As in the earlier period, the Babylonians of Khammurabi’s day were essentially an agricultural people, but since the time of Urukagina, agriculture had developed enormously, and the relationship of landlord to tenant, and of employer to labourer, was regulated and fixed by a number of legal enactments embodied in the code. Ordinary arable land was let at a fixed rental, the rent being paid in corn, but the owner was entitled to a deposit, and non-payment of the rent was a legal debt. The code contains two special provisions, the effect of which must have been to make the tenant postpone the payment of his rent as long as possible. The one enacted that if the rent had not been paid, or if the land had been lent on the share-profit principle and the crops were destroyed by a storm, the damage done was shared either equally or proportionally by landlord and tenant. If on the other hand the rent had been already paid, the tenant could claim no compensation. The share-profit system was very common, and in such cases the landlord generally received a half or two-thirds of the crop. But the inequalities calculated to arise from such a system were obvious, for though it safeguarded the tenant to some extent, it left the landlord without remedy in the event of his tenant being an idler, and to provide for such a case a clause was inserted to the effect that the negligent small owner should pay an average rent “like his neighbours.” Often the landlord further secured himself by stipulating in the contract for the erection of a cottage on the land, or insisted on the tenant renting a cottage already built there, the cottage to be vacated on the termination of the lease. The tenant was empowered to sub-let his ground, the principal landlord’s consent apparently not being necessary. The landlord was of course legally entitled to the rent agreed upon in the contract with his immediate tenant, but provided that was forthcoming, and the ground properly cultivated, he could raise no objection. Sometimes the landlord found the seed, the necessary tools, and also the oxen, and in addition paid a wage to the farmer; in this case the status of the tenant somewhat resembled that of a gardener in his cottage on an estate to-day. The seed, the oxen, and everything belonged to his master, and the penalty for any embezzlement of the same on the part of the tenant was the amputation of the latter’s hands. Again, if a tenant of this kind were a rogue, he might hire out the oxen, purloin the provender he had received from his master for the said oxen, and at the same time produce no crop: in this case he was liable to a heavy fine, and if he were insolvent, he was torn to pieces by the oxen on the field which he had neglected to cultivate.