These inscriptions are now preserved in great numbers in European and American museums, and have only been partly published. The bibliography is very extensive. For the earlier attempts to read and explain these documents the reader may refer to Professor C. Bezold's Kurzgefässter Überblick über die babylonisch-assyrische Litteratur,[6] which gives a fairly complete account up to 1887. Of course, many books and memoirs there mentioned have now only a historical interest for the story of decipherment and explanation. These, however, may be studied with the greatest profit after having first become acquainted with the more recent works.
Division of subject
The division which is adopted in this work, “law, contracts, and letters,” is only conventional. The three groups have much that is common and mutually supplement one another. Previous publications have often treated them [pg 004] more or less together, both as inscriptions and as minor sources of history. Hence it is not possible to draw up separate lists of books treating each division of the subject. Only those books or articles will be referred to which are most valuable for the student. Many of them give excellent bibliographies of their special subject.
Laws and contracts
The contemporary sources include actual codes of law, or fragments of them, legal phrase-books, and legal instruments of all sorts. From the last-mentioned source almost all that is known of ancient Babylonian law has been derived. The historical and religious inscriptions contribute very little. The consequence is that, except from the recently discovered Code of Ḥammurabi scarcely anything is known of the law in respect to crimes. Contracts and binding agreements are found in great profusion; but there is nothing to show how theft or murder was treated. Marriage-contracts tell us how adultery was punished. Agreements or legal decisions show how inheritance was assigned. Consequently our treatment of law and contracts must regard them as inseparable, except that we may place first the fragments of actual codes which exist.
Letters
The letters are much more distinct. Each is a separate study, except in so far as it can be grouped with others of the same period in attempts to disentangle the historical events to which they refer. The deductions as to life and manners are no less valuable than those made from legal documents. In both wording and subject-matter they often illustrate legal affairs and even directly treat of them.
Chronologically treated
A first duty will be carefully to distinguish epochs. Great social and political changes must have left some mark upon the institutions we are to study. As far as possible, the material has been arranged for each subject chronologically.
The Code of Ḥammurabi