luable for the student. Many of them
give excellent bibliographies of their special subject.

(M3) The contemporary sources include actual codes of law, or fragments of
them, legal phrase-books, and legal instruments of all sorts. From the
last-mentioned source almost all that is known of ancient Babylonian law
has been derived. The historical and religious inscriptions contribute
very little. The consequence is that, except from the recently discovered
Code of Hammurabi scarcely anything is known of the law in respect to
crimes. Contracts and binding agreements are found in great profusion; but
there is nothing to show how theft or murder was treated.
Marriage-contracts tell us how adultery was punished. Agreements or legal
decisions show how inheritance was assigned. Consequently our treatment of
law and contracts must regard them as inseparable, except that we may
place first the fragments of actual codes which exist.

(M4) The letters are much more distinct. Each is a separate study, except
in so far as it can be grouped with others of the same period in attempts
to disentangle the historical events to which they refer. The deductions
as to life and manners are no less valuable than those made from legal
documents. In both wording and subject-matter they often illustrate legal
affairs and even directly treat of them.

(M5) A first duty will be carefully to distinguish epochs. Great social
and political changes must have left some mark upon the institutions we
are to study. As far as possible, the material has been arranged for each
subject chronologically.

(M6) The longest and by far the most important ancient code hitherto
discovered is that of Hammurabi (_circa_ 2250 B.C.). The source for this
is a block of black diorite about 2.25 metres high, tapering from 1.90 to
1.65 metres in circumference. It was found by De Morgan at Susa, the
ancient Persepolis, in December, 1901, and January, 1902, in fragments,
which were easily rejoined. The text was published by the French Ministry
of Instruction from "squeezes" by the process of photogravure, in the
fourth volume of the _Memoires de la Delegation en Perse_. It was there
admirably transcribed and translated by Professor V. Scheil. In all, the
monument now preserves forty-four columns with some three thousand six
hundred lines. There were five columns more, which were once intentionally
erased and the stone repolished, probably by the order of some monarch of
Susa,