Professor V. Scheil divided the text of the Code into sections according to subject-matter. But there are no marks of a division on the monument and Scheil's division is not adhered to in this work. For convenience of reference, however, his original section-numbers are given in connection with each law or sub-section of a law.
The legal phrase-books
Among the treasures preserved in the library of Ashurbânipal and in the archives of the Babylonian temples were a number of tablets and fragments of tablets which recorded the efforts made by Semitic scribes to render Sumerian words and phrases into Semitic. A large number of these are concerned with legal subjects. A fairly complete list of those now in the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum will be found in the fifth volume of Dr. Bezold's catalogue, page 2032. The greater part of them have been published either in the British Museum Inscriptions of Western Asia, in Dr. P. Haupt's Keilschrifttexten, Vol. I. of the Assyriologische Bibliothek, or in Dr. F. Hommel's Sumerische Lesestücke. In the latter will be found references to other publications. Dr. B. Meissner further published a number of later Babylonian editions of the same or allied series.[12]
Their plan
The plan of the series to which most of these tablets belong is well seen in Dr. Delitzsch's Assyrische Lesestücke, fourth edition, pp. 112-14. The name by which the series is usually known, to which most of these tablets [pg 009] belong, is the Semitic rendering of the first Sumerian phrase given there, ana ittišu, “to his side.” The sections into which the series is divided each deal with some simple idea and its expression in Sumerian. But the principle of arrangement is not very clear. We may take one section for example. “With him, with them, with me, with us, with thee, with you,” are given in two columns, the first being the Sumerian for these phrases, the second the Semitic rendering. Owing to the form of treatment some of these texts have been called “paradigms.”
Sumerian family laws
But the scribes also gave some fairly long and connected prose extracts in Sumerian with their Semitic renderings. What these were extracted from is still a question. Some of the clauses are known to have been employed in the contracts. But some of these even may well have been extracts from a code of laws. The name of “Sumerian Family Laws” has been given to certain sections.[13] Others seem to have been extracted from a Sumerian work on agriculture, with which Hesiod's Works and Days has been compared. But at present we are not in possession of the complete works from which these extracts are taken.
Such as they are, they have a value beyond that of enabling us to read Sumerian documents. They often afford evidence of customs and information which we get nowhere else.[14] The information given by them will be utilized in the subsequent portions of this work. Their translation here would serve no purpose, since they are very disconnected, but an example may be of interest. One section reads, “He fastens the buckets, suspends the pole, and draws up the water.” This is a vivid picture of the working [pg 010] of a watering-machine, from which we learn its nature as we could not from its name only.[15]
Legal documents
Legal documents constitute by far the larger portion of the inscriptions which have come down to us from every period of Babylonian and Assyrian history. In the library of Ashurbânipal alone they are exceeded by the letters and even more by the works dealing with astrology and omens. In some periods, however, we have only a few inscriptions from monuments, or bricks.