of “Amorites,” from Syria and Canaan, doubtless established there for the purposes of trade, who enjoyed the same rights as the native Babylonians. They could hold and bequeath land and other property, could buy and sell freely, could act as witnesses in a case where natives alone were concerned, and could claim the full protection of Babylonian law.
One of these colonies, known as “the district of the Amorites,” was just outside the walls of Sippara. In the reign of Ammi-zadok, the fourth successor of Khammurabi, a dispute arose about the title to some land included within it, and the matter was tried before the four royal judges. The following record of the judgment was drawn up by the clerk of the court: “Twenty acres by thirteen of land in the district of the Amorites which was purchased by Ibni-Hadad, the merchant. Arad-Sin, the son of Edirum, has pleaded as follows before the judges: The building land, along with the house of my father, he did not buy; Ibku-Anunit and Dhab-Istar, the sons of Samas-nazir, sold (it) for money to Ibni-Hadad, the merchant. Iddatum and Mazitum, the sons of Ibni-Hadad the merchant, appeared before the judges; they lifted up (their hands) and swore that it had been put up for sale; it had been bought by Edirum and Sin-nadni-sû who handed it over to Samas-nazir and Ibku-Anunit, selling it to them for money. The estate, consisting of twenty-two acres of land enclosed by thirty other acres, as well as eleven trees [and] a house, in the district of the Amorites, bounded at the upper end by the estate of –, and at the lower end by the river Bukai (?), is contracted in width, and is of the aforesaid nature. Judgment has been given for Arad-Sin, the son of Edirum, as follows: At the entrance to Sippara the property is situated (?), and after being put up for sale was bought by Samas-nazir and Ibku-Anunit, to whom it was handed over; power of redemption is allowed (?) to Arad-Sin; the estate is there, let him take it. Before Uruki-mansum the judge, Sin-ismeani the judge, Ibku-Anunit the judge, and Ibku-ilisu the judge. The 6th day of the month Tammuz, the year when Ammi-zadok the king constructed the very great aqueduct (?) for the mountain and its fountain (?) for the house of Life.”
If we may argue from the names, Arad-Sin, who brought the action, was of Babylonian descent; and in this case native Babylonians as well as foreigners could hold land in the district in which the Amorites had settled. At any rate, in the eyes of the law, the native and the foreign settler must have been upon an equal footing; they were tried before the same judges, and the law which applied to the one applied equally to the other. It is clear, moreover, that the foreigner had as much right as the native to buy, sell, or bequeath the soil of Babylonia.
Whether or not this right was restricted to particular districts, we do not know. In Syria, in later days, “streets,” or rows of shops in a city, could be assigned to the members of another nationality by special treaty, as we learn from I Kings xx. 34, and at the end of the Egyptian eighteenth dynasty we hear of a quarter at Memphis being given to a colony of Hittite merchants, but such special assignments of land may not have been the custom in ancient Chaldea. The Amorites of Canaan may have been allowed to settle wherever they liked, and the origin of the title “district of the Amorites” may have simply been due to the tendency of foreign settlers to establish themselves in the same locality. The fact that Arad-Sin seems to have been a Babylonian, and that his action was brought before Babylonian judges, is in favor of the view that such was the case.
Moreover, as Mr. Pinches has pointed out, Amorites could rise to the highest offices of state. Not only could they serve as witnesses to a deed, to which all the other parties were native Babylonians, they could also hold civil and military appointments. On the one hand we find the son of Abi-ramu, or Abram, who is described as “the father of the Amorite,” acting as a witness to a contract dated in the reign of the grandfather of Khammurabi, or Amraphel; on the other hand, “an Amorite” has the same title of “servant” of the King as the royal judge Ibku-Anunit, and among the Assyrians of the second empire, who were slavish imitators of Babylonian custom and law, we meet with more than one example of a foreigner in the service of the Assyrian government. Thus, in the reign of Sargon, thirteen years after the fall of Samaria, the Israelites, Pekah and Nadabiah, who appear as witnesses to the sale of some slaves, are described, the one as “the governor of the city,” the other as a departmental secretary. The founder, again, of one of the leading commercial families at Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar and his successors is entitled “the Egyptian,” and the clerk who draws up a contract in the first year of Cambyses is the grandson of a Jew, Bel-Yahu, “Bel is Yahveh,” while his father's name, Ae-nahid, “Ae is exalted,” implies that the Israelitish Yahveh had been identified with the Babylonian Ae. Hebrew and Canaanite names appear in legal and commercial documents of the age of Khammurabi and earlier by the side of names of purely native stamp; Jacob-el and Joseph-el, for instance, Abdiel and Ishmael, come before us with all the rights and privileges of Babylonian citizens. The name of Ishmael, indeed, is already met with on a marble slab from Sippara, which is as early as about 4,000 B.C. In the time of Sargon of Akkad the Babylonian “governor” of Syria and Canaan bears the Canaanitish name of Uru-Malik, or Urimelech, and under the later Assyrian empire, the “tartan” of Comagene, with the Hittite name of Mar-lara, was an eponym, who gave his name to the year.
