There are references to various kinds of crafts- men who must have worked ‘by the job’ so to speak, especially to smiths and carpenters, but we are not told how they were paid. Judah’s payment of a kid to Tamar (Gn 38!) may be mentioned here.
Code of Hammurabi.—This code, which is dated about B.c. 2285-2242 (Johns), includes provisions as to the fees to be paid to doctors and builders; and as to the wages of boatmen, reapers, threshers, shepherds, labourers, brickmakers, tailors, stonecutters, and carpenters ; and as to the hire of oxen, cows, waggons, and boats. If a doctor performs for a noble a suc- cessful operation for a wound or an abscess in the eye, he receives ten shekels of silver; if for a poor man, five; if for a slave, two. But if the noble dies or loses his eye, the doctor's hands are cut off; in the case of a slave, the doctor replaces him if he dies; pays half his price if he loses his eye. For minor operations, the doctor receives five, three, or two shekels, according to the rank of his patient. A cow- or sheep-doctor receives one-sixth of a shekel of silver for a cure, and pays the owner a quarter of the animal’s value if it dies. A builder is to be paid in proportion to the size of the house ; and if it collapses through faulty construction and the owner is killed, the builder is to be put to death; if other damage is caused, suitable com- pensation is to be paid.
Oxen, boatmen, reapers, threshers, and shepherds were hired for the year; the hire for the ox being 4 gur* of corn, of a boatman or thresher 6, of a reaper or shepherd 8.
There were also hirings by the day, as follows: (a) reckoned
* Worth, according to Johns, a shekel of silver per gur.
WAGES
SHIPS AND BOATS 359
ee a
in ka* of corn; for threshing, ox 20, ass 10, calf 1; oxen, waggon, and driver, 180; or waggon, 40 ; (0) reckoned in Se + of silver ; boat, 3; carpenter, 4; tailor, brickmaker, or stonecutter, 5; labourer, for first five months of the year, 6; for the last seven months, 5. A freight boat to carry 60 gus of corn could be hired for one-sixth of a shekel a day.
é In this code many regulations are laid down as to slaves; little is said as to their treatment or the provision made for their maintenance, but we may conclude that they were treated with the comparative humanity and consideration usually ac- corded to them in the ancient East. For instance, the code implies that a master would be willing to pay two shekels, or the equivalent of three months’ wages to a shepherd, for the cure of a slave. Moreover, if a slave married a free woman, the children were free.
It will be noticed that wages, as in medieval codes, are fixed by law. We may surmise, from the analogy of the Middle Ages, that these regulations were made in the interests of the em- ployers ; and that, practicaily, the rates fixed were a minimum, and that higher wages were often paid.
(B) THE ApPocRYPHA AND THE NEW TESTA- MENT.—The references to wages in the Apocrypha and the New Testament are still comparatively few, and do not suggest that any very important changes had taken place.
i. The farmers, ete., profited by the order main- tained by the Roman government and the Herods, but probably this advantage was more than counter- balanced by the weight of taxation and the fraudu- lent extortions of the publicans.
ii. Dependents, poor relations, etc., probably were very much in the same position as of old.
iii. Slaves were still well treated in the East, and fairly well when serving in the households of Greeks or even Romans, but the provision made for slaves working in factories or on large farms, or manning ships, was often scanty and sordid. Cf. art. SERVANT in vol. iv.
iv. Wages paid for continuous service.—In To 5 the angel Raphael, professing himself to be a member of a distinguished Jewish family akin to Tobit, is hired by the latter as travelling com- panion to his son, and subsequently sent to collect a large debt; so that hired servants were sometimes placed in positions of trust. Raphael’s wages were to be a drachma a day and ‘all found,’ with the promise of a bonus at the end of the engagement if he gave satisfaction. Similarly, the labourers in the vineyard (Mt 20) received adenarion or denarius, whose value ‘ was the same as that of’ the drachma ‘in ordinary transactions’ (art. MONEY in vol. iii. p. 428"), The shekel contained rather more silver than a half-crown, and the denarius about ¢ as much silver as a shilling; probably, too, the labourers received food. The mere statement of the weight of silver, however, tells us nothing as to real wages; and to a large extent our data rather serve to fix the value of silver than the real wages of labour. If we may reckon the price
-of wheat- in NT times at from l6s. to £1 a quarter, a denarius or drachma, about 95d. a day, with food, would be very roughly equivalent to the present wages of a London charwoman, about 2s. a day with food, wheat being about 29s. a quarter. ; :