Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/765

 THE LA WS OF HAMMURABI 739

for a special hearing. He presides over public works, projecting new canals and sending workmen for these undertakings. He supervises military affairs, naming the troops to be sent out, the boats to be used, and the rations to be bought. He stands forth the patron of art and letters, and commands his scribes to pre- pare collections of the national literature. Again Hammurabi appears as the servant of the gods, solicitous for their festivals and statues. 1 In the prologue to the code the great king, in true oriental fashion, recites his deeds, and proclaims his relations with the gods. Anu and Bel have called him, "the exalted prince, the worshiper of the gods, to cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak." There is a long catalogue of honors done in temple-building and service to the gods, of public works completed, of enemies overcome ; but the keynote of this civil code is struck in such phrases as, "who establishes in security their property in Babylon," and the concluding sentence of the prologue, "I established law and justice in the land 8 and promoted the welfare of the people." 3

Both the nature of the circumstances and the structure of the code itself confirm the belief that the aim of Hammurabi was to combine conflicting usages, customs, decisions of judges, into a single body of law, rather than to promulgate new legislation. Whether the work was done by a commission or was intrusted to a single jurist, the glory of the achievement belonged to the king, who combined the authority of his personal sovereignty with a supernatural sanction derived from the gods. In spite of the ingenious theory of Miiller, that from the standpoint of ancient Babylonian life the code is to be regarded as a unified and systematic work, 4 the internal evidence seems to confirm the view of Sayce 5 and Cook, who assert that the code is made up of

1 KING, The Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi, e. g., pp. 4, 17, 21, 24, 37.

2 Another reading of the text, literally " I established law and justice in the mouth i. e., language of the people," adds the interesting suggestion that by setting up the code in the national language, as distinguished from local dialects, the king was furthering both linguistic unity and legal uniformity.

SHARPER, Op. dt., pp. 3-9. *MULLER, Op. tit., pp. 188-205-

SSAYCE, "The Legal Code of Babylonia," American Journal of Theology, April 1904, p. 257.