Note 724 — Chapter VII · THE BABYLONIAN “EVIL DAYS” AND THE SHABATTUM

Some painstaking efforts have been made to discover whether during historic times there was any general observance in Babylonia of the “evil days.” W. Lotz (op. cit., p. 66), from an examination of 540 dated contract tablets belonging to different months, found that the average of the number of transactions on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days was 18, which would be also the average for each day of the month. The 19th day, however, had only one contract to its credit. Schiaparelli (op. cit., p. 132 n.¹) examined about 400 dated documents from the archives of the Babylonian business firm, Egibi and Sons, and showed that there was a real abstention from business only on the 19th day, when no contracts were concluded. The same investigator (op. cit., pp. 175 sqq.) also classified according to the day of the month 2764 dates on contract tablets belonging to the period 604-449 B.C. and found again that, while the transactions for the 7th, 14th, and 21st days were considerably above the average (94) and those for the 28th day only slightly below it, the 19th day registered but 12 transactions. It is true that these statistics deal with a late period of Babylonian history and include the reigns of several Persian kings. By this time the general observance of the custom may have been in decay. The figures, moreover, do not distinguish the sort of business done on the “evil days.” Many of the documents are temple records, having to do with offerings, receipts of salaries by priests, etc., and such business may not have been regarded as a violation of the prohibitions in question (C. H. W. Johns, “The Babylonian Sabbath,” Expository Times, 1906, xvii, 566 sq.). For Assyria, during the period 720-606 B.C., 365 dated documents indicate no marked cessation of business on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days. “They were not kept with puritan respect for the Sabbath, if Sabbaths they really were.” Only 2 contracts, however, were made on the 19th, and for one of these the date is doubtful (idem, Assyrian Deeds and Documents, London, 1901, ii, 40 sq.). Finally, out of 356 dated documents of the Hammurabi era, only 2 were dated on the 19th and only 26 on the four other “evil days” (idem, in Expository Times, 1906, xvii, 566 sq.). It would seem, accordingly, that at this earlier period (about 2000 B.C.) there was a sabbatic observance of all five days, and especially of the 19th day.