[97] This, however, must not be regarded as wholly an act of wanton savagery. The killing of his prisoners by the king was probably a sort of sacrifice in honor of the god who had given him victory over his enemies. See Amélineau, _Essai_, p. 12. [98] _Essai_, p. ix; see also p. 252, n. 1. [99] For the influence of the moral ideas of Egypt on Greece, see Amélineau, _Essai_, chap. xii, pp. 359–399; Wiedemann, _The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul_ (1895), p. x; and Toy, _Judaism and Christianity_ (1891), p. 387. [100] Petrie, _Egypt and Israel_ (1911), p. 133. [101] Demonism here was not, as it was and is in China (p. 55), a moral educator of the people, for the reason that the spirits were not conceived as the avengers of wrongdoing, but were thought to molest indifferently the good and the bad. [102] It is not possible, however, to draw a definite chronological line between the nonethical and the ethical texts. Cf. Jastrow, _The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_ (1898), p. 297. [103] King, _Babylonian Religion and Mythology_ (1899), p. 220. [104] The nature myths constituting the epic literature of the Babylonians, which consisted largely of elaborate tales of the struggle between the gods of light and the powers of darkness, were never moralized like the Egyptian myth of Osiris and Set, or the Iranian myth of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman. [105] Here are a few lines of a penitential prayer or psalm: O my god who art angry with me, accept my prayer; * * * * * May my sins be forgiven, my transgressions be wiped out. May the ban be loosened, the chain broken, May the seven winds carry off my sighs. Let me tear away my iniquity, let the birds carry it to heaven; * * * * * May the beasts of the field take it away from me, The flowing waters of the stream wash me clean. Let me be pure like the sheen of gold. JASTROW, _The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_ (1898), p. 323. [106] Cf. above, p. 35. [107] The stele which bore this code of laws was discovered at Susa in 1901–1902. The reign of Hammurabi is placed at about the end of the third millennium B.C. There are translations of the code by C. H. W. Johns (1903) and Robert Francis Harper (1904). [108] “If a man owe a debt and Adad [god of storms] inundate his field and carry away the produce, or, through lack of water, grain have not grown in the field, in that year he shall not make any return of grain to the creditor, he shall alter his contract-tablet and he shall not pay the interest for that year.”--_Code_, sec. 48. [We have used throughout Harper’s translation.] [109] _Code_, secs. 196, 197, 200. Cf. similar provisions of the Mosaic code: Ex. xxi. 23–25; Deut. xix. 21. [110] _Ibid._ secs. 209, 210. [111] _Ibid._ secs. 229, 230.