Mr. Pinches is probably right in seeing the name “Israel” itself in that of a high-priest who lived in the district of the Amorites outside Sippara in the reign of Ammi-zadok. His name is written Sar-ilu, and it was by his order that nine acres of ground “in the district of the Amorites” were leased for a year from two nuns, who were devotees of the Sun-god, and their nieces. Six measures of grain on every ten acres were to be paid to the Sun-god at the gate of Malgia, the women themselves receiving a shekel of silver as rent, and the field was to be handed back to them at harvest-time, the end of the agricultural year. That the women in the Amorite settlements enjoyed the same freedom and powers as the women of Babylonia is shown by two documents, one dated in the reign of the second King of the dynasty to which Khammurabi belonged, the other in the reign of Khammurabi's great-grandfather. In the first, Kuryatum, the daughter of an Amorite, receives a field of more than four acres of which she had been wrongfully deprived; in the second, the same Kuryatum and her brother Sumu-rah are sued by the three children of an Amorite, one of whom is a woman, for the recovery of a field, house, slaves, and date-palms. The case was brought before “the judges of Bit-Samas,” “the Temple of the (Babylonian) Sun-god,” who rejected the claim.
At a very early period of Babylonian history the Syrian god Hadad, or Rimmon, had been, as it were, domesticated in Babylonia, where he was known as Amurru, “the Amorite.” He had come with the Amorite merchants and settlers, and was naturally their patron-deity. His wife, Asratu, or Asherah, was called, by the Sumerians, Nin-Marki, “the mistress of the Amorite land,” and was identified with their own Gubarra. Nin-Marki, or Asherah, presided over the Syrian settlements, the part of the city where the foreigners resided being under her protection like the gate which led to “the district of the Amorites” beyond the walls. The following lawsuit which came before the courts in the reign of Khammurabi shows that there were special judges for cases in which Amorites were concerned and that they sat at “the gate of Nin-Marki.” “Concerning the garden of Sin-magir which Nahid-Amurri bought for money. Ilu-bani claimed it for the royal stables, and accordingly they went to the judges, and the judges sent them to the gate of Nin-Marki and the judges of the gate of Nin-Marki. In the gate of Nin-Marki Ilu-bani pleaded as follows: I am the son of Sin-magir; he adopted me as his son, and the seal of the document has never been broken. He further pleaded that ever since the reign of the deified Rim-Sin (Arioch) the garden and house had been adjudged to Ilu-bani. Then came Sin-mubalidh and claimed the garden of Ilu-bani, and they went to the judges and the judges pronounced that ‘to us and the elders they have been sent and in the gate of the gods Merodach, Sussa, Nannar, Khusa, and Nin-Marki, the daughter of Merodach, in the judgment-hall, the disputants (?) have stood, and the elders before whom Nahid-Amurri first appeared in the gate of Nin-Marki have heard the declaration of Ilu-bani.’ Accordingly they adjudged the garden and house to Ilu-bani, forbidding Sin-mubalidh to return and claim it. Oaths have been taken in the name of the Moon-god, the Sun-god, Merodach, and Khammurabi, the king. Before Sin-imguranni the president, Edilka-Sin, Amil-izzitim, Ubarrum, Zanbil-arad-Sin, Ak-hiya, Kabdu-gumi, Samas-bani, the son of Abia-rak-has, Zanik-pisu, Izkur-Ea the steward, and Bauila. The seals of the parties are attached. The fourth day of Tammuz, the year when Khammurabi the king offered up prayer to Tasmit.”
