Babylonian Work, Crafts and Leisure in Southern Mesopotamia

Work in Babylonia, the alluvial region of southern Mesopotamia, depended on household skills, specialist artisans and the resources managed by temples and palaces. From the Old Babylonian period through the Kassite era and the Neo-Babylonian state of 626–539 BCE, people processed crops, made clothing and vessels, built with mud brick, and turned imported metals and stones into tools and fine objects. A household might produce what it needed, sell a specialist’s work or depend on employment within a large institution.

Music, storytelling, food and drink also brought people together. Temple personnel performed prayers and laments, taverns supplied customers, and a later Babylonian rules tablet describes a competitive board game played for stakes. These activities belonged to different settings within the long history of Babylonia.

On this page8 sections

Households, institutions and the organisation of work

Families made or processed many things they needed, often alongside their other daily tasks. Grain was ground and food prepared in homes, while ordinary clothing was probably produced largely within households, with women often doing the textile work. The distinction between home production and specialist craft was not absolute: a skilled worker might practise a trade at home, and householders could commission work from an artisan.

Temples and palaces were also major economic centres. They owned workshops and stores, acquired materials, organised teams of workers and commissioned products for administration, construction and religious use. Workers could be assigned to teams under a supervisor; where an institution did not have the expertise or capacity it needed, it could hire independent workers or contract for goods and services. Large tasks such as grinding grain or making bricks required many hands, while metalworking and the production of finely made objects depended on specialist skill.

Skills were often passed on within families. A small number of Neo-Babylonian contracts also record training arranged with a specialist artisan, evidence that instruction could take place outside the household. This practical training was distinct from scribal education, which taught the reading and writing of cuneiform. Scribes used clay tablets for records and correspondence, and their training included copying signs, vocabulary lists and model texts.

Food processing and household crafts

Turning agricultural produce into food linked domestic work with specialist trades. Grain, especially barley, was ground into flour using grinding equipment. Millers supplied flour to cooks and bakers, who made bread, cakes and other foods. Brewing was another important occupation because beer was widely consumed. Barley beer is prominent in earlier evidence; by the Neo-Babylonian period, beer made from dates appears to have become more prominent. Sesame oil was produced by roasting the seeds and pressing them with the aid of a mill and water.

These tasks could be carried out in a household or on a larger scale for an institution. Excavated temple compounds include buildings interpreted as kitchens where food was prepared, probably including offerings to the gods. At Nippur, remains of a baker’s residence from the Old Babylonian period included bread ovens outside the house. Documents found there indicate that the baker served both institutional and private customers. In Kassite-period Nippur, records also attest to food-processing specialists who travelled to carry out their work.

Pottery supplied vessels for storing and serving food and drink, as well as containers for other purposes. Babylonian lexical lists distinguish hundreds of vessel forms by their shape, size, contents or use. Pottery could be made within a domestic setting, but specialised potters and workshops are also attested. At a Kassite-period workshop at Tell Zubeidi, a rectangular brick kiln used an updraft: a fire burned in a lower chamber and hot air rose into the chamber holding the pottery. This example shows the practical arrangements required to fire ceramic wares, while the wide range of vessel types reflects the varied needs of households and institutions.

Building, textiles and metalwork

Making buildings from clay

Mud brick was the basic building material across much of southern Mesopotamia. Workers shaped clay into standard-sized bricks and usually dried them in the sun. Baked bricks were used where greater durability was needed, and glazed bricks became a conspicuous feature of major buildings in later periods. Making enough bricks for a large construction project was itself a substantial undertaking. Neo-Babylonian records from Sippar describe temple teams supplemented by hired workers; large construction campaigns brought together many teams. Temples could also contract intermediaries to deliver bricks in large consignments.

Builders coordinated brick production with the laying of walls and other construction work. The professional called an itinnu, often translated as a mason, could direct a building project rather than simply lay bricks. On major works, a chief builder might supervise the operation. Royal inscriptions celebrated the construction and repair of temples, canals and city defences, but the physical work depended on these organised teams and on a steady supply of materials.

