oduct of it without material error.
Gardens and groves of date-palms, together with large regions devoted
to rough attempts at vegetable culture, were often to be met with,
especially in the neighbourhood of towns; these paid their contributions
to the State, as well as the owners'rent, in kind--in fruit, vegetables,
and fresh or dried dates. The best soil was reserved, for the growth of
wheat and other cereals, and its extent was measured in terms of corn;
corn was also the standard in which the revenue was reckoned both in
public and private contracts. Such and such a field required about fifty
litres of seed to the arura. Another needed sixty-two or seventy-five
according to the fertility of the land and its locality. Landed property
was placed under the guardianship of the gods, and its transfer or
cession was accompanied by formalities of a half-religious, half-magical
character: the party giving delivery of it called down upon the head
of any one who would dare in the future to dispute the validity of the
deed, imprecations of which the text was inserted on a portion of the
surface of an egg-shaped nodule of flint, basalt, or other hard stone.
These little monuments display on their cone-shaped end a series
of figures, sometimes arranged in two parallel divisions, sometimes
scattered over the surface, which represent the deities invoked to watch
over the sanctity of the contract. It was a kind of representation in
miniature of the aspect which the heavens presented to the Chaldaeans.
The disks of the sun and moon, together with Venus-Ashtar, are the
prominent elements in the scene: the zodiacal figures, or the symbols
employed to represent them, are arranged in an apparent orbit around
these--such as the Scorpion, the Bird, the Dog, the Thunderbolt of
Ramman, the mace, the horned monsters, half hidden by the temples they
guard, and the enormous Dragon who embraces in his folds half the entire
firmament. "If ever, in the course of days, any one of the brothers,
children, family, men or women, slaves or servants of the house, or any
governor or functionary whatsoever, arises and intends to steal this
field, and remove this landmark, either to make a gift of it to a god,
or to assign it to a competitor, or to appropriate it to himself; if he
modifies the area of it, the limits and the landmark; if he divides it
into portions, and if he says: 'The field has no owner, since there has
been no donation of it; '--if, from d