Chapter II: The Actual Code

was first published by V. SCHEIL in the Fourth Volume of the _Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_, pp. 11-162, with transcriptions, translation, and some notes (Paris, E. Leroux, 1902). Fragments of a second example of the Stele were also given by V. SCHEIL in the Tenth Volume of the _Mémoires_, pp. 81-84 (1908).

All subsequent editions of the text are based upon this edition. The original monument being now in the Louvre at Paris and a superb cast of it in the Babylonian Room of the British Museum, it is open to any competent scholar to appreciate the extraordinary accuracy of V. SCHEIL’s work. The transcription and translation have naturally been somewhat improved by the intensive study devoted to them by the many scholars who have worked upon the text, especially as the result of comparison with the contemporary legal documents. But the highest praise must be awarded to the genius which so successfully accomplished such a task as that of editing an entirely new text involving so many new words and expressions and such unexpected subjects.

RE-EDITIONS OF THE CUNEIFORM TEXT ITSELF.

Having published an important article on _The Chirography of the Hammurabi Code_ in the _American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures_, vol. xx, pp. 137-48 (Chicago University Press, 1904), R. F. HARPER proceeded to issue a revised edition of the cuneiform text, with a transcription, a new translation, vocabulary, indexes, and list of signs, under the title _The Code of Hammurabi_ (Chicago University Press, 1904), which forms a most convenient student’s handbook for English readers.

In 1909, A. UNGNAD published _Keilschrifttexte der Gesetze Hammurapis, Autographie der Stele sowie der altbabylonischen, assyrischen und neubabylonischen Fragmente_ (Leipzig, Hinrichs).

_Codex Hammurabi. Textus primigenius, transcriptio, translatio, Latina, vocabularia, tabula comparationis inter leges Mosis et Hammurabi. Ad usum privatum auditorum_, by A. DEIMEL (Rome, Vatican Press, 1910), has the advantage of a language specially fitted to rendering exactly the turns of expression occurring in the original.

There are some fragments of a copy found at Nippur, now preserved in the Museum at Constantinople, copied by ST. LANGDON, and noticed by him and V. SCHEIL in _Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions_ (Paris, A. Picard), 1912, p. 159, as _Tablette du Musée de Constantinople contenant les §§ 145-80 du Code de Hammourabi_; and there are other still unpublished copies.

A. POEBEL, in the _Museum Journal of the Philadelphia Museum_, vol. iv, no. 2, 1913, pp. 49-50, announces a further copy of the Code from Nippur, which also supplies some of the missing laws. The fine picture of this tablet shows its present state.