140 



HAROLD M. WIENEE, M.A., LL.B., ON THE 



the nature of the problem with which they were faced, the 

 state of mental development to which they had attained, and 

 we shall then be in a position to form some conception of tlieir 

 views and policy. In other words we must glance successively 

 at the Ideas the nation had inherited from its Infancy, at its 

 Oeographical Environment and Historical Circumstances, at 

 the Conditions and Tasks of its Daily Life, and at the Quality 

 and Development of its Intellect; only when that is done can 

 we hope to see something of its Soul. In the case of the 

 Babylonian code the occupations of the people and its history 

 were almost entirely determined by the geography and can for 

 the most part be dealt with under that head. 



In dealing with the historical portion of our subject nothing 

 is possible in the present condition of our knowledge, beyond a 

 few generalities. The legal antecedents of the code are too 

 largely unknown, and it would be quite impossible to attempt 

 to separate tlie elements that are due to the Sumerians from 

 those contributed by the Babylonians. But we have seven 

 sections belonging to some Sumerian legislation, and these are 

 sufficient to show that the code of Hammurabi merely 

 represents a particular stage in an orderly historical evolution. 

 Thus we read in the Sumerian laws, " If a wife hates her 

 husband and has said, ' You are not my husband,' one shall 

 throw her into the river."* This penalty of throwing into the 

 river remains in the case of the undutiful wife of Hammurabi's 

 codet, though there the law is somewhat more elaborate and 

 testifies to more advanced legal reflection. Evidently the two 

 ■enactments rest on the same theory of punishment. Again the 

 Sumerian laws provide that "If a husband has said to his wife, 

 ^ You are not my wife,' he shall pay half a mina of silver.''^ 

 Precisely the same idea of compensating the wife for a divorce 

 reappears in the code, but there the amount is either a sum 

 ■equal to the bride-price, or if there was no bride-price, one 

 mina in the case of well-to-do persons, one-third of a mina in 

 the case of a plebeian§. The fundamental principle is identical, 

 but social inequalities have led to some differentiation in detail. 



But if our present knowledge of Babylonian history enables 

 us to do little to trace the antecedents of the code the same 



* Johns' Bah]ilonlan and Assyrian Laivs, p. 42. 



t § 143. If she has not been economical but a g^oer about, has wasted 

 her house, has belittled her husband, one shall throw that woman into 

 the waters. 



i Op. cit., p. 42. 



§ §§ 138-140. 



