Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/776

 746 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

laws is one of relatively high legal status for women. How closely this was correlated with their actual social position leaves some room for speculation. In any event, the arbitrary power accorded to the husband points to a subordination of a marked kind for the wife, in spite of the protection afforded by a return- able dowry and other safeguards. Thus the code as a whole gives vivid glimpses of ancient Babylonian society. One sees an energetic and capable people pushing their industry to a com- plexity which demanded precise regulation, and displaying all those unsocial tendencies which, fostered by private property and competition, require check and guidance from the state. Along with increase in wealth and leisure, and the growth of family life on a basis not wholly physical and economic, the posi- tion of women had risen far above the prevailing level of the age. So, too, the redress of personal injury no longer a legal con- cern of family or clan had been assumed by society which held the individual responsible. Social caste was recorded in the varying scales of privileges, punishments, and damages, and slavery underlay the whole fabric of the nation. Primitive, as time is reckoned, the empire of Hammurabi, judged by its social status, seems in many ways curiously contemporary.

A study of the code naturally suggests similar regulations among other peoples, and raises the two questions : ( I ) How far has this body of laws directly influenced other legislation ? and (2) In what measure does it confirm the thesis that in given conditions the same general principles of social control tend to emerge among groups widely separated in time and space ?

The first problem has already been attacked by Semitic scholars who have advanced three tentative theories as to the relation between the laws of Moses and the code of Hammurabi. To Sayce the connection is slight, and the contrasts are more striking than the similarities, which latter he attributes to the common origin of the Semitic peoples and their racial character- istics, rather than to any direct influence. 1 Cook adopts prac- tically the same view as to the so-called Book of the Covenant

1 Op. cit., pp. 258, 259.