essed, or wrapped in pieces of sacking transfixed by seals. If the
ancient people had a festive season which was regarded, like the
European Yuletide or the Indian Durga fortnight, as an occasion
suitable for the general exchange of expressions of goodwill, the
Babylonian streets and highways must have been greatly congested by
the postal traffic, while muscular postmen worked overtime
distributing the contents of heavy and bulky letter sacks. Door to
door deliveries would certainly have presented difficulties. Wood
being dear, everyone could not afford doors, and some houses were
entered by stairways leading to the flat and partly open roofs.

King Hammurabi had to deal daily with a voluminous correspondence. He
received reports from governors in all parts of his realm, legal
documents containing appeals, and private communications from
relatives and others. He paid minute attention to details, and was
probably one of the busiest men in Babylonia. Every day while at home,
after worshipping Merodach at E-sagila, he dictated letters to his
scribes, gave audiences to officials, heard legal appeals and issued
interlocutors, and dealt with the reports regarding his private
estates. He looks a typical man of affairs in sculptured
representations--shrewd, resolute, and unassuming, feeling "the
burden of royalty", but ever ready and well qualified to discharge his
duties with thoroughness and insight. His grasp of detail was equalled
only by his power to conceive of great enterprises which appealed to
his imagination. It was a work of genius on his part to weld together
that great empire of miscellaneous states extending from southern
Babylonia to Assyria, and from the borders of Elam to the
Mediterranean coast, by a universal legal Code which secured
tranquillity and equal rights to all, promoted business, and set
before his subjects the ideals of right thinking and right living.

Hammurabi recognized that conquest was of little avail unless followed
by the establishment of a just and well-arranged political system, and
the inauguration of practical measures to secure the domestic,
industrial, and commercial welfare of the people as a whole. He
engaged himself greatly, therefore, in developing the natural
resources of each particular district. The network of irrigating
canals was extended in the homeland so that agriculture might prosper:
these canals also promoted trade, for they were utilized for
travelling by boat and fo