who meant to put his own name and titles there. There have been
found other monuments in the French explorations at Susa, where the
Elamite monarch has erased the inscription of a Babylonian king and
inserted his own. This method of blotting out the name of a king was a
favorite device in the ancient East and is frequently protested against
and cursed in the inscription set up in Babylonia. This particular
inscription did not fail to call down similar imprecations, which perhaps
the Elamite could not read. But he stayed his hand, and we do not even
know his name, for he wrote nothing on the vacant space.

It seems probable that the stone, or at any rate its original, if it be a
copy, was set up at Sippara; for the text speaks of _Ebarra suati_, "this
Ebarra," which was the temple of Shamash at Sippara. At the head of the
obverse is a very interesting picture of Hammurabi receiving his laws from
the seated sun-god Shamash. Some seven hundred lines are devoted to the
king's titles and glory; to enumerating the gods he reverenced, and the
cities over which he ruled; to invoking blessings on those who preserved
his monument and respected his inscription, with the usual curses on those
who did the opposite.(7) These belong to the region of history and
religion and do not concern us here. We may note, however, that the king
expected that anyone injured or oppressed would come to his monument and
be able there to read for himself what were the rights of his case.

(M7) The whole of this inscription is not entirely new matter. The scribes
of Ashurbanipal somewhere found a copy, or copies, of this inscription and
made it into a series of tablets. Probably their originals were Babylonian
tablets, for we know that in Babylonia the Code had been made into a
series which bore the name of _Ninu ilu sirum_, from the opening words of
the stele. But, judging from the colophon of the Assyrian series, the
scribes knew that the inscription came from a stele bearing the "image" of
Hammurabi. A number of fragments belonging to such copies by later scribes
were already published, by Dr. B. Meissner(8) and Dr. F. E. Peiser.(9)
These were further commented upon by Professor Fr. Delitzsch,(10) who
actually gave them the name "Code Hammurabi." Some of these fragments
enable us to restore one or two sections of the lost five columns.

These fragments are now easily set in order and will doubtless lead to the
discovery of many others, the meaning o