1I. The Code

1. Description of the Stele

Elamite conqueror of the land. The of the stele, when discovered, was in three

Stele. fragments which fit together and make a tablet -with convex surfaces, seven feet three inches in height, six feet two inches in width at the bottom and five feet five inches at the top. At the top of the obverse is a .bas-relief repre senting Hammurabi receiving the code from Sha mash. Immediately underneath is the prologue to the code, then the code itself, running partly on the

* in the following discussion M is used an the symbol for the Pentateuchal codes, H for the code of Hammurabi, and trite Arabic numerals reer to the sections in the latter.

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obverse, partly on the reverse, . and finally an epi logue, making altogether the longest Semitic cunei form inscription yet known. The inscription was originally in forty-nine columns, of which five have been erased and the surface smoothed, se though the intention was to substitute an inscription by the king who captured it. The rest of the text is intact except for short blanks where the surface is damaged. The original inscription is estimated to have contained about 8,000 words in 282 sections, of which thirty-five sections were in the erased part, and of these three have been recovered from other sources. .A peculiarity of the inscription is that it is written in horizontal columns so that as the stele stood it co-dd be read only by the reader's turning his head across the body to the left so se to follow the characters from the low®r side of the columns to the upper. The stele found was evidently not the only copy of the code, since a duplicate fragment of the epilogue was found at Susa and parts of the code were in Aashurbanipal's library. Indeed, portions of the cone have been known for years from fragments found in various places and hard been assigned on internal grounds by Meissner and

Delitzsch to Hammurabi's times. The verification of this assignment by the discovery of the code is a rare testimony to Aseyriological and critical acumen.

2. Contents of the Inscription

The epilogue states that Ilu (the supreme god) and Bel, lord of heaven and earth, have entrusted mankind to Marduk, and have called Hatnmurabi to ,create justice, to destroy the wicked, and to make men,happy. Then follows.a statement of Hammu rabi's achievements in which he refers three times to war, once to punishment of thieves, over a dozen times to temples which he has built, restored, adorned or endowed, several times to the digging and clearing of canals, and frequently to his kindly rule over his people for whom he, like a shepherd, has carefully provided. Then follows the code, dealing with witchcraft (1-2), trials (3-b), stealing and retaining lost property (G-13), kid napping (14), fugitive slaves (15-20), burglary and robbery (21-26), duties and privileges of a class of royal officers (26-41), agriculture, gardening, and ahelpherding (42-65). Next comes the erasure, supposed to have eliminated thirty-five sections.

The obverse takes up commercial matters, the relations of merchant and agent (100-107), liquor and saloon regulations (108-111), debt and deposit (112

12G). Then a large section (127-193) deals with the family as follows: slander, infidelity, violation, and suspicion of adultery (127-132), desertion, sep aration and divorce, remarriage and aoncubinage

(133-149), woman's property (150-152), various crimes of unfaithfulness or incest (153-158), the bride's price and dowry, and laws of inheritance

(159-184), adoption of children (185-193). Then follow laws concerning assault (194-214), physi cians' fees and responsibilities (215-227), building

(228-233), shipping (234-240), damage and rates of wages for various kinds of service (241_27?), and slaves (278-282). The epilogue follows, in which the king reasserts his faithfulness to the task en trusted to hum by Bel and Marduk, that of guarding the people (" On my heart I fold the people of

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Sumer and Akkad, in my spirit let them in peace repose"). He has written the stele, he continues, to bestow protection upon the weak, the widow and the orphan, and to further the cause of justice. Future kings are to observe the laws without change and are to receive blessing. The inscription closes with a series of imprecations on the king who shall obliterate, change, or annul the laws: "each day, month by month, may the years of his reign be filled with sighing and tears; as a burden may his royalty be prolonged, a life that is joined to death may God award him as his fate."

H is criminal and civil, prohibitive and prescriptive; it deals with offenses against the State, the person, and property. Novel facts are (1) that it includes among its provisions regulation of rates to be paid for loans of money or material, and establishes prices to be paid for several kinds of merchandise, for labor of various sorts, and for

