Social life among the Assyrians and Babylonians
| Language | en |
|---|---|
| First published | 2025-11-11 |
| Rights | Public domain in the USA. |
| Gutenberg ID | #77217 |
Description
"L'espionne" by Ernest Daudet is a historical study written in the late 19th century. It examines everyday life, law, economy, belief, and social organization in ancient Assyria and Babylonia, contrasting their peoples, institutions, and material culture. The opening of the work maps the two lands and peoples, explaining how Babylonia’s irrigated plains and mixed Accadian–Semitic–Kassite stock produced traders, farmers, and a superstition-tinged piety, while Assyria’s stony, forested north fostered tall, warlike, commercially minded townsmen confident in their god Asshur—an empire that ultimately collapsed as its military class was exhausted. It then details daily life: brick versus stone architecture, house plans, furniture, gardens and irrigation, varied costumes, and the distinctive hair and beard fashions. Education is shown as widespread (especially in Babylonia): clay tablets, vast temple libraries, mastery of cuneiform and the older Accadian “literary Latin,” practical studies, and the use of Aramaic for commerce and diplomacy; women also read and signed documents. Marriage contracts, dowries, women’s property rights, adoption, name-giving, and temple colleges are outlined, followed by burial customs involving cremation or tombs, offerings, and running water for the dead. The marketplace section surveys prices, taxes, partnerships, moneylending, property sales and rentals, and even royal participation in trade, all documented by rigorously witnessed contracts. On slavery and agriculture, it shows slaves’ legal protections and routes to freedom, the range of slave roles, the largely free rural workforce, co-operative farm tenures paid largely in kind, and scraps of ploughing songs and proverbs, before turning to the array of trades and professions. (This is an automatically generated summary.)