Ancient Iraq (46 page)

The New Year Festival

Once a year, in the spring, the religiosity diffused throughout Sumer and Akkad crystallized in Babylon. For several days the thoughts of the entire population were focused on the ceremonies which took place in the capital-city, because they offered an answer to the fears and hopes of every Mesopotamian. It was felt that mankind shared in the great renewal undergone by nature, that the past was abolished, that the cosmos momentarily reverted to chaos, that the fate of the country depended upon the judgement pronounced by the gods. Nothing short of a complex ritual loaded with magical virtues could solve the unavoidable crisis and put an end to the terrible uncertainty that overwhelmed the human race.

The New Year Festival, or
akîtu
, as celebrated in Babylon during the first millennium
B.C.
,
¹⁴
resulted from the confluence of two powerful currents of religious thought: an extremely old Fertility Cult, consisting of seasonal feasts and a ‘Sacred Marriage’ ceremony, which is only attested in certain cities and up to the first half of the second millennium
B.C.
, and a comparatively more recent cosmogony developed by the theologians of Nippur, wherein the creation of the world was attributed to Enlil following his victory over Tiamat and the forces of Chaos. After the world was created, a general assembly of the gods presided by the ‘Lord Wind’ decreed the Destinies of the Land, the fate of humanity. Creation and the naming of Destiny were not unique and final, but annual and conditional. The great cosmic struggle was believed to take place every year and its outcome was unpredictable. In the Babylonian
akîtu
-festival, the passage of nature from want to fruitfulness was made to coincide with the restoration of divine order, and the main role was played by Marduk, who combined the personality of Enlil, champion and king of the gods, with his own personality of fertilizing city-god.

The New Year Festival began on the day called
zagmuk
, in the month of Nisan (March – April), and lasted eleven or twelve
days. The tablets which describe it are unfortunately damaged, but enough is legible for us to follow, albeit with some gaps, the ceremonies of the first six days. From what remains concerning the first day we can only gather that a priest unlocked the ‘Lofty Gate’ of Esagila and opened its great courtyard. On the second day the great-priest (
sheshgallu
) rose before dawn and washed himself with Euphrates water; he then entered the temple, recited a secret prayer asking Marduk to bestow his favours on Babylon and its people, and let in the
erib bîti
priests, the incantators (
kalû
) and the singers, who performed their rites. What follows is too fragmentary to be understood, but it seems that it referred to difficult times, speaking of ‘forgotten rites’, ‘enemies’ and ‘malediction of Marduk’. The third day began very much like the second day, but three artisans were summoned and provided with material to make two statuettes of wood adorned with precious stones and clad in red garments; one statuette was brandishing a serpent, the other a scorpion. On the fourth day prayers to Marduk and his spouse Sarpanitum were chanted in the early morning, and after the second meal, in the late afternoon, the
sheshgallu
-priest recited the long poem
Enuma elish
(the Epic of Creation) in its entirety, whilst Anu's tiara and Enlil's seat remained covered by deference to these gods who, in the Epic, had been replaced by Marduk.

The first part of the fifth day was devoted to the purification of the temple. A specialized priest, the
mashmashu
went around Esagila with a censer and a torch, sprinkled its walls with Tigris water and smeared them with cedar resin. A slaughterer was then called in to cut off the head of a sheep, take its body around inside the temple and, with the help of the priest, throw head and body into the river, the ‘scapegoat’ being supposed to take away all the sins of the previous year; whereupon both the
mashmashu
and the slaughterer left Babylon to remain in the open country until the end of the Festival. The
sheshgallu
– who had kept away from these ceremonies to avoid becoming impure – ordered craftsmen to cover the shrine of Marduk's son, Nâbu,
– who was then travelling by boat from Barsippa (Birs Nimrud)
¹⁵
to Babylon – with a veil of blue material embroidered with gold.

In the evening, the king proceeded to Esagila. Before the statue of Marduk, he surrendered the insignia of kingship – the sceptre, the circle and the mace – to the
sheshgallu
-priest, who deposited them on a chair in front of Marduk, and then struck the king on the cheek:

The priest reassured the king:

‘Have no fear… The god Bêl will listen to your prayer… He will magnify your lordship… He will exalt your kingship… The god Bêl will bless you for ever. He will destroy your enemy, fell your adversary.’

The king was given back his insignia and struck once more:

He (the priest) shall strike the king's cheek. If, when he strikes the king's cheek, the tears flow, (it means that) the god Bêl is friendly; if no tears appear, the god Bêl is angry: the enemy will rise up and bring about his downfall.
¹⁶

The symbolism of this humiliating ritual is clear: the king, scapegoat of the community, atoned for his sins and was reminded that he owed his powers to none but the gods. Later in the night, he took part in other ceremonies involving the burning of a bull in a fire of reeds.