3. Character

the hire of animals and implements and of the boats; (2) that there is no intrusion Legislation of the priestly element. Moreover, H and Pen- recognizes and legislates for three alties. grades of society: (1) the Amelu, a word fairly represented by the English word "gentry," who are held to a high responsibility, paying and receiving enhanced consideration in damage cases; (2) Muskenu, " commoners," freemen, yet subject to the corv6e; and (3) Ardu, slaves. Along with this goes the further fact that H legislates also for classes of society: (1) For those holding lands of the crown on a sort of feudal tenure and apparently liable to service, military and civil, probably as underofficers. (2) For votaries of certain deities (Shamash and Marduk are names in the code, but almost certainly the votaries of Sin and Anunit were included, as indicated by sources other than H). To these certain employments and places were interdicted, as the keeping and entering of a beer-shop. On the other hand they were protected from slander, were evidently respected in the community, and were not prostitutes, as they are so often designated. (3) For keepers of beer-shops, generally women, who were made responsible for order in their shops, were enjoined to report treasonous talk, and seem to have had the power of arrest. (4) For physicians, evidently not a highly respected class, whose fees are regulated by the patient's social status, while penalties were attached for malpractise or failure. (5) For -agriculturists, gardeners, and shepherds, and (6) for various kinds of artisans and laborers duties, fees, wages and penalties are prescribed. The place of justice was the temple or temple gate, and in the temple the records were filed. The order of procedure in cases was first the filing of the briefs, on perusal of which within six months the court heard the case and rendered the decision, which decision might not be reversed by the court hearing it, though the case might be appealed to a higher court or even to the king. The parties to the case plead their own cause, no professional attorneys being in evidence. Where, from the nature of the case, testimony was lacking, the final test was the oath before deity with the death penalty for proved perjury. Litigation was discouraged by penalizing the unsuccessful complainant as heavily as the establishing of his case would have penalized the defendant. Penalties range from fine through multiple payment, mutilation, reduction to slavery, expatriation, death, to death in especially dishonorable form. The cases of fine are of course numerous, as when personal or property damage has been done (106-109). Multiple payment is prescribed in many cases of trade transaction or fraudulent claim, and the rate varies from double to thirtyfold,;he last in case of a gentleman stealing from a temple-if a commoner committed such a theft, the penalty was tenfold restitution or death. Reduction to slavery, equivalent to hard labor for life, followed slander of a votary or a married woman (127). Expatriation was the punishment for incest with a daughter (154). The punishment by mutilation, which often appears in H, was either a case of lex talionis or of punishment by excision of the offending member. In the former case it was eye for eye, etc. (196-198). Instances of the latter were loss of hands by the thief (253), by an unskilful surgeon (218), or by a son who struck his father (195); a wet nurse who substituted a changeling lost her breasts (194), a slave who repudiated his master lost his ear (the organ of obedience, 205, 282). The death penalty followed witchcraft or false accusation of it (1, 2), perjury in a capital cause (3), violent entry or theft or receiving goods stolen from mansion or temple (6, 21 ), purchase from unauthorized agents (7), appropriation or selling of things found (9,10 ), making false claim to property (11), kidnapping a free-born child (14), instigating the flight of a slave (15), harboring a fugitive slave (16) or holding one for personal gain (19), highway robbery (22), neglect of duty by subofiicers (26), permitting disorder in a beer-shop (109), rape of a betrothed maiden (130), striking and killing a pregnant gentlewoman (209), erasing the brand of slavery (227), defective building, causing the death of the occupant (229), oppression, bribery, misappropriation of public property or persons by magistrates (33-34). In some cases the death penalty was carried out in a special manner; burning was for looting at a fire (25), for a votary's entering a beer-shop (110), for incest with a mother (157). Death by drowning was the penalty for cutting the price of beer (109), adultery (129), being a bad wife (143), incest with daughter-in-law (155), and deserting a husband's house in his absence (133). Impalement was the punishment for procuring a husband's death (153), dismemberment for failing to keep an agricultural agreement (256). The ordeal (2,132) probably implies death by drowning. Examples of prescriptive measures are those which enabled a man who had suffered from highway robbery or, in case of his death his family, to recover from the governor or the city if the thief were not captured. Thus the responsibility for order was placed on the authorities. Damages were assessed for neglect of various sorts, as, neglect to care for the portion of a canal adjacent to one's property, to herd flocks properly, or to till the whole of a field rented on shares or to till it all properly. Similar prescriptive regulations require that certain commercial operations be conducted in the presence of

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witnesses under penalty of forfeiture. Such operations as purchase from a minor and deposit of goods or money were illegal if without witnesses.

The position of woman under the law is interesting. Her oath cleared her of the charge of adul- tery (131), repudiation by her husband 4. Legal gave her the right to her dowry (137- Status of 139), for open contempt of her hus- Woman. band she might be reduced to bondage in her hqsband's house, provided she had been a slack housewife (141); if she had been a good housewife, she might leave him and take her dowry (142), if she were slack and slandered her husband, she was drowned (143). Concubinage was allowed under certain conditions (145); a woman whose husband had under those conditions married again might elect to stay with the husband or to take her marriage portion and go home (148-149). Property deeded to a wife was hers absolutely (150). By making the agreement at marriage, she could not be seized for a debt contracted before marriage, but she might be held with the husband for one contracted afterward (151-152). The dowry of a mother went to her children at her death, not to her father (162), but the father of a barren wife received back her dowry less the price paid for her (163-164). The widow who remained with the family of her husband shared in the property equally with the sons; if she left she took only her dowry (172). A man was bound to support his wife and she to be faithful to him. Hence if he were captured by an enemy and had left for her means of subsistence, she was bound to remain in the home. If he had not done so, she was blameless if she married during his absence. When he came back, she returned to him, and the children followed the father. So a man who expatriated himself from his city could not hold his wife to marital duty.

