Babylonia - history.

« Below the house was often located a mausoleum in which the family dead were buried.

The Babylonians believed that the souls of the dead traveled to the nether world,and that, at least to some extent, life continued there as on earth.

For this reason, pots, tools, weapons, and jewels were buried with the dead. B Technology The Babylonians inherited the technical achievements of the Sumerians in irrigation and agriculture.

Maintaining the system of canals, dikes, weirs, and reservoirsconstructed by their predecessors demanded considerable engineering knowledge and skill.

Preparation of maps, surveys, and plans involved the use of leveling instrumentsand measuring rods.

For mathematical and arithmetical purposes they used the Sumerian sexagesimal system of numbers, which featured a useful device of so-calledplace-value notation that resembles the present-day decimal system.

Measures of length, area, capacity, and weight, standardized earlier by the Sumerians, remained inuse.

Farming was a complicated and methodical occupation requiring foresight, diligence, and skill.

A recently translated document written in Sumerian but used as atextbook in the Babylonian schools is a veritable farmer's almanac; it records a series of instructions and directions to guide farm activities from the watering of the fields tothe winnowing of the harvested crops. Babylonian artisans were skilled in metallurgy, in the processes of fulling, bleaching, and dyeing, and in the preparation of paints, pigments, cosmetics, and perfumes.

Inthe field of medicine, surgery was well known and often practiced, judging from the Hammurabi law code, which devotes several paragraphs to the surgeon.

Pharmacology,too, doubtless had made considerable progress, although the only major direct evidence of this comes from a Sumerian tablet written several centuries before Hammurabi. C Legal System and Writing Law and justice were key concepts in the Babylonian way of life.

Justice was administered by the courts, each of which consisted of from one to four judges.

Often theelders of a town constituted a tribunal.

The judges could not reverse their decisions for any reason, but appeals from their verdicts could be made to the king.

Evidenceconsisted either of statements from witnesses or of written documents.

Oaths, which played a considerable role also in the administration of justice, could be eitherpromissory, declaratory, or exculpatory.

The courts inflicted penalties ranging from capital punishment and mutilation to flogging, reduction to slavery, and banishment.Awards for damages were from 3 to 30 times the value of the object to be restored. To ensure that their legal, administrative, and economic institutions functioned effectively, the Babylonians used the cuneiform system of writing developed by theirSumerian predecessors.

To train their scribes, secretaries, archivists, and other administrative personnel, they adopted the Sumerian system of formal education, underwhich secular schools served as the cultural centers of the land.

The curriculum consisted primarily of copying and memorizing both textbooks and Sumero-Babyloniandictionaries containing long lists of words and phrases, including the names of trees, animals, birds, insects, countries, cities, villages, and minerals, as well as a large anddiverse assortment of mathematical tables and problems.

In the study of literature, the pupils copied and imitated various types of myths, epics, hymns, lamentations,proverbs, and essays in both the Sumerian and the Babylonian languages. III HISTORY Long periods of the history of the Middle East in antiquity cannot be dated by an absolute chronology or according to a modern system of reckoning.

The Sumerian King List gives a succession of rulers to the end of the dynasty of Isin, about 1790 BC, but it is quite unreliable for dates prior to the dynasty of Akkad, about 2340 BC.

A relative chronology is well established for the era from the beginning of the dynasty of Akkad to the end of the 1st Dynasty of Babylon, about 1595 BC.

This period, however, is followed by an obscure period of more than 700 years, during which dates are only approximate.

Scholars follow at least three chronological systems for the ancient MiddleEast: high, middle, or low, depending upon whether the date assigned to the first year of the reign of Hammurabi of Babylon is 1848, 1792, or 1728 BC.

The dates in this article and in that on Sumer follow the so-called middle chronology and date the first year of Hammurabi's reign to 1792 BC. A The Sumerians Toward the end of the 3rd millennium BC, Sumer and Akkad was a kingdom of empire proportions ruled by a Sumerian dynasty known as the 3rd Dynasty of Ur.

After a century or two, hordes of Semitic nomads, the Amurru, or biblical Amorites, who had migrated from the Arabian desert lands to the west, made themselves masters ofsome of the more important cities such as Isin, Larsa, Babylon, and Eshnunna (now Tell Asmar).

About 2000 BC the last ruler of the 3rd Dynasty of Ur was carried off into captivity by the Elamites.

The kingdom of Sumer and Akkad disintegrated, and civil strife became rampant.

At first the city of Isin attempted to control Sumer and Akkad,but in the course of time its authority was challenged by Larsa, considerably to the south, and the two cities were constantly at war.

About 1790 BC King Rim-Sin (reigned about 1823-1763 BC) of Larsa conquered and occupied Isin, an event considered so important that it actually marked the beginning of a new, though limited, dating era in the scribal annals. B Hammurabi HammurabiHammurabi, king of Babylon, united the diverse tribes in Mesopotamia by strategically conquering territory in the region.

During hisrule (circa 1792 to 1750 bc), he proved to be as able an administrator as a general.

The Code of Hammurabi, a set of laws for theconduct of individuals and society that he codified, is one of the first bodies of written law.THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE Rim-Sin was unable to exploit his victory, because at the same time in the previously unimportant city of Babylon to the north, the ruler Hammurabi came to the fore.

Asking, Hammurabi combined astute diplomacy and military leadership; he defeated Rim-Sin, as well as the kings of Elam, Mari, and Eshnunna, and about 1760 BC became the ruler of a united kingdom extending from the Persian Gulf to the Habur River.

The history of Babylonia is considered to begin with Hammurabi. An unusually active and capable administrator, Hammurabi gave his personal attention to such details as the cleaning of irrigation canals and the insertion of an extramonth into the calendar.

He was an outstanding lawgiver; the Code of Hammurabi is one of the most significant legal documents ever uncovered.

He was also an inspiring. »