* All the people enumerated in this passage might, in ignorance of what they were doing, be induced to tear up the stone, and unconsciously commit a sacrilege from which every Chaldaean in his senses would have shrunk back.  The formula provides for such cases, and it secures that the curse shall fall not only on the irresponsible instruments, but reach the instigator of the crime, even when he had taken no actual part in the deed.

[Illustration:  322.jpg THE MICHAUX STONE (left)]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin.  The original is in the medal cabinet
     of the Bibliotheque Nationale.

[Illustration:  323.jpg THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MICHAUX STONE (right)]

Merodach, by whose spells the sick are re stored, will inflict upon the guilty one a dropsy which no incantation can cure.  Shamas, the supreme judge, will send forth against him one of his inexorable judgments.  Sin, the inhabitant of the brilliant heavens, will cover him with leprosy as with a garment.  Adar, the warrior, will break his weapons; and Zamama, the king of strifes, will not stand by him on the field of battle.  Eamman will let loose his tempest upon his fields, and will overwhelm them.  The whole band of the invisibles hold themselves ready to defend the rights of the proprietor against all attacks.  In no part of the ancient world was the sacred character of property so forcibly laid down, or the possession of the soil more firmly secured by religion.

In instruments of agriculture and modes of cultivation Chaldaea was no better off than Egypt.  The rapidity with which the river rose in the spring, and its variable subsidence from year to year, furnished little inducement to the Chaldaeans to entrust to it the work of watering their lands; on the contrary, they were compelled to protect themselves from it, and to keep at a distance the volume of waters it brought down.  Each property, whether of square, triangular, or any other shape, was surrounded with a continuous earth-built barrier which bounded it on every side, and served at the same time as a rampart against the inundation.

[Illustration:  324.jpg TWO ROWS OF SHADUFS ON THE BANK OF A RIVER.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from
     Koyunjik.

Rows of shadufs installed along the banks of the canals or streams provided for the irrigation of the lands.* The fields were laid out like a chess-board, and the squares, separated from each other by earthen ridges, formed as it were so many basins:  when the elevation of the ground arrested the flow of the waters, these were collected into reservoirs, whence by the use of other shadufs they were raised to a higher level.