Fragments of duplicates were also found at Susa, showing that the text was executed in several copies, probably to be set up in different cities. At least one fragment of a contemporary copy written on clay was found at Nippur, showing that the text was also circulated in writing at the time of its promulgation.
There are fragments of several copies preserved in the British Museum, made for the Library of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria 668-626 B.C. These are in Assyrian script and show some variants which are useful as synonymous renderings. From their phraseology, however, Dr. Br. Meissner, who first published most of them, concluded that they were early Babylonian laws,[7] while Professor Friedrich Delitzsch, who commented upon them, named them the Code of Hammurabi.[8] Further, a late Babylonian copy exists at Berlin, and was published by Dr. F. E. Peiser.[9]
These late copies show that the inscription was edited in a series of tablets or ‘Books’ called Ninu Anum tsirum, from the first words of the text, just as Genesis was called Bereshith from its first word or other books of the Old Testament were named in the same way. Another series was called Dinâni sha Hammurabi, from the first words of the Epilogue or closing portion of the text. From these editions we may conclude that the Code was known and studied both in Assyria and Babylonia at least as late as the seventh century B.C. Whether any monumental stela with this inscription survived so long after the Susa examples had been carried off is not yet certain. But these editions are of extreme value as indications that a knowledge of the provisions of the Code existed so long and was preserved so accurately.
We may note that there is a very great advantage for students of this ancient body of law in the fact that beside a long tradition accurately preserved we have a practically complete autograph of the Code as originally promulgated. There can be no suspicion of overwriting, interpolation or gloss, no tendency-redaction, no revision in the interests of any party, priestly or political. We have no need to seek for any conjectural restoration, except for a few erased clauses or defaced characters. We have no call to split up the text[10] into strata as embodying older laws, though we know such earlier codes had existed perhaps a thousand years before. A comparison with such fragments of earlier law as we possess shows indeed much change if not always progress in that period, and marks on the whole a great advance in civilization.
It is a task still reserved for the students of Babylonian law to make careful researches into the growth of social institutions and the development of legal conceptions which led up to this Code. It will prove a most instructive study if pursued apart from the presumptions deduced from other and unrelated areas which now form a body of dogmatic prejudice from which many scholars seem unable to emancipate their thought. We must, however, start our investigations at a point where the Code has already arrived, when it must be treated as the principal landmark in the long history of law in Babylonia. Whatever may be our view as to what should have been the evolution of law before that date we must be careful to remember what that evolution produced.
The date of the Code, as shown by the prologue with which the text begins, fell in the reign[11] of the great king Hammurabi, sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon, whose call to the throne, successful wars, and great benefits to his people, it sets out with magniloquent phraseology. The list of his achievements thus given further enables us to fix the year of its redaction as after the fortieth year of the reign. This may, however, be the date at which our existing monument was erected rather than that at which the Code was first promulgated. As this king only reigned forty-three years the date is very closely fixed. We now know some prominent event for each year of this long reign, and by means of other inscriptions of his we can make out a fairly complete sketch of his times for which reference must be made to the many excellent histories of Babylonia.[12] As is well known Hammurabi has frequently been identified with Amraphel king of Shinar mentioned in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis as having made war on his rebellious subjects in and around the Dead Sea area. Amraphel is there associated with Arioch king of Ellasar, usually identified with Rîm-Sin king of Larsa, with Chedorlaomer king of Elam and Tidal king of ‘Nations’. The same tradition made him contemporary with Abraham, ‘father of the faithful and friend of God’, who is said to have migrated with his family from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran, the chief city and commercial capital of Mesopotamia, and thence into Palestine. It is interesting to note that it is precisely with the period of Hammurabi that Hebrew tradition elects to link up its early memories of origins. We might then be naturally drawn to examine the native records of the Hammurabi reign, including its laws, simply to gain a clearer idea of the circumstances among which Abraham was born and grew up. But there are other reasons for our effort to study the period. As a record of early law the Code of Hammurabi is one of the most remarkable monuments of the history of the human race. Treated as a legal document the peculiarities of the Code are amazing. Doubtless an expert in comparative law could have reconstructed a large part of the Babylonian law from the many thousands of legal documents of all periods which have come down to us. To a very remarkable extent this has been done, especially by Professor Kohler, assisted or followed by Professor Peiser, Professor Meissner, Professor Schorr, Professor Ungnad and a score more who have taken up special points.[13] My article on Babylonian Law in the Encyclopaedia Britannica will give some idea of this work.
But while abundant evidence was available as to commercial matters, such as the disposal of estates and other property by sale or exchange, or their assignment by hire, lease, or hypothec, the laws of deposit and warehousing, commenda or commission, agency, security, pledge, warranty, the laws of partnership, rules as to debt and interest, loans with or without security, the family laws relating to marriage, divorce, adoption, inheritance, maintenance, &c., and many other points were made out with great clearness, yet much remained obscure.
For the legal documents, deeds, contracts, or the like, while doubtless absolutely clear to the contemporary parties concerned and evidently the outcome of long-established legal practice, assumed much that could only be conjectured from their slight hints. In my article on Babylonian Law and in Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters I gathered up most of what was then known.
Especially was our knowledge defective in the matter of criminal law. We had plenty of legal decisions, but they too often merely recorded the award of the court, and even where the case in dispute was stated, the suit was nearly always about property. We had little or no information about such questions as murder, manslaughter, theft, adultery, assault, and the like. The Code, with its full criminal sections, was thus doubly welcome.