246 THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, ESQ., LL.D., M.K.A.S., ON 



compass of one short paper — not even the most important of 

 them. 



But besides the laws, there is the monument itself. It is a 

 splendid example of Babylonian stone-work, and the relief 

 showing the king before the sungod is especially fine. The 

 surface of the stone, which is described as diorite, has suffered 

 in places, where it may be supposed that the material was a 

 little soft, and has therefore been affected by the weather, but 

 except where the Elamite king has erased a portion of the text 

 to inscribe his own name — which, however, for some reason he 

 failed to do — it is practically in the condition in which it was 

 when it left the sculptor's hands. Besides the laws, the 

 introduction and concluding peroration are worthy of attention. 

 The former refers to the various gods and temples of Babylonia, 

 and in this inscription it would seem that Ilu, God as the Lord 

 of the world and the creator of all things, which Professor Scheil 

 has boldly reproduced by the west-Semitic El — it will be 

 remembered that Hammurabi belonged to a foreign dynasty, 

 notwithstanding that he is regarded as having been a Babylonian 

 — was probably really the god whom he worshipped, and this 

 circumstance may prove to be of importance in the history of 

 the religions of the Semitic East. In this introduction he not 

 only speaks of all the principal cities of Babylonia : Babylon, 

 Dur-ilu, Ur (o£ the Chaldees), Sippar, Erech, Nisin or Isin, 

 Harsag-kalama, Cuthah, Borsippa, Dilmu (Dailem), Lagas, 

 Girsu, Hallabi, Muru, Adab, Malka, Mera, Tulul, and Agade, 

 with their gods and their temples, but he also refers to the two 

 principal cities of Assyria, namely, Ausar or Assur, and Ninua 

 (Nineveh) That Ausar or Assur existed and was an important 

 place at the time his dynasty reigned, we know from the tablets 

 of the period to which that dynasty belonged, and which are 

 now in the British Museum ; but this is probably the earliest 

 mention of Ninua (Mneveh) in Assyria, which is to be 

 distinguished from Nina, near Kinunir, in Babylonia. 



At the end he describes how he had made his people, with 

 the help of the gods, dwell in security, and the long reference 

 which he makes to the temple E-sagila at Babylon, the great 

 temple of Belus, leads to the suggestion that the monument 

 was carved to adorn the courtyard or some other prominent 

 place in the grounds of that edifice. If this be the case, it is 

 probable that the conjecture that the monument was carried off 

 from Babylonia by some Elamite ruler, probably Sutruk- 

 nahhunte, is correct. For us it is a fortunate circumstance that 

 it has been so well preserved — had it remained on the site 



