s my obligations to Dr. F. Carr for his many kind
suggestions as to the meaning of the Code.

The Index will, it is hoped, serve more or less as a digest of the Code.
One great difficulty of any translation of a law document must always be
that the technical expressions of one language cannot be rendered in
terms that are co-extensive. The rendering will have implications
foreign to the original. An attempt to minimise misconceptions is made
by suggesting alternative renderings in the Index. Further, by labelling
a certain section, as the law of incest, for example, one definitely
fixes the sense in which the translation is to be read. Hence it is
hoped that the Index will be no less helpful than the translation in
giving readers an idea of what the Code really meant.

No doubt this remarkable monument will be made the subject of many
valuable monographs in the future, which will greatly elucidate passages
now obscure. But it was thought that the interest of the subject
warranted an immediate issue of an English translation, which would place
the chief features of the Code before a wider public than those who could
read the original. The present translation is necessarily tentative in
many places, but it is hoped marks an advance over those already
published.

Dr. H. Winckler's rendering of the Code came into my hands after this
work was sent to the publishers, and I have not thought it necessary to
withdraw any of my renderings. In some points he has improved upon
Professor Scheil's work, in other points he is scarcely so good. But any
discussion is not in place here. I gratefully acknowledge my obligations
to both, but have used an independent judgment all through. I hope
shortly to set out my reasons for the differences between us in a larger
work. A few of Dr. Winckler's renderings are quoted in the Index, and
marked--Winckler's tr.

C. H. W. JOHNS.

CAMBRIDGE,
_January_ 31, 1903.

THE TEXT OF THE CODE

section 1. If a man weave a spell and put a ban upon a man, and has not
justified himself, he that wove the spell upon him shall be put to death.

section 2. If a man has put a spell upon a man, and has not justified
himself, he upon whom the spell is laid shall go to the holy river, he
shall plunge into the holy river, and if the holy river overcome him, he
who wove the spell upon him shall take to himself his house. If the holy
river makes that man to be innocent, and has saved him,