Study of the code reveals that it was not a thing entirely new. Its provisions are such as would naturally suggest themselves in a g. The developing civilization; they are often Laws not the result of conservatism and insist- New. ence on class rights and privileges, and again as evidently modifications of nomadic custom. Yet the stage of advance is indicated by the facts that the era of blood-revenge is past and that capital punishment is in the hand of the State except in the two cases of violent entry and looting at a conflagration. Another sign of the advanced stage is the protection afforded both to the person and to property, especially in the case of commercial transactions. The developed law might indeed be expected when it was remembered that the processes of justice were implied as in operation at least 2,300 years earlier, when the name of a judge is given on a tablet. Both Sargon and Naram-Sin spoke of public justice, and Gudea named courts of law. That the code is gentler than earlier practise appears manifest, its processes and penalties being on the whole less savage than the custom-code of contemporary peoples. Thus H appears as a register of progress; and this is the more noteworthy when there is taken into account the fact that it is only a code, not a pandect. Many of the provisions have the appearance of being rather examples of procedure than ample statutes for all possibilities. The general trend of opinion among Assyriologists is that H is but the consequence of the centralization of power by a strong and keen-eyed systematizer. The same grouping of factors appears in the administration of the empire as in this collection of statutes.

It was inevitable, in view of the discussion of Babylonian influence upon Hebrew life and literature, that as soon as the code was discovered, comparison should be made with M. It 6. Relation was found that a number of laws were to Pentateu- almost exact reproductions or parallels, chal Codes. there were many others in which there was an identity of principle but difference in detail of treatment, still others showing sharp contrast in principle and treatment, while whole groups of laws in one are not represented in the other. In accounting for these facts students find themselves in one of three positions. Since H is indisputably the older, if either is.dependent on the other, M must be the derived code. Accordingly some, emphasizing the influence of Babylonia on the West, derived parts of M at a late period from H. Others attribute the similarities in M to transmission from Abraham who had received the laws in Ur. A third view is that the similarities are best explained by regarding both codes as national developments under different environment from a common stock of Semitic cus tom. A decision is made more difficult because the Hebrew legislation is of at least three different periods, the early kingdom (Ex. xx.-xxiii. 20), the seventh century B.c. (Deuteronomy), and the Exile or later (the Priest-Code). Complicating the situation is the brevity of the earliest code, affording but few grounds of comparison. Moreover, the data obtained by comparison of the longer M codes are claimed by all three parties as favoring their individual contentions. Representative facts are, the following:

Correspondence exists in the case of assault upon a betrothed maiden (130; Deut. xxii. 25), of a slave concubine who had borne children (146; Deut. xxi. 14), of adultery with a daughter-in-law, betrothed or married (155-156; Ex. xxii. 16-17; Lev. xx. 12; Deut. xxii. 28), of false witness (3; Deut. xix. 19), of kidnapping (14; Ex. xxi. 16), witchcraft (1; Ex. xxii. 18), and of violence to a pregnant woman (109-114; Ex. xxi. 22). The laws of deposit differ only in detail (100-107; Ex. xxii. 7-15). Divergences are that according to H a man may pledge his wife, son or daughter for payment of a debt for three years only, in M for six years (117; Ex. xxi. 2; Deut. xv. 12). In H no provision is made for absolute release of a slave pledged for debt; in M there was a jubilee release, though whether that was more than theoretical is one of the debated questions. The careful provisions.in H, on pain of forfeiture, for witnesses to deposits, loans, or property given or entrusted for purposes of trade or in barter or sale are lacking in M (122, 123). The actual ordeal by water is in H alone (2,123), though the oath (which is an ordeal and one of the most common) is used by both. Necessarily a series of prescriptions with reference to lands let on feudal ten-

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ure is in H alone; similar are those sections which deal with the features of the country peculiar to Babylonia, such as the canals and the care of them. The probability seems to be in favor, therefore, of the position that while in the earlier code of M nothing beyond the most general influence of Baby lonian culture is evident, in the later codes that influence was intensified; but direct borrowing is yet to be shown as the true solution of the agree ments. Indeed the later codes of M seem to show a knowledge of H or its equivalent of the time by avoiding the specific treatment and substituting that more in accordance, with its own genius. The correspondences are as close, though not as nu merous, in the earliest code of M, where the theory of direct borrowing is hardly tenable. The agree ment of the later codes of M with H are generally of the same kind as that of the earliest and in the same class of cases.