While a portion of the land was thus owned by foreigners, there was a considerable part of it which belonged to the temples. Another part consisted of royal domains, the revenue of which went to the privy purse of the King. The King could make grants of this to his favorites, or as a reward for services to the state. The Babylonian King Nebo-baladan, for example, gave one of his officials a field large enough, it was calculated, to be sown with 3 gur of seed, and Assur-bani-pal of Assyria made his vizier, Nebo-sar-uzur, the gift of a considerable estate on account of his loyalty from the time that the King was a boy. All the vizier's lands, including the serfs upon them, were declared free from taxation and every kind of burden, the men upon them were not to be impressed as soldiers, nor the cattle and flocks to be carried away. It was also ordered that Nebo-sar-uzur, on his decease, should be buried where he chose, and not in the common cemetery outside the walls of the city. Like the monarch, he might have his tomb in the royal palace or in his own house, and imprecations were called down on the head of anyone who wished to disturb his final resting-place. The deed of gift and privilege was sealed, we are told, with the King's own “signet-ring.”
A grant of immunity from taxation and other burdens could be made to the inhabitants of a whole district. A deed exists, signed by a large number of witnesses, in which Nebuchadnezzar I. of Babylon (about 1200 B.C.) makes a grant of the kind to the district of Bit-Karziyabku in the mountains of Namri to the east of Babylonia. We read in it that, throughout the whole district, neither the royal messengers nor the governor of Namri shall have any jurisdiction, no horses, foals, mares, asses, oxen, or sheep shall be carried off by the tax-gatherers, no stallions shall be sent to the royal stables, and no taxes of grain and fruit shall be paid to the Babylonian treasury. Nor shall any of the inhabitants be impressed for military service. It speaks volumes for the commercial spirit of the Babylonians that a royal decree of this character should have been thrown into legal form, and that the names of witnesses should have been attached to it, just as if it had been a contract between two private persons. The contrast is striking with the decree issued by the Assyrian King, Assur-bani-pal, to his faithful servant Nebo-sar-uzur. All that was needed where the King of Assyria was concerned was his signet-seal and royal command. But Assur-bani-pal was an autocrat at the head of a military state. The Babylonian sovereign governed a commercial community and owed his authority to the priests of Bel.
Chapter IX. The Law
Babylonian law was of early growth. Among the oldest records of the country are legal cases, abstracts of which have been transcribed for future use. The first law-book, in fact, was ascribed to Ea, the god of culture, and it was told how he had enacted that the King should deal uprightly and administer justice to his people. “If he regard not justice,” it was said, “Ea, the god of destiny, shall change his fortune and replace him by another.… But if he have regard to the injunction of Ea, the great gods shall establish him in wisdom and the knowledge of righteousness.”
The Ea of the cuneiform text seems to be the Oannes of the Chaldean historian Berossos, who was said to have risen out of the waters of the Persian Gulf, bringing with him the elements of civilization and the code of laws which were henceforth to prevail in Babylonia. The code of Oannes has perished, but fragments of another and more historical one have been preserved to us in a reading-book which was intended to teach the Semitic pupil the ancient language of the Sumerians. The original Sumerian text is given with its Semitic equivalent, as well as a list of technical legal terms. “If a son,” it is said, “denies his father, his hair shall be cut, he shall be put into chains and sold for silver. If he denies his mother, his hair also shall be cut, city and land shall collect together and put him in prison.… If the wife hates her husband and denies him, they shall throw her into the river. If the husband divorces his wife, he must pay her fifty shekels of silver. If a man hires a servant, and kills, wounds, beats, or ill-uses him or makes him ill, he must with his own hand measure out for him each day half a measure of grain.”
