The Historians' History of the World 01

265. If a herdsman, to whom oxen and sheep have been given for pasturing, has deceived, has changed the price, or has given them for money; he shall be brought to judgment and he shall return to their owner oxen and sheep ten times that which he stole.

266. If in the fold a disaster is brought about from God, or if a lion has killed, the herdsman shall purge himself before God, and the owner of the fold shall bear the disaster to the fold.

267. If the herdsman has been careless and in the fold has caused loss, the shepherd shall make good in oxen and sheep the loss he caused in the fold, and shall give them to their owner in good condition.

268. If a man has hired an ox for threshing, 20 KA of grain is its hire.

269. If he has hired an ass for threshing, 10 KA of grain is its hire.

270. If he has hired a young animal for threshing, 1 KA of grain is its hire.

271. If anyone has hired oxen, a cart, and driver, he shall pay 180 KA of grain for one day.

272. If anyone has hired a cart alone, he shall give 40 KA of grain for one day.

273. If anyone has hired a day labourer, from the first of the year to the fifth month, he shall give him 6 SHE of silver a day; from the sixth month to the end of the year he shall give him 5 SHE of silver a day.

274. If anyone hires an artisan,—The wages of a … are 5 SHE of silver; the wages of a brick maker (?), 5 SHE of silver; the wages of a tailor, 5 SHE of silver; the wages of a stone cutter (?) … SHE of silver; the wages of a … SHE of silver; the wages of a … SHE of silver; the wages of a carpenter, 4 SHE of silver; the wages of a … 4 SHE of silver; the wages of … SHE of silver; the wages of a mason … SHE of silver,—a day he shall give.

275. If anyone has hired a (ferry-boat?) its hire is 3 SHE of silver a day.

276. If he has hired a freight boat, he shall give 2½ SHE of silver a day as its hire.

277. If anyone has hired a boat of 60 GUR he shall give one-sixth of a shekel of silver as its hire.

Regulations concerning the Buying of Slaves

278. If anyone has bought a man or woman slave and before the end of the month the bennu-sickness has fallen upon him, he shall return him to the seller, and the buyer shall take back the money which he paid.

279. If anyone has bought a man or woman slave and a complaint is made, the seller shall answer for the complaint.

280. If anyone has bought another man’s man or woman slave in a strange land; when he has come into the country and the owner of the man or woman slave recognises his property; if that man or woman slave are natives: without money he shall grant them their freedom.

281. If they are from another country, the buyer shall declare before God the money which he paid; the owner of the man or woman slave shall give to the merchant the money which he paid, and shall recover his man or woman slave.

282. If a slave has said to his master, “Thou art not my master,” one shall bring him to judgment as his slave, and his master shall cut off his ear.

Having presented this remarkable code in its entirety, it is hardly necessary to comment upon it at length. It will repay the closest examination on the part of anyone who is interested in the manners and customs of this remote period. Prior to the excavations in Mesopotamia, no historian could have dared hope that we should ever have presented to us so varied and so authoritative an exposition of the laws that governed society in any part of the world in the third millennium before our era. Thanks to the imperishable nature of the materials on which the Babylonians wrote, this seeming miracle has now come to pass, and we are in a fair way to have a much more precise and accurate knowledge of the culture of this ancient people than we are likely ever to possess regarding European nations of two thousand years later. The laws that governed the Greeks and Romans of the earlier period, and the details as to the practicalities of their civilisation, are for the most part preserved to us only through traditions that utterly lack the authenticity of such an original document as this code of Khammurabi. The sands of Egypt have recently given up to us a papyrus roll on which is inscribed the famous treatise on the constitution of Athens by Aristotle; and the eagerness with which this document has been scanned by students of Greek history is in itself an evidence of the paucity of authoritative documents regarding the classical world during this relatively recent period. It is peculiarly gratifying then to be able to go back to so much more remote a period and learn as it were at first hand such interesting details of the laws that governed the social intercourse of these forerunners of the Greeks. The fact that the earliest European civilisation undoubtedly deferred in many ways to this remoter civilisation of the Orient lends additional importance to these wonderful documents from old Babylonia.a

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