History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

by P. V. N. Myers

May the ban be loosened, the chain broken,

May the seven winds carry off my sighs.

Let me tear away my iniquity, let the birds carry it to heaven;

* * * * *

May the beasts of the field take it away from me,

The flowing waters of the stream wash me clean.

Let me be pure like the sheen of gold.

Jastrow, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (1898), p. 323.

[106] Cf. above, p. 35.

[107] The stele which bore this code of laws was discovered at Susa in 1901–1902. The reign of Hammurabi is placed at about the end of the third millennium B.C. There are translations of the code by C. H. W. Johns (1903) and Robert Francis Harper (1904).