Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/99

 ipremacy Hammurapi Western Asia : Babylonia, Assyria, and Chaldea 6/ Section 12. The Age of Hammurapi and after Centuries of struggle between the Sumerians and Semites Hammu- ensue. A tribe of Amorites from the west (p. 59) gains control second ^^^ of the little town of Babylon. Hammurapi, one of their kings, Semitic fights for thirty years and conquers all Babylonia (about 2 1 00 b.c). Again the desert wins, as this second great Semitic ruler, Ham- murapi, raises Babylon, thus far a small and unimportant town, to be the leading place in the plain which we may now more properly call " Babylonia." Hammurapi survived his triumph twelve years. It is not a civilization little interesting to watch this great man, still betraying in his Hammumpi shaven upper lip (a desert custom) the evidence of his desert ancestry, as he puts forth his powerful hand upon the teeming life of Babylonia, and with a touch brings in order and system where before all had been confusion. He collects all the older laws and The laws of customs of business, legal, and social life and issues these in a great legal code. Engraved upon a splendid shaft of diorite, these laws have survived to our day, the oldest-preserved code of ancient law (Fig. 42). On the whole it is a surprisingly just code and shows much consideration for the poor and defenseless classes. Thus regulated, Babylonia prospers as never before, and her Expansion of merchants penetrate far and wide into the surrounding countries. The clay-tablet invoices in Babylonian writing which accompany their heavily loaded caravans have to be read by many a merchant in the towns of Syria and behind the northern mountains. Thus the wedge-writing of Babylonia gradually makes its way through western Asia. There is as yet no coined money, but lumps of silver of a given weight circulate so commonly (p. 98) that values are given in weight of silver. Thus a man may say an ox is worth so many ounces of silver, only he would use " shekels " (the name of a weight) in place of ounces. Loans are common, and the rate of interest is twenty per cent. Babylonian civiliza- tion is above all things mercantile. Merchandising is the chief occupation and even invades the temples. Babylonian commerce