Publisher's Synopsis
The Code of Hammurabi is one of the most importantmonuments in the history of the human race. Containing asit does the laws which were enacted by a king of Babyloniain the third millennium B.C., whose rule extended overthe whole of Mesopotamia from the mouths of the riversTigris and Euphrates to the Mediterranean coast, we mustregard it with interest. But when we reflect that the ancientHebrew tradition ascribed the migration of Abraham fromUr of the Chaldees to this very period, and clearly meansto represent their tribe father as triumphing over this verysame Hammurabi (Amraphel, Gen. xiv. 1), we can hardlydoubt that these very laws were part of that tradition. Atany rate, they must have served to mould and fix the ideasof right throughout that great empire, and so form the stateof society in Canaan when, five hundred years later, theHebrews began to dominate that region.
