BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON 55 



many who have not read it, and a very slight survey 

 of the code may be made here. 



It is chiefly remarkable for its deep and pervading 

 concern for justice. That, some one may say, is 

 supposed to be the object of law; but one must 

 remember that we are dealing with a despotic oriental 

 monarchy of four thousand years ago. A modern 

 worker, at all events, will learn with surprise that in 

 this most ancient code a minimum wage is fixed for 

 every worker in the kingdom. Nearly a fifth of the 

 code is taken up with this concern for the workers. 

 Another long series of clauses deal with the rights of 

 woman, and they are remarkably just. Woman had 

 as good a legal and social position in Babylon as she 

 had in Egypt ; far better than she has had anywhere 

 in Europe until the end of the nineteenth century. 

 She has, in the law, her own property and equal right 

 of divorce with the husband. 



More interesting still is the zeal of the old law 

 against sexual immorality. Here it becomes positively 

 savage, and is, no doubt, a very old law surviving 

 from pre-civilized days. But apparently Hammurabi 

 has to sustain these laws, with certain modifications, 

 in the height of Babylonian civilization, and they 

 will be read with astonishment by those who have 

 always thought of Babylon as, in Biblical language, 

 '1 the whore." The sentence for adultery — which is 

 now not punished in any civilization in the world — 

 was death. Both man and woman were to be drowned ; 

 unless — this is, apparently, a humane modification — 

 the king pardons the man, and the husband pardons 

 the wife. In any case, adultery was a statutory crime, 

 punishable with death. For rape the sentence is 

 death. For incest the offenders were burned alive. 



