As a further evidence of the humanity of the Sumerians, we have the fact that, like the Egyptians, they had a god who presided over the accouchements, a god who corresponded in some ways to the Hera of the Greeks and the Juno of the Latins, but who had other and more kindly functions, and was there to ameliorate pain and apparently to protect the young. Among the Greeks and Romans the young were never thought of except as the property of adults, whose interest always came first. In fact, among the Babylonians and Egyptians, there was this essential difference, that the goddess was really a midwife. Among the Sumerians, she was known as Belitile, and was afterwards identified with Mama, the goddess of the young; and in two texts translated by P. Dhorme,[132] the two are referred to as one. Later on the two goddesses were absorbed by the all-powerful Istar.
It was in December, 1901, that M. J. de Morgan, Director-General of the expedition sent out by the French Government, while excavating the acropolis of Susa, found three large fragments of a block of black diorite among the debris.[133] When fitted together these three fragments formed a stele eight feet high, on the upper end of the front side of which was a bas-relief showing the sun-god, Shamash, presenting the Code of Laws to the king, Hammurabi.
Under this bas-relief was the longest cuneiform Semitic inscription yet recovered, having sixteen columns of text of which four and a half formed the prologue. On the reverse of the stele there were twenty-eight columns, the entire inscription being estimated by Johns to contain “forty-nine columns four thousand lines, and eight thousand words.”[134]
Hammurabi, identified by Assyriologists as the Amraphael of Genesis xiv., 1, was the sixth King of the dynasty of Babylon, reigning over fifty-five years, about 2250 B. C., and the first king to consolidate the Semitic empire, making Babylon the capital.[135]
There are two periods in the history of humanity: one when the morals make the laws, and one when the laws change the morals. The Code of Hammurabi, the oldest known code in the world, belongs to the second period.[136]
While it appears from the prologue and epilogue of the Code that Hammurabi was deeply devoted to religion and was, in addition to being king, a pious, God-fearing man, one who destroyed his enemies North and South, the Code is strictly devoted to civil and secular affairs. Nevertheless, scarcely anything is known of the laws of the time dealing with crimes, nothing having been discovered to show how murder or theft was treated.[137]
Hammurabi’s Code is undoubtedly a compilation and, while he enacted fresh laws, he built for the most part on the foundations of other men.
In the Sumerian days that preceded these Semitic kings, of whom Hammurabi, Sargon I., and Lugalzaggisi were the greatest, there were codes of laws on which Hammurabi doubtless built. The attitude taken toward children in this period is indicated in extracts from the series called ana ittisu, the seven tablets of the series giving the following seven laws:
“I. If a son has said to his father, ‘You are not my father,’ he may brand him, lay fetters upon him, and sell him.