We have already seen that the last regulation was in force up to the latest period of Babylonian history. It betrays a humane spirit in the early legislation and shows that the slave was regarded as something more than a mere chattel. It provided against his being over-worked; as soon as the slave was rendered unfit for labor by his hirer's fault, the latter was fined, and the fine was exacted as long as the slave continued ill or maimed. The law which pronounced sentence of death by drowning upon the unfaithful wife was observed as late as the age of Khammurabi. Such at least is the evidence of some curious documents, from which we learn that a certain Arad-Samas married first a daughter of Uttatu and subsequently a half-sister of his wife. In the contract of marriage it is stipulated that unfaithfulness to the husband on the part of both the wives would be punished with drowning, on the part of the second only with slavery. On the other hand he could divorce them on payment of a maneh of silver—that is to say, of 30 shekels apiece. Under Nebuchadnezzar the old power of putting the wife to death in case of adultery was still possessed by the husband, where the wife was of lower rank than himself and little better than a concubine. It was a survival of the patria potestas which had once belonged to him. The wife who came from a wealthy and respectable family, however, stood on a footing of equality with her husband, and he could not venture to put in force against her the provisions of the ancient Sumerian law.
Babylonian law resembled that of England in being founded upon precedents. The code which was supposed to have been revealed by Ea, or Oannes, belonged to the infancy of Chaldean society and contained only a rudimentary system of legislation. The actual law of the country was a complicated structure which had been slowly built up by the labors of generations. An abstract was made of every important case that came before the judges and of the decision given in regard to it; these abstracts were carefully preserved, and formed the basis of future judgments.
The judges before whom the cases were brought were appointed by the King, and acted in his place. They sat under a president, and were usually four or five in number. They had to sign their names at the end of their judgments, after which the date of the document was added. It is probable that they went on circuit like Samuel in Israel and the “royal judges” of Persia.
Where foreigners were involved the case was first tried before special judges, who probably belonged to the same nationality as the parties to the suit; if one of the latter, however, was a Babylonian it was afterward brought again before a native tribunal. Sometimes in such cases the primitive custom was retained of allowing “the elders” of the city to sit along with the judges and pronounce upon the question in dispute. They thus represented to a certain extent an English jury. Whether they appeared in cases in which Babylonians alone were engaged is doubtful. We hear of them only where one at least of the litigants is an Amorite from Canaan, and it is therefore possible that their appearance was a concession to Syrian custom. In Babylonia they had long been superseded by the judges, the royal power having been greater there from the outset than in the more democratic West, and consequently there would have been but little need for their services. If, however, the foreign settlers had been accustomed at home to have their disputes determined by a council of elders, we can understand why they were still allowed in Babylonia to plead before a similar tribunal, though it could do little more than second the decisions of the judges.
Plaintiff and defendant pleaded their own causes, which were drawn up in legal form by the clerks of the court. Witnesses were called and examined and oaths were taken in the names of the gods and of the King.
The King, it must be remembered, was in earlier times himself a god. In later days the oaths were usually dropped, and the evidence alone considered sufficient. Perhaps experience had taught the bench that perjury was not a preventable crime.
Each case was tried by a select number of judges, who were especially appointed to inquire into it, as we may gather from a document dated at Babylon the 6th day of Nisan in the seventeenth year of Nebuchadnezzar. “[These are] the judges,” it runs, “before whom Sapik-zeri, the son of Zirutu, [and] Baladhu, the son of Nasikatum, the servant of the secretary of the Marshlands, have appeared in their suit regarding a house. The house and deed had been duly sealed by Zirutu, the father of Sapik-zeri, and given to Baladhu. Baladhu, however, had come to terms with Sapik-zeri and handed the house over to him and had taken the deed (from the record-office) and had given it to Sapik-zeri. Nebo-edher-napisti, the prefect of the Marshlands; Nebo-suzzizanni, the sub-prefect of the Marshlands; Merodach-erba, the mayor of Erech; Imbi-ilu, the priest of Ur, Bel-yuballidh, the son of Merodach-sum-ibni, the prefect of the western bank; Abtâ, the son of Suzubu, the son of Babutu; Musezib-Bel, the son of Nadin-akhi, the son of the adopted one; Baniya, the son of Abtâ, the priest of the temple of Sadu-rabu; and Sa-mas-ibni, the priest of Sadu-rabu.” The list of judges shows that the civil governors could act as judges and that the priests were also eligible for the post. Neither the one class nor the other, however, is usually named, and we must conclude, therefore, that, though the governor of a province or the mayor of a town had a right to sit on the judicial bench, he did not often avail himself of it.
