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The Oldest Code of Laws in the World The code of laws promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon B.C. 2285-2242 By: King of Babylonia Hammurabi (-1750? BC) |
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THE CODE OF LAWS PROMULGATED BY
HAMMURABI, KING OF BABYLON
B.C. 2285 2242 TRANSLATED BY C. H. W. JOHNS, M.A. LECTURER IN ASSYRIOLOGY, QUEENS' COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
AUTHOR OF "ASSYRIAN DEEDS AND DOCUMENTS"
"AN ASSYRIAN DOOMSDAY BOOK" EDINBURGH
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET
1903 PRINTED BY
MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED FOR T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS FIRST IMPRESSION . . . February 1903. SECOND IMPRESSION . . . March 1903. THIRD IMPRESSION . . . May 1903. FOURTH IMPRESSION . . . June 1903. "The discovery and decipherment of this Code is the greatest event in
Biblical Archaeology for many a day. A translation of the Code, done by
Mr. Johns of Queens' College, Cambridge, the highest living authority on
this department of study, has just been published by Messrs. T. & T.
Clark in a cheap and attractive booklet. Winckler says it is the most
important Babylonian record which has thus far been brought to
light." The Expository Times .
INTRODUCTION
The Code of Hammurabi is one of the most important monuments in the
history of the human race. Containing as it does the laws which were
enacted by a king of Babylonia in the third millennium B.C., whose rule
extended over the whole of Mesopotamia from the mouths of the rivers
Tigris and Euphrates to the Mediterranean coast, we must regard it with
interest. But when we reflect that the ancient Hebrew tradition ascribed
the migration of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees to this very period, and
clearly means to represent their tribe father as triumphing over this
very same Hammurabi (Amraphel, Gen. xiv. 1), we can hardly doubt that
these very laws were part of that tradition. At any rate, they must have
served to mould and fix the ideas of right throughout that great empire,
and so form the state of society in Canaan when, five hundred years
later, the Hebrews began to dominate that region. Such was the effect produced on the minds of succeeding generations by
this superb codification of the judicial decisions of past ages, which
had come to be regarded as 'the right,' that two thousand years and more
later it was made a text book for study in the schools of Babylonia,
being divided for that purpose into some twelve chapters, and entitled,
after the Semitic custom, Ninu ilu sirum , from its opening words. In
Assyria also, in the seventh century B.C., it was studied in a different
edition, apparently under the name of 'The Judgments of Righteousness
which Hammurabi, the great king, set up.' These facts point to it as
certain to affect Jewish views before and after the Exile, in a way that
we may expect to find as fundamental as the Babylonian influence in
cosmology or religion. For many years fragments have been known, have been studied, and from
internal evidence ascribed to the period of the first dynasty of Babylon,
even called by the name Code Hammurabi. It is just cause for pride that
Assyriology, so young a science as only this year to have celebrated the
centenary of its birth, is able to emulate astronomy and predict the
discovery of such bright stars as this. But while we certainly should
have directed our telescopes to Babylonia for the rising of this light
from the East, it was really in Elam, at Susa, the old Persepolis, that
the find was made. The Elamites were the great rivals of Babylonia for
centuries, and it seems likely that some Elamite conqueror carried off
the stone from a temple at Sippara, in Babylonia. However that may be, we owe it to the French Government, who have been
carrying on explorations at Susa for years under the superintendence of
M. J. de Morgan, that a monument, only disinterred in January, has been
copied, transcribed, translated, and published, in a superb quarto
volume, by October. The ancient text is reproduced by photogravure in a
way that enables a student to verify word by word what the able editor,
Father V... Continue reading book >>
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