Of no other period in the history of Babylon have we so intimate a knowledge as that of the West-Semitic kings under whom the city first attained the rank of capital. It was a time of strenuous growth, in the course of which the long struggle with regard to language and racial dominance was decided in favour of the Semite. But the victory involved no break of continuity, for all the essential elements of Sumerian culture were preserved, the very length of the struggle having proved the main factor in securing their survival. There had been a gradual assimilation on both sides, though naturally the Sumerian had the more to give, and, in spite of his political disappearance, he continued to exert an indirect influence. This he owed in the main to the energy of the Western Semite, who completed the task of transforming a dying culture, so that in its new embodiment it could be accepted by men of a newer race. Hammurabi's age was one of transition, and we have fortunately recovered a great body of contemporaneous evidence on which to base an analysis of its social and political structure. On the one hand the great Code of Laws supplies us with the state's administrative ideal and standard of justice.[1] On the other we have the letters of the kings themselves, and the commercial and legal documents of the period,[2] to prove that the Code was no dead letter but was accurately adjusted to the conditions of the time. The possibility has long been recognized of the existence of similar codes of early Sumerian origin, and a copy of one of them, on a tablet of the Hammurabi period, has recently been recovered.[3] But the value of Hammurabi's Code rests not so much in any claim to extensive originality, but rather on its correspondence to contemporary needs. It thus forms a first-rate witness on the subjects with which it deals, and where it gives no information, the letters and contracts of the period often enable us to supply the deficiency.