There is a settled population, engaged in agriculture and pastoral pursuits, yet with many industries in the hands of guilds of artisans, recruited by adoption and apprenticeship, but largely hereditary in families. There is a highly organized system of military service and the _corvée_ or press-gang for public works, with a feudal tenure, alongside tenure on payment of tithes and temple dues, and the metayer system by which the landlord found cattle, agricultural implements and seed for culture of the fields. Estates bore permanent responsibilities which went with the land to furnish military service, produce, supplies, &c., to the state. Other estates were held of the king, on rent or tribute, the usual lot of conquered territory. There was a numerous and wealthy body of merchants who were also bankers or money-lenders and much controlled by the Code, especially in the interest of the poorer debtors. They were also afforded state protection and their canvassers carried trade far and wide to every quarter. There was a highly developed and rapid postal or messenger system, of which many beside the king availed themselves. The land was full of populous towns with fixed areas of dependent villages, remnants of the old city states, now conterminous over the whole kingdom; counties we might call them, parishes and boroughs. There were still traces of borough law, but the Code was supreme and the king’s justice ran everywhere. Temples, mansions, farms, plantations, common pasture, feudal estates, existed alongside private ownership in land. The state of society bears surprising likenesses to that of Europe in the Middle Ages. The law itself is no less advanced. Justice has replaced vengeance. Self-help is restrained, if not suppressed; wrong must be redressed at law. There is full protection for the weak, the widows and orphans, as the lawgiver himself points out with pride. Women are placed in a position of freedom and independence of their husbands, such as they have only enjoyed in our land since the Married Women’s Property Acts. Education was at such a high pitch that Hammurabi assumes that every injured person would come and read for himself the laws that applied to his own case, or at least find a neighbour who could do so. The nature of the legislation is no less surprising from a comparative point of view. In many respects we find the most extraordinary medley of ancient and modern laws. To take but one or two examples. A belief in witchcraft is not avowed, but recognized as demanding regulation; while purgation of the charge is referred to ordeal by water, such as lingered on so long in Europe. The extraordinary confidence in the power of the oath to secure truthful witness is remarkable; but has not died out of our law courts yet. The purgation by oath is in the Saxon form, and applies not only to things solely within the knowledge of the accused, as loss of entrusted goods, but also to manslaughter.