EECENT ORIENTAL DISCOVERIES ON OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. 173 



Professor Sayce observes : — 



" From one end of the civilised ancient world to the other men 

 and women were reading, and writing, and corresponding with one 

 another ; schools abounded, and great libraries were formed." 



" Moses not only could have written the Pentateuch but it would 

 have been little short of a miracle had he not been a scribe." Op. 

 cit., p. 42. 



The Code of Hammurabi. 



Description of the Code. 



In point of fact the whole spirit of the criticism, which 

 seems perpetually dominated by the thought that all the 

 religion and culture of Israel only truly blossomed in the 

 later times, is completely opposed to the trend of archaeological 

 discovery of the present day. The whole tendency of that 

 course of discovery is to more and more unfold to view the 

 fact of the great antiquity to which the culture and social 

 institutions of mankind reach back. This contrast between 

 the tendency of thought among the critics in regard to the 

 history of Israel and the course of the revelations of archaeology 

 may be aptly exemplihed by the case of the Code of Ham- 

 murabi. This, the most recent and wonderful discovery in 

 the field of Assyriology, was made in January, 1902, among 

 the ruins of Susa — " Shushaii the palace," as it is called in the 

 Book of Daniel, " which is in the province of Elam." 

 Excavations carried on there under M. de Morgan brought to 

 light the three fragments, which had composed an enormous 

 block of polished black marble, covered with cuneiform 

 inscriptions. At what had been the top of the monument a 

 low relief was carved representing the great King Hammurabi 

 himself standing before the" Sun-god, from whom he is 

 receiving the laws of his kingdom. When the cuneiform 

 characters on the marble had been copied and read it was found 

 that a priceless treasure had been unearthed — a complete code 

 of laws, the earliest ever discovered in the world, " earlier than 

 that of Moses by eight hundred years, and constituting the 

 foundation of the laws promulgated and obeyed throughout 

 Western Asia." 



The Code of Hammurabi has strong affinities to the Mosaic 

 Code, and several points "of contact with it. " An eye for an 

 eye," " a tooth for a tooth," is a drastic principle of law, which 

 holds in either code. There are other similarities, too, but the 



