Separate Sections.
Many discussions arose as to the meaning of particular sections. Thus C F. Lehmann(-Haupt) wrote in Klio, vol. iii, pp. 32-41 (1904), on Ein missverstandenes Gesetz Hammurabis, which was also taken as the title of an article by F. E. Peiser in Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, vol. vii, cols. 236-7 (1904). Neither of these scholars can be said to have quite settled the questions they had raised; but the subject of §§ 185-93 was greatly cleared by their thoughtful treatment.
In 1908 M. Schorr contributed to the Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. xxii, pp. 385-92, an article on Die §§ 280-282 des Gesetzbuches Hammurabis, followed, pp. 393-8, by an article of D. H. Müller on Die §§ 280-282 des Kodex Hammurabis.
M. Schorr in 1906 had written in the same journal, vol. xx, pp. 119-23, an article Zum § 27 des Hammurabi-Gesetzes, and in the Vienna Oriental Journal, xx (1906), pp. 314-36, Der § 7 des Hammurabi-Gesetzes.
Br. Meissner has discussed the correct word for a builder in the Code in the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, vol. xv, cols. 38-59 (1912), under the title Zu Hammurapis Gesetz, xix, R. 93.
Die Lücke in der Gesetzes-Stele Hammurapis, by A. Ungnad, in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vi, Heft 5, discussed all the means known to fill the gap as existing in the text, but the new sources named on p. 66 above will very likely suffice to complete the text.
The Structure of the Code.
Considerable weight may ultimately have to be laid on the grouping of the laws by ‘tens’ or ‘fives’. This aspect had been discussed by D. G. Lyon in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xxv, pp. 248-65, as The Structure of the Hammurabi Code (New Haven, Conn., 1904).
C. F. Kent in his excellent work on Israel’s Laws and Legal Precedents (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1907) makes considerable use of a division of Hebrew laws into groups of five or ten, of which the Ten Commandments forms a well-known example. Whether or no these divisions command general assent, we should notice that D. G. Lyon finds repeated evidence of the same grouping in the Code of Hammurabi. This naturally cannot be pressed too far as evidence of dependence. But it is surely non-essential that laws should be arranged in pentads unless we are to suppose that a reference to five fingers as a method of recalling the separate clauses is involved, and would be natural to expect in such cases. But that Israelite fondness for the number seven, shown in their seven-day week as against the Babylonian week of five days, or their partiality for other sacred numbers, did not affect the numbering of the laws may well be significant. If it turn out that these groups of five also correspond in contents, even though they show traces of change, we have a strong argument for dependence which supports any others pointing in the same direction.