The stele is inscribed with his great code of laws. The Sun- god is represented as seated on a throne in the form of a temple façade, and his feet are resting upon the mountains. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co. Moreover, the recently discovered code of laws drawn up by Hammurabi contains information of the greatest interest with regard to the conditions of life that were prevalent in Babylonia at that period. From these three sources it is possible to draw up a comparatively full account of early Babylonian life and customs. CHAPTER VI--EARLY BABYLONIAN LIFE AND CUSTOMS In tracing the ancient history of Mesopotamia and the surrounding countries it is possible to construct a narrative which has the appearance of being comparatively full and complete. With regard to Babylonia it may be shown how dynasty succeeded dynasty, and for long periods together the names of the kings have been recovered and the order of their succession fixed with certainty. But the number and importance of the original documents on which this connected narration is based vary enormously for different periods. Gaps occur in our knowledge of the sequence of events, which with some ingenuity may be bridged over by means of the native lists of kings and the genealogies furnished by the historical inscriptions. On the other hand, as if to make up for such parsimony, the excavations have yielded a wealth of material for illustrating the conditions of early Babylonian life which prevailed in such periods. The most fortunate of these periods, so far as the recovery of its records is concerned, is undoubtedly the period of the Semitic kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and in particular the reign of its greatest ruler, Hammurabi. When M. Maspero wrote his history, thousands of clay tablets, inscribed with legal and commercial documents and dated in the reigns of these early kings, had already been recovered, and the information they furnished was duly summarized by him.[1] But since that time two other sources of information have been made available which have largely increased our knowledge of the constitution of the early Babylonian state, its system of administration, and the conditions of life of the various classes of the population. [1] Most of these tablets are preserved in the British Museum. The principal?works in which they have been published are Cuneiform Texts in the British Museum (1896, etc.), Strassmaier’s Altbabylonischen Vertràge aus Warka, and Meissner’s Beitràge zum altbabylonischen Privatrecht. A number of similar tablets of this period, preserved in the Pennsylvania Museum, will shortly be published by Dr. Ranke.