the inherent impurity of all bloodshed, whatever is the manner of the shedding; and it seems that this society was no longer in bondage to that religious feeling, to which our modern moral sense concerning murder is in many ways indebted, but which is often obstructive of legal and ethical progress, and which coloured so deeply the early Judaic and Hellenic law of homicide. Further, we note that Hammurabi’s code has come to allow the consideration of motives {131} and extenuating circumstances; and in this vital respect it ranks with modern civilised legislation. Between such a society and the proto-Hellenic community, at least in regard to the view of homicide, there was a great gulf fixed. But for the present let us pursue the code further. Another crime that early society regards with religious horror, and of which religion always takes cognisance, is incest. The enactments of the code deal only with three cases: incest with daughter, mother, and stepmother; in the first, the sinner is driven from the land, probably into perpetual exile; in the second, both parties are burned alive; in the third, he is merely driven from the paternal house. The first two punishments reveal, I think, religious feeling, stronger in the second case than in the first: the sinner pollutes the land, therefore the pollution must be purged by his flight, or when most deadly must be purged away by fire; for execution by burning had often the religious significance of a holocaust. Still it is only by surmise that we detect religious colour in the code at this point: in fact, it emerges clearly only in a few clauses. We note that the code allows of expurgation by oath-taking; so did the early Greeks and our own forefathers, and the practice is not distinctive of any particular people or group. The code allows the ordeal in certain cases, as did the Greek, and as probably every community has done at a certain stage of religious feeling; also civilised Babylon countenanced trials for witchcraft, and enacted a similar water-ordeal to that which prevailed in England till fairly recent times. One clause is of interest as showing that Hammurabi was not afraid of any opposition from the priesthood if he wished to tax Church property; for he enacts that {132} the ransom of his captured feudal followers (about whom he is particularly thoughtful) “shall be paid out of the property of the temple nearest to the place where they were taken prisoners.”[132.1] But the most interesting part of the code from the religious point of view, are the enactments concerning a class of women who are devoted to the service of religion, sisters or wives, as they are here called, of Marduk: but it will be more convenient to consider these later on when the question of ritual is dealt with.