Cloth and clothing

Wool and linen were the principal textile fibres mentioned in the evidence. Spinners twisted fibres into yarn, and weavers interlaced threads to make cloth. Dyeing and embroidery could then add colour and decoration. Making a garment required several connected skills, from preparing the fibre to assembling and maintaining the finished textile. Written garment names are not always easy to identify, so images are an important guide to clothing. They show men wearing skirts, draped garments or tunics, and women in long dresses, sometimes with sleeves. Fringes and other decorative details appear on some garments. The form of a garment and the quality of its cloth helped express resources and social position.

Households probably made much everyday clothing, but temples also employed textile specialists. In the Neo-Babylonian period, temple workers made and maintained elaborate garments for divine statues. Some weavers specialised in linen or multicoloured cloth; other workers repaired or washed textiles. Such work served the cult as well as the practical need to keep valuable clothing in good condition.

Metal and prestige crafts

Local resources were not enough to supply Babylonian crafts with all the metals and stones they required. Metal arrived as ore that had already been partly processed elsewhere or as ingots, and artisans also recovered metal from old objects. Recycling mattered because raw metal was scarce. Merchants carried metals and high-quality stone into Babylonia along routes linking the plain with neighboring regions and more distant suppliers.

Metalworkers melted and cast metal or shaped it by hammering. Precious metals could be drawn into wire. Casting formed an object by pouring molten metal into a mould. In lost-wax casting, a wax model was enclosed in a mould and removed by heating, leaving a cavity for the metal. After cooling, the object could be trimmed, hammered or polished. Artisans made tools and other everyday objects as well as jewellery and objects for temples and palaces. Records show that institutions monitored both the materials issued to craftspeople and the finished goods returned, since precious supplies needed careful accounting.

Palaces and temples commissioned skilled carpenters, stonecutters, goldsmiths and jewellers to produce furniture, doors and valuable objects for royal or religious use. Fifth-century BCE records from the temple of Ishtar at Uruk, under Persian rule, describe highly regarded craftsmen working on cult objects and repairs with materials supplied by the temple. This evidence belongs to the Persian period, after the independent Neo-Babylonian state, and shows that institutional craft work continued under new political rulers.

Music, stories and places of consumption

Music accompanied worship and court life. Stringed instruments included harps, lyres and lutes. Harps and lyres sounded when a musician plucked their strings; a lute had a neck along which a player could shorten the vibrating string to change its pitch. Pipes produced sound through blown air, while drums and other percussion supplied struck or shaken sounds. Together these categories offered different ways to accompany voices and mark rhythm.

Temple lamenters, called kalu, performed prayers and songs as part of ritual service. A lament could ask for divine help or seek to calm a deity’s anger, giving music a purpose within worship. Images also preserve musicians as recognizable figures. A Neo-Babylonian clay plaque now in the Metropolitan Museum depicts a bearded man with a drum, while Old Babylonian terracottas include lute players. These objects make the musician’s instrument and posture part of the scene.

Babylonian stories and poems offered another form of cultural experience, though their surviving copies chiefly come from scribal and scholarly settings. The Epic of Gilgamesh, shaped into an Akkadian version in the early second millennium BCE and later circulated in a more standard form, tells of a hero’s unsuccessful search for immortality. Other narrative works treated divine conflict, creation and human misfortune. Such texts carried religious, moral or political ideas as well as a capacity to entertain. Stories such as Gilgamesh combine action with questions about friendship, death and the limits of human achievement. Repeated copying kept these narratives available to new generations of learned readers.

Old Babylonian records also attest to taverns, often run by women, where drinks and basic foods were sold, sometimes on credit. These establishments linked food and drink sales to everyday commerce. A keeper had to obtain supplies, serve customers and keep track of what was owed. Selling on credit made the establishment part of a household’s economic relationships as well as a place to buy a drink.

A later Babylonian board game

In 177 BCE, under Seleucid rule, the Babylonian scholar Itti-Marduk-balatu copied rules for the Game of Twenty Squares. Its board had a marked route along which two players raced their pieces. The goal was to bring one’s pieces through the course before the opponent. Knucklebones, small animal ankle bones used as throwing devices, governed movement in this later form of the game. Their falls combined chance with choices about which piece to advance.

The rules tablet describes a developed version with five different pieces per player and bets associated with play. Its central squares also carried fortune-telling meanings. This late Babylonian record is related to the much older boards discovered in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, but its distinctive pieces and betting belong to the version described in the tablet. Competition, stakes and interpretation of lucky or unlucky results were all part of its appeal.