The range of subjects with which they deal is enormous, and there is
scarcely one of them which does not add to our knowledge of the period.*
The other new source of information is the great code of laws, drawn up
by Hammurabi for the guidance of his people and defining the duties and
privileges of all classes of his subjects, the discovery of which at
Susa has been described in a previous chapter. The laws are engraved on
a great stele of diorite in no less than forty-nine columns of writing,
of which forty-four are preserved,* and at the head of the stele is
sculptured a representation of the king receiving them from Shamash, the
Sun-god.

* See King, Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi, 3 vols.
(1898-1900).

This code shows to what an extent the administration of law and justice
had been developed in Babylonia in the time of the First Dynasty. From
the contracts and letters of the period we already knew that regular
judges and duly appointed courts of law were in existence, and the code
itself was evidently intended by the king to give the royal sanction to
a great body of legal decisions and enactments which already possessed
the authority conferred by custom and tradition. The means by which such
a code could have come into existence are illustrated by the system of
procedure adopted in the courts at this period. After a case had been
heard and judgment had been given, a summary of the case and of the
evidence, together with the judgment, was drawn up and written out on
tablets in due legal form and phraseology. A list of the witnesses was
appended, and, after the tablet had been dated and sealed, it was stored
away among the legal archives of the court, where it was ready for
production in the event of any future appeal or case in which the
recorded decision was involved. This procedure represents an advanced
stage in the system of judicial administration, but the care which
was taken for the preservation of the judgments given was evidently
traditional, and would naturally give rise in course of time to the
existence of a recognized code of laws.

Moreover, when once a judgment had been given and had been duly recorded
it was irrevocable, and if any judge attempted to alter such a decision
he was severely punished. For not only was he expelled from his
judgment-seat, and debarred from exercising judicial functions in the
future, but, if his judgment had involved the infliction of a penalty,
he was