Geo. W. Gilmore.

Bibliography: On Hammurabi, beside the literature given under Babylonia, consult: L. W. King, Letters and Inwriptiona of Hammurabi, 3 vols., London, 1898-1901 (vol. iii. is the translation; as a source this series of letters is of the first rank); M. W. Montgomery, Bride aus der Zeit des . . . Hammurabi, Leipsic, 1901; G. Nagel, Die Bride Hammurabia an Sin-iddinam, in BeW4ge cur Assyriologie, iv. 434-483, Leipsic, 1902; T. G. Pinches, The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and Babylonia, London, 1902; W. St. C. Boseawen, First of Empires, pp. 162-263, ib. 1903 (has also a transl. and study of the Code); D. H. Müller, in Zeitschrift für die %unde des Morgenlandee, xvii (1903-04), 337-342; W. H. Ward, Who was Hammurabif in The Century, lxvi (1903), 454-460.

The literature on the Code is voluminous, the following are the most important contributions: V. Scheil, D& Uyation en Pores. Mémoiree publics sous la direction de M. J. de Morgan, vol. iv., Textes _*lamitiquss-s6mitiques, deuxi~me s&ie, Paris, 1902 (the editio princeps of the Code, in photogravure, transliteration and translation; a magnificent volume); idem, La Loi de Hammourabi, ib. 1903; S. A. Cook, Laws of Moses and the Code of HammuraN, London, 1903 (full, but lacks the desideratum of clearness); H. Grimme, Das Geseb Chammurabis and Moses, Cologne, 1903, Eng. transl., London, 1907; J. Jeremiae, Moses and Hammurabi, Leipsic, 1903 (notes connections of the codes); C. W. H. Johns, Oldest Code of Laws in the World, Edinburgh, 1903 (very brief); E. König, in Die Grenzboten, l xii (1903), 59703; S. Oettli, Das Gesetz Hammurabis und die Thora, Leipsic, 1903; H. Winckler, in Der Alto Orient, ib. 1903 (with brief notes); idem, Die Gesetze Hammurabis in Umschrift and Ueberaetzung, Leipsic, 1904; R. D. Wilson, in Princeton Theological Review, Apr., 1903, pp. 239-255 (philological); Dareste, in Journal des Savants, 1903, pp. 517-528, 586-596; R. F. Harper, Code of Hammurabi . . autographed Text, Transliteration, Glossary, Index,., Chicago, 1904 (as a source second only to Scheil's edition); E. Bests, in Rivista IM. de sociologica, viii (1904), 179-236; S. Daichee, in Zeitschrift für Asayriolegie, xviii (1904), 202-222; D. O. Dykes, in Juridical Review, xvi (1904), 7285 (from a lawyer's point of view); C. Edwards, The Hammurabi Code and the Sinaitie Legislation, London, 1904; A. H. Godbey, in Reformed Church Review, viii (1904), 469; D. G. Lyon, in JAGS, xxv. (1904'), part 2, pp. 248-274; G. E. Vincent, in American Journal et Sociology, ix (1904), 737-754; P. Berger, in Grande Revue, 1905, vol ii. 23-48; Hammurabi and Moses, Cincinnati, 1905; O.,B. Jenkins, in American Law Review, xxxix (1905), 330-341; J. A. Kelso, in Princeton Theological Review, iii. (1905), 399-412; W. T. Pilter, The Law of Hammurabi and of Moses, London, 1907; M. Schorr, Altbabylonische Rechtsurkunden a us der Zeit der eraten babylonischen Dynastic (2800-2100 B.C.), Vienna, 1907; M. Flugel, The Humanity, Benevolence, and Charity Legislation of the Pentateuch and the Talmud in Parallel with the Laws of Hammurabi, the Doctrine of Egypt, the Roman %11 Tables, and Modern Codes, Baltimore, 1908; C.

M. Cobern, in Methodist Review, da:xvi. 696-703; G. Cohn, Gesetw Hammurabia, Zurich, 1903 (compares the Code with the old German laws); MOller, in Jahresbericht der iaraeY itisch-theologischen Lehrarbdalt, Vienna, 1903 (compares the Code with the twelve Roman tables). An excellent discussion by C. H. W. Johns may be found in DB, extra vol., pp. 584-612. Further literature is given in C. F. Kent, Student's Old Testament, iv. 280, New York, 1907.