All we know about the sixth day is that Nabû arrived from Barsippa and that, at the same time, the two ‘statuettes of evil’,
which had been made three days before, were decapitated and their heads cast into fire. Our main narrative breaks off here, but other texts indicate that other gods reached Babylon, notably from Sippar, Kutha and Kish. On the ninth day, the king entered Marduk's shrine, ‘took his hand’ – a gesture which came to summarize the royal participation in the Festival
¹⁷
– and installed him in the
ubshukkinna
chapel, together with the other deities. In this first divine assembly was proclaimed the sovereignty of Marduk, as stated in the Epic of Creation and the Destinies were named for the first time. A great, solemn cortége was then formed, including the statues of all the gods and goddesses. Headed by Marduk on his chariot glittering with gold and precious stones and led by the king, it went down Procession Street across Babylon in an aura of incense, songs and music, while people were kneeling down in adoration as it passed by. Through Ishtar Gate the cortége left the city, and after a short journey on the Euphrates, reached the
bît akîtu
, a temple filled with plants and flowers in the middle of a large park.
¹⁸
We lack details concerning the ceremonies which took place there but the triumph of Marduk over the forces of evil was certainly celebrated.
¹⁹
The gods stayed in the
bît akîtu
for three days. On the eleventh of Nisan they returned to Esagila, where they assembled again to decree, once more, ‘the Destinies of the Land’. What is meant by this vague expression, we do not know exactly. Perhaps oracles concerning definite events, such as wars, famines, inundations, etc., were pronounced; perhaps the gods simply reaffirmed their protection over the Babylonians and their monarch in general terms. The session ended in a huge banquet accompanied by music and prayers. On the twelfth of Nisan all the gods who had come to Babylon returned to their respective cities, the priests to their temples, the king to his palace. The great New Year Festival was over.

Economic Life

From the lofty summits of religious thought to the mundane realities of economic life the distance in Chaldaean Babylonia was not very great, since in many places the clergy cared for both the spiritual and material needs of the population. For instance, the archives of E-Anna, the great sanctuary of Uruk, show that the temple owned large estates which were partly let out to tenants, carried out extensive trade within and outside Mesopotamia and formed a social and economic unit almost independent of the central government.
²⁰
These various activities were directed by an ‘administrator’ (
shatammu
), assisted by an ‘overseer’ (
qipu
) and by the head scribe (
tupshar bîti
). The temple employed a considerable number of people: notables (
mâr bâni
) and artisans (
ummane
) engaged in various professions. Hired men and slaves ploughed and harvested its fields, dug and maintained its canals, grazed its cattle and flocks, and assured the transportation and storage of goods. Among the temple servants special mention should be made of the
shirkê
(sing.
shirku
), literally ‘consecrated‘, men and women of different social classes who had been ‘offered’ in perpetuity to the temple, performed various tasks, received no pay, but were fed and kept by the clergy.
²¹
The produce of the land, the profits of trade, the rent of fields and houses, taxes levied on the community and part of the offerings and sacrifices – in theory optional, but in practice compulsory – constituted the revenues of the temple. A similar organization probably existed in other cities, though most of the documents from Babylon, Sippar, Nippur, Barsippa and Ur published up to now deal mainly with transactions between individuals.
2 2

The importance assumed at least by some temples under the Chaldaean dynasty probably originated in the tenth and eleventh centuries
B.C.
Prior to that date, the general trend in history had been towards a gradual reduction of the temples' privileges through the creation of large royal estates and the development of private property. But during the ‘dark age’ of
Aramaean invasion events took a different course. Despite the lack of written evidence, we may reasonably assume that while the invaders ransacked and occupied the open country, the Mesopotamian farmers and craftsmen took refuge in or immediately around the cities, and put themselves at the service of the only remaining authority, the local clergy. The temples then became the social, economic and cultural centres of southern Mesopotamia – a state of affairs reminiscent of the role played by the monasteries in our Middle Ages – with unlimited facilities for enlarging their domains. Under the Assyrian domination, when texts again become available, it appears that the wealth of Babylonia was concentrated in her ‘holy cities’. The kings of Assyria, who relied a great deal upon the temples to maintain the political stability of Babylonia, bestowed their favours upon them and generally exempted them from taxes and duties; but they also kept them under tight administrative control and, on occasion, ‘borrowed’ from their treasures.
²³
The collapse of Assyria to a great extent freed the temples from governmental interference, and if Nabopolassar and Nebuchadrezzar, out of personal devotion and faithfulness to a well-established tradition, materially rebuilt and adorned the sanctuaries, they abstained from interfering with their organization and contented themselves with a twenty per cent return on their revenue. Nabonidus, however, attempted to bring the temples' business under closer royal scrutiny. We know that in 553 he appointed two high officials – the ‘Royal Officer Lord of the Appointment’ and the ‘Royal Officer over the King's Coffer’ – over the E-Anna of Uruk, with instructions to supervise its transactions and ensure the regular collection of royal tithe and taxes. In all probability it was this, more than the king's ‘heresy’, which alienated the priests from him and threw them on Cyrus's side.

