the stone from a temple at Sippara, in Babylonia.

However that may be, we owe it to the French Government, who have been
carrying on explorations at Susa for years under the superintendence of
M. J. de Morgan, that a monument, only disinterred in January, has been
copied, transcribed, translated, and published, in a superb quarto
volume, by October. The ancient text is reproduced by photogravure in a
way that enables a student to verify word by word what the able editor,
Father V. Scheil, _Professeur a l'Ecole des Hautes-Etudes_, has given as
his reading of the archaic signs. The volume, which appears as _Tome
IV., Textes Elamites-Semitiques_, of the _Memoires de la Delegation en
Perse_ (Paris, Leroux, 1902), is naturally rather expensive for the
ordinary reader. Besides, the rendering of the eminent French savant,
while distinguished by that clear, neat phrasing which is so charming a
feature of all his work, is often rather a paraphrase than a translation.
The ordinary reader who desires to estimate for himself the importance of
the new monument will be forced to wonder how and why the same word in
the original gets such different renderings. Prolonged study will be
needed to bring out fully the whole meaning of many passages, and it may
conduce to such a result to present the public with an alternative
rendering in an English dress. Needless to say, scholars will continue
to use Scheil's edition as the ultimate source, but for comparative
purposes a literal translation may be welcome as an introduction.

The monument itself consists of a block of black diorite, nearly eight
feet high, found in pieces, but readily rejoined. It contains on the
obverse a very interesting representation of the King Hammurabi,
receiving his laws from the seated sun-god Samas, 'the judge of heaven
and earth.' Then follow, on the obverse, sixteen columns of writing with
1114 lines. There were five more columns on this side, but they have