The charge was drawn up in the technical form and attested by witnesses before it was presented to the court. We have an example of this dated at Sippara, the 28th day of Adar in the eighth year of Cyrus as King of Babylon: “Nebo-akhi-bullidh, the son of Su—, the governor of Sakhrin, on the 28th of Adar, the eighth year of Cyrus, king of Babylon and of the world, has brought the following charge against Bel-yuballidh, the priest of Sippara: I have taken Nanâ-iddin, son of Bau-eres, into my house because I am your father's brother and the governor of the city. Why, then, have you lifted up your hand against me? Rimmon-sar-uzur, the son of Nebo-yusezib; Nargiya and Erba, his brothers; Kutkah-ilu, the son of Bau-eres; Bel-yuballidh, the son of Barachiel; Bel-akhi-uzur, the son of Rimmon-yusallim; and Iqisa-abbu, the son of Samas-sar-uzur, have committed a crime by breaking through my door, entering into my house, and leaving it again after carrying away a maneh of silver.” Then come the names of five witnesses and the clerk.
A suit might be compromised by the litigants before it came into court. In the reign of Nebuchadnezzar a certain Imliya brought witnesses to the door of the house of an official called Bel-iddin, and accused Arrali, the superintendent of the works, of having stolen an overcoat and a loin-cloth belonging to himself. But it was agreed that there would be no need on the part of the plaintiff to summon witnesses; the stolen goods were returned without recourse to the law.
The care taken not to convict without sufficient evidence, and the thoroughness with which each case was investigated, is one of the most striking features in the records of the Babylonian lawsuits which have come down to us. Mention has already been made of the case of the runaway slave Barachiel, who pretended to be a free citizen and the adopted son of a Babylonian gentleman. Every effort seems to have been made to get at the truth, and some of the higher officials were associated with the judges before whom the matter was brought. Eventually cross-examination compelled Barachiel to confess the actual facts. It is noticeable that no torture was used to compel confession, even though the defendant was not a free citizen. No allusion, in fact, is ever made to torture, whether by the bastinado or otherwise; the evidence of witnesses and the results of cross-examination are alone depended upon for arriving at the truth. In this respect the legal procedure of Babylonia offers an honorable contrast to that of ancient Greece or Rome, or even of Europe down to the middle of the last century.
Two cases which were pleaded before the courts in the reign of Nabonidos illustrate the carefulness with which the evidence was examined. One of them was a case of false witness. Beli-litu, the daughter of Bel-yusezib, the wine merchant (?), “gave the following testimony before the judges of Nabonidos, king of Babylon: In the month Ab, the first year of Nergal-sharezer, king of Babylon, I sold my slave Bazuzu for thirty-five shekels of silver to Nebo-akhi-iddin, the son of Sula of the family of Egibi, but he now asserts that I owed him a debt and so has not paid me the money. The judges heard the charge, and caused Nebo-akhi-iddin to be summoned and to appear before them. Nebo-akhi-iddin produced the contract which he had made with Beli-litu; he proved that she had received the money, and convinced the judges. And Ziriya, Nebo-suma-lisir, and Edillu gave further testimony before the judges that Beli-litu, their mother, had received the silver.” The judges deliberated and condemned Beli-litu to a fine of 55 shekels, the highest fine that could be inflicted on her, and then gave it to Nebo-akhi-iddin. It is possible that the prejudice which has always existed against the money-lender may have encouraged Beli-litu to commit her act of dishonesty and perjury. That the judges should have handed over the fine to the defendant, instead of paying it to the court or putting it into their own pockets, is somewhat remarkable in the history of law.
The second case is that of some Syrians who had settled in Babylonia and there been naturalized. The official abstract of it is as follows: “Bunanitum, the daughter of the Kharisian, brought the following complaint before the judges of Nabonidos, king of Babylon: Ben-Hadad-nathan, the son of Nikbaduh, married me and received three and one-half manehs of silver as my dowry, and I bore him a daughter. I and Ben-Hadad-nathan, my husband, traded with the money of my dowry, and we bought together a house standing on eight roods of ground, in the district on the west side of the Euphrates in the suburb of Borsippa, for nine and one-third manehs of silver, as well as an additional two and one-half manehs, which we received on loan without interest from Iddin-Merodach, the son of Iqisa-ablu, the son of Nur-Sin, and we invested it all in this house. In the fourth year of Nabonidos, king of Babylon, I claimed my dowry from my husband Ben-Hadad-nathan, and he of his own free will gave me, under deed and seal, the house in Borsippa and the eight roods on which it stood, and assigned it to me for ever, stating in the deed he gave me that the two and one-half manehs which Ben-Hadad-nathan and Bunanitum had received from Iddin-Merodach and laid out in buying this house had been their joint property. This deed he sealed and called down in it the curse of the great gods (upon whoever should violate it). In the fifth year of Nabonidos, king of Babylon, I and my husband, Ben-Hadad-nathan, adopted Ben-Hadad-amara as our son and subscribed to the deed of adoption, and at the same time we assigned two manehs ten shekels of silver and the furniture of the house as a dowry for my daughter Nubtâ. My husband died, and now Aqabi-ilu (Jacob-el), the son of my father-in-law, has raised a claim to the house and property which was willed and assigned to me, as well as (a claim) to Nebo-nur-ilani, whom we bought for money through the agency of Nebo-akhi-iddin.
