FOR
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH
london: simpkin, marshall, hamilton, kent, and co. limited
new york: charles scribner’s sons
first impression . . . February 1903.
second impression . . . March 1903.
third impression . . . May 1903.
fourth impression . . . June 1903.
“The discovery and decipherment of this Code is the greatest event in Biblical Archæology for many a day. A translation of the Code, done by Mr. Johns of Queens’ College, Cambridge, the highest living authority on this department of study, has just been published by Messrs. T. & T. Clark in a cheap and attractive booklet. Winckler says it is the most important Babylonian record which has thus far been brought to light.”—The Expository Times.
INTRODUCTION
The Code of Hammurabi is one of the most important monuments in the history of the human race. Containing as it does the laws which were enacted by a king of Babylonia in the third millennium B.C., whose rule extended over the whole of Mesopotamia from the mouths of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates to the Mediterranean coast, we must regard it with interest. But when we reflect that the ancient Hebrew tradition ascribed the migration of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees to this very period, and clearly means to represent their tribe father as triumphing over this very same Hammurabi (Amraphel, Gen. xiv. 1), we can hardly doubt that these very laws were part of that tradition. At any rate, they must have served to