This new, unpopular policy was no doubt dictated by serious financial difficulties. Nebuchadrezzar had spent fabulous sums in the rebuilding of Babylon and other cities, and the ‘archaeological’ activities of Nabonidus himself were hardly less costly. In addition, the government had to support a large and
permanent army. With the exception of Elam, all the northern and eastern countries were now practically closed to Mesopotamian trade, and if Syria – Palestine was still in Babylonian hands, frequent revolts made these distant provinces a burden more than an asset. Moreover, the Phoenician cities had lost much of their former wealth. The sixth century
B.C
. was precisely the great period of Greek maritime and colonial expansion, and the main commercial centres of the eastern Mediterranean were no longer on the Lebanese coast, but in Greece, Ionia, Lydia, Cilicia and Egypt. Increased expenditures and reduced income drained heavily on the royal treasury and deeply affected the general economy of Babylonia. A study of the hire and sale contracts reveals a marked increase in prices between the beginning and the end of the Neo-Babylonian period. Thus a male slave costing 40 shekels of silver about 600
B.C
., cost 50 shekels some fifty years later. Under Nebuchadrezzar 1 shekel could buy from 2 to 4
qa
of cultivated land, but only 1 to 2
qa
under Nabonidus.
²⁴
A similar increase affected foodstuffs, clothes and other daily necessities. For various reasons it is difficult to draw an exact scale of wages, but they seem to have remained fairly low throughout the period. The average monthly salary of an unskilled labourer, for instance, was about 1 shekel; with this, he could purchase 2 bushels of grain and 3 bushels of dates, just enough for him to feed his family. In consequence, people took to borrowing money on a long-term basis, and credit inflation rendered the Babylonian economy even more unhealthy.

The term ‘money’ here should not be taken in its ordinary sense, for minted coins – said to have been invented by the Lydians in the seventh century
B.C
. – did not circulate widely in the Near East before the reign of Darius I (521 – 486
B.C
.). What the Babylonians used as currency were bits of silver of various shapes and standardized weights: the
shiqlu
(shekel), weighing about three-tenths of an ounce; the
mana
(mine or pound) of 67 shekels, weighing about 18 ounces; and the biltu (talent) of 60 mines, weighing about 67 pounds. In current use were also the half-shekel and, occasionally, the
she
, literally a ‘grain’ of silver. The system was very old, since ingots of bronze stamped with some inscription or image which guaranteed their fineness appear in Mesopotamia as early as the second millennium
B.C
, and the Assyrians used cast objects of silver, lead and, later, copper in their commercial dealings. What was novel in the Neo-Babylonian period was the adoption of the silver standard, the ratio of silver to gold varying between 14 and 10 to 1. Standardized currency taken as a system of reference made accounting considerably easier and facilitated transactions, but the silver standard also encouraged the development of credit, for the simple reason that silver ‘coins’ were easy to store and manipulate. ‘Usury, mortgages and enslaved debtors followed the new medium of exchange wherever it was introduced.’
²⁵
Private business on a scale hitherto unknown flourished in Babylonia during the sixth century
B.C.
, and while most of the population endured considerable hardship, a few ‘dynasties’ of capitalists and businessmen – such as the Egibi family in Babylon – made a fortune in real estate, slave trade, money-lending societies, commercial and agricultural companies and banking operations, such as loans and the handling of deposits on behalf of their clients.
²⁶

The emergence of a monetary system and the development of capitalism are phenomena the importance of which cannot be overstressed; but the resurgence of the temples as major social and economic units is equally important. Both help to explain what happened after Babylonia had lost her political autonomy. Economic depression contributed to the decline of the Mesopotamian civilization, but the temples kept it alive for almost six hundred years. By a remarkable coincidence, this civilization was to die as it was born: under the wings of the gods.