I. Anticipations of a Babylonian Code of Laws.
In 1890, F. E. Peiser published in his thesis Iurisprudentiae Babylonicae quae supersunt (Cöthen, P. Schettler’s Erben) a number of fragments of Babylonian Codes of Laws, and aptly illustrated them by relevant legal documents. In 1902, Br. Meissner published what proved to be some fragments of the Code of Hammurabi, from copies made for Ashurbanipal’s Library at Nineveh, now preserved in the British Museum. These appeared in the Third Volume of the Beiträge zur Assyriologie (Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1898), under the title Altbabylonische Gesetze (pp. 473-523), and were commented upon by Fr. Delitzsch in the next volume (pp. 78-87) in an article entitled Zur juristischen Litteratur Babyloniens and regarded as Bruchstücke eines altbabylonischen bürgerlichen Gesetzbuchs. Judging from the early forms of words and the old Babylonian measures used in these texts the writer called the laws the Code Hammourabi (1902). In his lecture before the German Emperor, which created so much stir in theological circles and excited such general interest in Germany and then over the whole world, Fr. Delitzsch stated that Hammurabi, after his conquest of Elam and expulsion of the Elamite power from Babylonia, was able to promulgate a great Gesetzessammlung, which should unify the civilizations of the united kingdom and fix the bürgerliche Recht in all essential points. Babel und Bibel (Leipzig, Hinrichs, p. 25, 1902: delivered Jan. 13).