No one document of the thousands that have been unearthed in the course of those explora tions surpasses or even equals in interest the code of King Khammurabt (the Amraphel of Genesis xiv, 9, 'King of Shinars or Elam, called also in the Scripture Shusham, and by the Greeks and Latins Susiana, from the name of the capital city Susa). This code, discovered at the site of ancient Susa in 1901, afterward translated by the Dominican friar Schiel, who was the Assyriologist of Monsieur de Morgan's exploring expedition and published in 1903 by order of the French Minister of Public Instruc tion, is inscribed on a great monolith of granite; it dates from 2200 s.c. It consisted originally of about 3,000 lines of writing in 49 columns, five of which are effaced; but the rest of the inscription of a very beautiful type is still plainly legible. The code begins with a law relating to witchcraft or sorcery, and touches all grades of social and domestic life, even determining the wages of workmen and laborers from the lowest to the highest Very curious is the law regarding enchantments or sorcery. The person on whom the spell of enchantment has been laid must plunge into the Euphrates: if he sinks and drowns, his house goes to the sorcerer; but if he floats the sorcerer forfeits his life and his house. Proof of the general use of writing in Khammurabi's dominions is seen in the requirement of written testimony in lawsuits and in business transactions. The code commands that land be kept in cultiva tion; uncultivated and unimproved land is taxed at the same rate as neighboring cultivated land. The farmer whose crop is seriously dam aged by storm is excused from paying interest on money loaned him. He through whose neg
lect the irrigation canals and ditches cause damages must make good the loss. The wine shop keeper-- usually, it would appear, a woman — is required to 'seize and drive to the palaces riotous persons who resort to her place: failing to do this she incurs the penalty of death. The defamer of an honest woman, be she wife or is to be branded on the forehead. A man was permitted to divorce his childless wife. If a man divorces his wife without cause he must allow her alimony and custody of her children, also a share in his estate equal to a son's portion. Here are some points at which Khammurabi's code touches matters which were afterward made the subject of Hebrew legislation. Says the Elamite king: 'If a man strike another in a quarrel and cause him a wound and he shall swear (I did not strike him knowingly> he shall answer for the doctor?) The Hebrew law (Deut xxi, 19) pre scribes as penalty for one who smites another with stone or fist so that the injured man keepeth his bed, that the smiter shall spay for the loss of his time and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed." The Hebrew law punished with death "him that smiteth his father or his mothers ; the punishment decreed by Kham murabi for the same offense was loss of the hands.
The word 'cuneiform) is traced first to Thomas Hyde in 1700, professor of Hebrew at Oxford, and has passed into most modern lan guages. It is called Keilschrift or wedge script, by the Germans, and Mismari or nail writing by the Arabs.