“I have brought him before you; pass judgment. The judges heard their pleas; they read the deeds and contracts which Bunanitum produced in court, and disallowed the claim of Aqabi-ilu to the house in Borsippa, which had been assigned to Bunanitum in lieu of her dowry, as well as to Nebo-nur-ilani, whom she and her husband had bought, and to the rest of the property of Ben-Hadad-nathan; they confirmed Bunanitum and Ben-Hadad-amara in their titles. (It was further added that) Iddin-Merodach should receive in full the sum of two and one-half manehs which he had given toward the purchase of the house, and that then Bunanitum should take in full three and one-half manehs, the amount of her dowry, and that part of the property (which had not been bequeathed to Nubtâ). Nebo-nur-ilani was to be given to Nubtâ in accordance with the will of her father. The following judges were present at the delivery of this judgment: Nergal-banunu the judge, the son of the architect; Nebo-akhi-iddin the judge, the son of Egibi; Nebo-sum-ukin the judge, the son of Irani; Bel-akhi-iddin the judge, the son of –; Nebo-balasu-iqbi the judge, the son of –; and the clerks Nadin and Nebo-sum-iskun. Babylon, the 29th day of Elul, the ninth year of Nabonidos, king of Babylon.”
The term used in reference to the loan made by Iddin-Merodach implies that the lender accepted a share in the property that was bought instead of demanding interest for his money. Hence it was that, when the estate came to be settled after the death of Ben-Hadad-nathan, it was necessary to pay him off. What the grounds were upon which Aqabi-ilu laid claim to the property we are not told, and the dossier in which it was set forth has not been found. His name, however, is interesting, as it proves that the old Western Semitic name of Jacob-el, of which the Biblical Jacob is a shortened form, still survived in a slightly changed shape among the Syrian settlers in Babylonia. Indeed, Iqubu, or Jacob itself, is found in a contract of the tenth year of Nabonidos as the name of a coppersmith at Babylon. Two thousand years before there had been other Semitic settlers in Babylonia from Western Asia who had also taken part in the legal transactions of the country, and among whom the name of Ya'qub-ilu was known. The name had even spread to the Assyrian colonists near Kaisarîyeh, in Cappadocia, who have left us inscriptions in uniform characters, and among them it appears as Iqib-ilu. Iqib-ilu and Aqabi-ilu are alike kindred forms of Ya'qub-ilu (or Yaqub-ilu), the Jacob-el of Canaan.
Death, more especially with “an iron sword,” was the punishment of the more serious offences; imprisonment and scourging of lighter ones. Imprisonment might be accompanied by chains or the stock, but the prisoner might also be left unfettered and be allowed to range freely through the court or cell of the prison. Whether the penalty of imprisonment with hard labor was ever inflicted is questionable; in a country where slavery existed and the corvée was in force there would have been but little need for it.
The prisoner could be released on bail, his surety being responsible for his appearance when it was required. Thus in the seventh year of Cyrus one of the officials of the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara was put into “iron fetters” by the chief priest of the god, but was afterward released, bail being given for him by another official of the temple. The latter undertook to do the work of the prisoner if he absconded. The bail was offered and accepted before “the priests and elders of the city,” and the registration of the fact was duly dated and attested by witnesses. At a later date a citizen of Nippur was allowed to become surety for the release of his nephew from prison on condition that the latter did not leave the city without permission. The prison is called bit-karê, or “House of Walls.”8