but that is more
doubtful.

Thus, we find that the practice of taking a pledge as security for debt is
fully established for later times and we may therefore hesitate to deny
its existence in early periods, although we have no direct evidence on the
point. This absence of evidence may be due to the nature of the early
collections. It may be an accident. It may also be due to the fact that
the tablet acknowledging a loan was usually broken up on the return of the
sum. But it might also be the fact that pledges were not usual in early
times. Such was, indeed, formerly the conclusion drawn from the absence of
documents referring to pledges; but Dr. B. Meissner pointed out that the
legal phrase-books bore witness to the existence of the custom. The
discovery of the Code of Hammurabi has shown that the practice not only
existed, but was regulated by statute in his time. Hence the argument from
silence is once more shown to be fallacious.

On the other hand, it is well to avoid a dogmatic statement of the
existence of a practice before the date at which we have direct evidence
of it: thus, it has been stated that the tithe was paid in Babylonia "from
time immemorial." The only direct evidence comes from the time of
Nebuchadrezzar II. and later. In view of such an early antiquity as that,
the use of the phrase "time immemorial" was perhaps once justified. But we
are now equipped with documentary evidence concerning customs two or three
thousand years earlier. Until we can discover some direct evidence there
of tithe, we must content ourselves with saying that it was regularly paid
under the Second Empire of Babylonia. We may be firmly convinced that a
custom so widespread did not spring into being all at once. But the tithe
may have been a composition for earlier dues, and as such may have been
introduced from Chaldea by Nabopolassar. It may therefore not have been of
native Babylonian growth.

In this and many similar cases it is well not to go beyond the evidence.

To some extent the plan of this work must necessarily be different from
that of the rest of the series. When a historical inscription is once well
translated its chief bearings can be made out and it is its own
interpreter to a large extent. But the object in a contract is to legally
bind certain parties to a course of action, and there its translation
ends. We do not find much interest now in the obligations of these
parties, save in so far as they illustrate