These divisions had no justification on the stela found at Susa, which divides only lines and even occasionally cuts a word in two. It shows no indication where a particular law begins or ends. Hence the Babylonian scribes, as all modern scholars, have had to divide as their common sense dictated. But the text on the stela was certainly copied from a clay tablet which may well have shown division-lines between the laws. At any rate, the divisions adopted by the Babylonian scribes, even if not original, have great weight as embodying an independent tradition among scholars who surely knew the meaning and connexion of the successive regulations in a very authoritative way. That their ruling does not agree with PROFESSOR SCHEIL’s where we can compare them shows that his division is not essential and may be neglected. Unfortunately our fragments of later copies do not help us often, and are too few to give us a canon upon which we can rely when we need it most, and we can rarely be sure that the division we propose was that of the original. Nevertheless there is great verisimilitude about PROFESSOR LYON’s proposals, and it is a very striking likeness between the Book of the Covenant and the Code of Hammurabi that both adopted a division of laws into groups of five. We cannot press the argument too far, but the Roman Law at any rate shows that this arrangement is not a logical necessity nor a psychological demand of early legislation. The critical account usually given of the Book of the Covenant is that it embodies the consuetudinary law of the early monarchy. It is regarded as embracing the formulated decisions which had gradually accumulated among the people up to that age. It is admitted that it, or at any rate parts of it, may well be older than the narrative (E.) in which it was incorporated. Its place in the scale of civilization is estimated by the fact that it imposes many restrictions on the arbitrary action of the individual, while it retains the _lex talionis_. Further, prominence is sometimes given to the fact that God is regarded as the immediate source of punishment. It is styled theocratic law, but breaks away from the purest type of such laws. The Code of Hammurabi goes further in the direction of purely civil enactment.