Thorstein Veblen
Review author of: 'The Code of Hammurabi, King of Babylon about 2250 B. C. 
Autographed Text, Transliteration, Translation, Glossary, Index of 
Subjects, Lists of Proper names, Signs, Numerals, Corrections and Erasures, 
with Map, Frontispiece, and Photograph of Text'. By ROBERT FRANCIS HARPER. 
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1904. 8vo, pp. xv + 192 + 103 
plates.
The Journal of Political Economy, vol. 13, No. 2 (Mar., 1905), pp. 319-320.
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To an economist this document is interesting for the evidence it affords as 
to property relations and business trafic among a people living near the 
beginning of recorded history. The cultural situation of this people is 
fairly evident from the provisions of the code and the character of the 
introductory and concluding remarks. It would be difficult for anyone - for 
any other than an expert quite out of the question - to separate those 
elements of the code which were the law of the land before the coming of 
the great king, from those portions which were added by him.
The situation to which the code applies may be characterized somewhat as 
follows: The code embodies the laws imposed by a body of invading 
conquerors upon the population already living on the land. The subject 
population were mainly, if not almost wholly, agricultural. Whether they 
were free or subject before the coming of the conquering host is probably 
not to be determined, although it seems not improbable that they already 
had the institution of slavery, and therefore that the bulk of them were 
unfree. The invaders from the north, who made themselves masters, were of a 
race alien to the population already occupying the land and were of a 
pastoral origin. They brought with them a servile-despotic organization of 
society and the bloodthirsty monotheistic form of religion that belongs to 
the militant pastoral culture.
In the Babylonian community, as regulated by the code of the great king 
principles of status, privilege, and differential advantage prevail 
throughout, so as to give it something of a feudalistic structure. The 
prerequisites and privileges of the upper classes are large and 
uncompromising, and the laws safeguarding them are harsh and summary. 
Regulation from above is the rule, and the gravest offenses are those 
against the king's servants and against the priests and temples. Capital 
punishment and mutilations are frequent, and extravagant fines and 
reprisals no less so. Prices of various com-[320]modities, as well as the 
hire of servants, animals, utensils, and land, are fixed by "the king." 
Terms of agreement between landlord and tenant, and between "merchant" and 
agent, are in great part prescribed by statute, and as a rule the tenant 
and the agent are at a disadvantage in case of disagreement or violition of 
contract. Women are in a state of subjection, almost as abject in many 
respects as that of the slaves. But with all this subjection and regulation 
there are some evidences of a traditional freedom of contract, and of 
relative freedom of action on the part of the women (cf., e. g., secs. 149-
51, 172-79, 181, 182).
However austere and unequal may have been the organization of society 
before the coming of the invaders, it seems plain that the rule of law was, 
at least in some degree, milder and that economic classes were on a 
somewhat less unequal footing. Coupled with this, as testifying on a like 
general effect, is the evidence of an earlier polytheistic religion. The 
whole code, it may be added, has a very marked resemblance to the Mosaic 
code.
This earliest document of the history of the Mesopotamian country boars 
evidence of a culture that was already ancient in the land at the date when 
"the perfect king" imposed his code upon the population of the land. How 
ancient the barbarian civilization of the country may have been there is no 
knowing, but it is plain that the invasion of the Babylonian dynasty was in 
no sense near the beginning of things, in institutions, industrial arts, or 
religion. There were, evidently, at least two, in all probability three, 
and perhaps more than three, superimposed layers of institutions that were 
in some degree correlated and combined in the legislative reforms embodied 
in the code.
It is, of course, and possible here to offer my opinion as to the degree of 
faithfulness with which the editor has rendered and presented his 
materials, or as to the efficiency with which he has made use of such 
authorities as he may have had recourse to. But a word may not be out of 
place as to the mechanical characteristics of the volume, in a case where 
these characteristics are so striking as in the present instance. The 
printer's work is excellent and errors are few, but the volume as a whole 
is an extreme example of what printers sometimes call "padding." The paper 
is excessively heave and bulky, and the leading and spacing are likewise 
excessive. The volume could, with advantage to all concerned, have been 
reduced to one-third of its present bulk and to one-fourth of its present 
weight.
V.