But while abundant evidence was available as to commercial matters, such as the disposal of estates and other property by sale or exchange, or their assignment by hire, lease, or hypothec, the laws of deposit and warehousing, commenda or commission, agency, security, pledge, warranty, the laws of partnership, rules as to debt and interest, loans with or without security, the family laws relating to marriage, divorce, adoption, inheritance, maintenance, &c., and many other points were made out with great clearness, yet much remained obscure. For the legal documents, deeds, contracts, or the like, while doubtless absolutely clear to the contemporary parties concerned and evidently the outcome of long-established legal practice, assumed much that could only be conjectured from their slight hints. In my article on Babylonian Law and in _Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters_ I gathered up most of what was then known. Especially was our knowledge defective in the matter of criminal law. We had plenty of legal decisions, but they too often merely recorded the award of the court, and even where the case in dispute was stated, the suit was nearly always about property. We had little or no information about such questions as murder, manslaughter, theft, adultery, assault, and the like. The Code, with its full criminal sections, was thus doubly welcome. The state of society revealed, and its laws, are most remarkable. The tribal system has disappeared. The city states with their local customs are being welded into a unity. There is still local government and district responsibility, but the king’s judges are over the local elders, and there is appeal to higher courts, ultimately to the king himself. The family is the unit, with great measure of family solidarity and complete indefeasible right over family estate, devolving its rights to individuals as they form new family units, but retaining rights of reversion amounting to a strict entail.