The date of the Code, as shown by the prologue with which the text begins, fell in the reign[11] of the great king Hammurabi, sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon, whose call to the throne, successful wars, and great benefits to his people, it sets out with magniloquent phraseology. The list of his achievements thus given further enables us to fix the year of its redaction as after the fortieth year of the reign. This may, however, be the date at which our existing monument was erected rather than that at which the Code was first promulgated. As this king only reigned forty-three years the date is very closely fixed. We now know some prominent event for each year of this long reign, and by means of other inscriptions of his we can make out a fairly complete sketch of his times for which reference must be made to the many excellent histories of Babylonia.[12] As is well known Hammurabi has frequently been identified with Amraphel king of Shinar mentioned in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis as having made war on his rebellious subjects in and around the Dead Sea area. Amraphel is there associated with Arioch king of Ellasar, usually identified with Rîm-Sin king of Larsa, with Chedorlaomer king of Elam and Tidal king of ‘Nations’. The same tradition made him contemporary with Abraham, ‘father of the faithful and friend of God’, who is said to have migrated with his family from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran, the chief city and commercial capital of Mesopotamia, and thence into Palestine. It is interesting to note that it is precisely with the period of Hammurabi that Hebrew tradition elects to link up its early memories of origins. We might then be naturally drawn to examine the native records of the Hammurabi reign, including its laws, simply to gain a clearer idea of the circumstances among which Abraham was born and grew up. But there are other reasons for our effort to study the period. As a record of early law the Code of Hammurabi is one of the most remarkable monuments of the history of the human race. Treated as a legal document the peculiarities of the Code are amazing. Doubtless an expert in comparative law could have reconstructed a large part of the Babylonian law from the many thousands of legal documents of all periods which have come down to us. To a very remarkable extent this has been done, especially by PROFESSOR KOHLER, assisted or followed by PROFESSOR PEISER, PROFESSOR MEISSNER, PROFESSOR SCHORR, PROFESSOR UNGNAD and a score more who have taken up special points.[13] My article on Babylonian Law in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ will give some idea of this work.