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Show 111 lj I THE OLDEST CODE. m Tho Review of Reviews publishes the code of 1 1 Khammurabi, who reigned over Babylon over 2,200 M ifi years before the coming of Messiah; more than IH if' ve liun(red years before the birth of Moses. m , j I The city of Babylon was his capital, his empire i ; t included nearly all the then known world. The j ' code was found by M. de Morgan at Susa late ' j I in the year 1901 on a monument of black dlarlte 'I J eight feet high, the inscription being of 3,000 lines, divided into eight columns. The code it- b I self is a most direct and severe one, but it so B I S - I closely resembles in many things the Mosaic code H n' at scnlars re bound to believe that the last Hj !' fi was framed from (and modified from) the first, H I 8 ' though the first antidated the thundering on Sinai H by many hundreds of years. B j' 1' The first thought this awakens is that cen- m ! v " tuiios must have passed over that nation before if custom became law and before those laws crysta- lized into a code. At thought of it, the Bible H Dy comparison, becomes almost a modern book. H I Again, as man had so far progressed five thou- B 1 sand years ago as to be able to draft a code, H I through what ages must the race have existed be- I fore it learned to subdue itself enough to feel ' I the need of fixed laws, to frame a code and to I submit to its rule? Of course, there can be no i j. j, answer, it was infinite years ago. That it had ob I tained so high a place intellectually is made clear 1 by this code, for under it men and women stood I : on equal ground, and that only comes after ages 1 I of preparation. We know, too, they were skilled Hj ' f ! in arms and architecture, that they understood H V" I i the tilling of the soil, as well as modern men, and H 1 that through irrigation, they were able to sustain, H I 1 ' ' ' on a small area, millions of people. By what H !! ! process did they attain to that state? All that is H 1 Lji j lost, of course, but4 the fact remains that they H jl ? i were as mo.dorns are; they had established a H i 1 1 great state; they drafted and executed laws; they had their loves and hates as modern men and women have. They had licensed wine rooms, but their methods were more direct than ours. Women Wo-men kept the wine rooms, and if a disturbance arose in any of them, the penalty was to take the owner out and drown her. How would it do to try that in Salt Lake City? They had divorce laws more direct than those of South Dakota. From them Moses drafted his, only the scholars say "Moses never wrote the books ascribed to him," and between the promulgation of the earlier code and the Mosaic code a vast intellectual advance ad-vance was made, for the Mosaic code is as stately in diction as any modern law book. But the thought keeps coming back, what was the purpose pur-pose of all those Myriads, living on generation after generation, century after century, before history was born; living, working, loving, hating, fighting, dying, even as did the animals. If there was a purpose behind it all, what was it, and as they lived, died and were forgotten, will some coming cataclysm re-prepare the world for new races and will antiquarians five thousand years hence, digging amid the ruins of the structures that modern men will leave, then ask as we ask now, the question, "what Avas the purpose of it all?" Who knows? The swallows make their nests under the eaves for a few years and1 then disappe s man so very much the advantage over me swallows? swal-lows? Out in the mountains, the bull elks lock their antlers in mortal fight and men die of starvation starva-tion and exhaustion. Are not men doing about the same thing every day? Is not the fight they wage upon each other enough to starve their souls and exhaust nearly every sense of enjoyment? They were doing the same things in and about Babylon five thousand years ago. How much have we the best of those who lived before his-tpry his-tpry was born? t |