royal compiler, Hammurabi's code. He was an imperialist in purpose and
action, and in the last of his reign of fifty-five years he annexed or
assimilated the suzerainty of Elam, or Southern Persia, with Assyria to
the north, and also Syria and Palestine, to the Mediterranean Sea.

This record in stone originally contained nineteen columns of
inscriptions of four thousand three hundred and fourteen lines, arranged
in two hundred and eighty sections, covering about two hundred separate
decisions or edicts. There is substantial evidence that many of the laws
were of greater antiquity than the code itself, which is a thousand
years older than the Mosaic code, and there are many striking
resemblances and parallels between its provisions, and the law of the
covenant, and the deuteronomy laws of the Hebrews.

The code was based on personal responsibility. It protects the sanctity
of an oath before God, provides among many other things for written
evidence in legal matters, and is wonderfully comprehensive and rich in
rules for the conduct of commercial, civic, financial, social, economic,
and domestic affairs.

These sections are notably illustrative:

"If a man, in a case (pending judgment), utters threats against the
witnesses (or), does not establish the testimony that he has given, if
that case be a case involving life, that man shall be put to death.

"If a judge pronounces a judgment, renders a decision, delivers a
verdict duly signed and sealed and afterwards alters his judgment, they
shall call that judge to account for the alteration of the judgment
which he had pronounced, and he shall pay twelvefold the penalty which