Subject matter of Ham

justice. A man who tries to bribe a witness or a judge is to be severely punished. A farmer who is careless with his dikes and allows the water to run through and flood his neighbor's land must restore the value of the grain he has damaged. The owner of a vicious ox

which has gored a man

murabi's code

must pay a heavy fine, provided he knew the disposition of the animal and had not blunted its horns. A builder who puts up a shaky house which afterwards collapses and kills the tenant is himself to be put to death. On the other hand, the code has some rude features. Punishments were severe. For injuries to the body there was the simple rule of retaliation an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a limb for a limb. A son who had struck his father was to have his hands cut off. The nature of the punishment depended, moreover, on the rank of the aggrieved party. A person who had caused the loss of a "gentleman's" eye was to have his own plucked out; but if the injury was done to a poor man, the culprit had only to pay a fine.

BABYLONIAN CONTRACT TABLET

The actual tablet is on the right; on the left is a hollow clay case or envelope.

Importance

of Hammu

Hammurabi's laws thus present a vivid picture of Oriental society two thousand years before Christ. They always remained the basis of the Babylonian and Assyrian legal system. They were destined, also, to exert a considerable influence upon Hebrew legislation. Centuries after Hammurabi the enactments of the old Babylonian king were reproduced in some of the familiar regulations

rabi's code

of the laws of Moses. In this way they became the heritage of the Hebrews and, through them, of our modern world.

The Mosaic code

The laws which we find in the earlier books of the Bible were ascribed by the Hebrews to Moses. These laws covered a wide range of topics. They fixed all religious ceremonies, required the observance every seventh day of the Sabbath, dealt with marriage and the family, stated the penalties for wrongdoing, gave elaborate rules for sacrifices, and even indicated what foods must be avoided as "unclean.” No other ancient people possessed so elaborate a code. The Jews throughout the world obey, to this day, its precepts. And modern Christendom still recites the Ten Commandments, the noblest summary of the rules of right living that has come down to us from the ancient world.

ship

17. Religion

Oriental ideas of religion, even more than of law and morality, were the gradual outgrowth of beliefs held by the Asiatic peoples Nature wor- in prehistoric times. Everywhere nature worship prevailed. The vault of heaven, earth and ocean, sun, moon, and stars were all regarded either as themselves divine or as the abode of divinities. The sun was an object of especial adoration. We find a sun god, under different names, in every Oriental country.

Another inheritance from prehistoric times was the belief in evil spirits. In Babylonia and Assyria this superstition became a prominent feature of the popular religion. Men Babylonian belief in evil supposed themselves to be constantly surrounded by a host of demons which caused insanity, sickness, disease, and death - all the ills, of life. People lived in constant fear of offending these malignant beings.

spirits

To cope with evil spirits the Babylonian used magic. He put up a small image of a protecting god at the entrance to his house and wore charms upon his person. If he Magic felt ill, he went to a priest, who recited a long incantation supposed to drive out the "devil" afflicting the patient. The reputation of the Babylonian priests was so wide

spread that in time the name "Chaldean"1 came to mean one who is a magician. Some of their magical rites were borrowed by the Jews, and later by the Romans, from whom they entered Christian Europe.

Another Babylonian practice which spread westward was that of divination, particularly by inspecting the entrails of animals slain in sacrifice. This was a very common method of divination among the Greeks and Romans.2

Astrology received

AN EGYPTIAN SCARAB

The beetle, as a symbol of birth and resurrection, and hence of immortality, enjoyed much reverence in ancient Egypt. A scarab, or image of the beetle, was often worn as a charm and was placed in the mummy as an artificial heart.

Astrology

much attention. It was believed that the five planets, comets, and eclipses of the sun and moon exerted an influence for good or evil on the life of man. Babylonian astrology likewise extended to western lands and became popular among the Greeks and Romans. Some of it survives to the present time. When we name the days Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, we are unconscious astrologers, for in old belief the first day belonged to the planet Saturn, the second to the sun, and the third to the moon.3 Superstitious people who try to read their fate in the stars are really practicing an art of Babylonian origin.

Less influential in later times was the animal worship of the Egyptians. This, too, formed a heritage from the prehistoric past. Many common animals of Egypt the cat, Egyptian anithe hawk, the jackal, the bull, the ram, the crocodile were highly reverenced. Some received worship because deities were supposed to dwell in them. The larger

1 Chaldea was another name for Babylonia.

mal worship

2 See page 148.

3 The names of four other week days come from the names of old Teutonic deities. Tuesday is the day of Tyr, Wednesday of Woden (Odin), Thursday of Thunor (Thor), and Friday of the goddess Frigga. See page 394.

number, however, were not worshiped for themselves, but as symbols of different gods.

In the midst of such an assemblage of nature deities, spirits, and sacred animals, it was remark

in Persia one god should ever have arisen. The Medes and Persians accepted the teachings of Zoroaster, a great prophet who lived perhaps as early as 1000 B.C. According to Zoroaster, Ahuramazda, the heaven-deity, is the maker and upholder of the universe. He is a god of light and order, of truth and purity. Against him stands Ahriman, the personification of darkness and evil. Ahuramazda in the end will overcome Ahriman and will theism in Egypt by abolishing the reign supreme in a righteous world.

AMENHOTEP IV

A striking likeness of an Egyptian king (reigned about 1375-1358 B.C.) who endeavored to introduce mono

Zoroastrianism was the only mono

in failure, for after the king's death theistic religion developed by an

the old deities were restored to honor.

Indo-European people.1

The Hebrews, alone among the Semitic peoples of antiquity, were to develop the worship of their god, Jehovah, into a lasting Hebrew mon- monotheism. This was a long and gradual procotheism ess. Jehovah was at first regarded as the peculiar divinity of the Hebrews. His worshipers did not deny the existence of the gods of other nations. From the eighth century onward this narrow conception of Jehovah was transformed by the labors of the Hebrew prophets. They taught that Jehovah was the creator and ruler of the world and the loving father of all mankind. On Hebrew monotheism two

1 Zoroastrians are still to be found in the East. In Persia, now a Mohammedan country, there is a little band of devoted followers of Zoroaster, who keep up to this day the tenets of their ancient faith. In India the Parsees of Bombay are the descendants of those Persians who fled from Persia at the time of the Mohammedan conquest (page 376), rather than surrender their cherished beliefs and embrace a new religion.

world religions have been founded - Mohammedanism and Christianity.

We do not find among the early Hebrews or any other Oriental people very clear ideas about the life after death. The Egyptians long believed

that the soul of the

dead man resided in

Egyptian
ideas of the

future life

or near the tomb, closely associated with the body. This notion seems to have first led to the practice of embalming the corpse, so that it might never suffer decay. If the body was not preserved, the soul might die, or it might become a wandering ghost, restless and dangerous to the living. Later Egyptian thought regarded the future state as a place of rewards and punishments. One of the chapters of the work called the Book of the Dead describes the judgment of the soul in the spirit world. If a man in the earthly life had not murdered, stolen, coveted the property of others, blasphemed the gods, borne false witness, ill treated his parents, or committed certain other wrongs, his soul would enjoy a blissful immortality.

MUMMY AND COVER OF
COFFIN

U. S. National Museum, Washington.

Babylonian and Hebrew

ideas of the

Some Oriental peoples kept the primitive belief that after death all men, good and bad alike, suffered the same fate. The Babylonians supposed that the souls of the departed passed a cheerless existence in a gloomy underworld. The early Hebrew idea of Sheol, "the land of darkness and the shadow of death," 1 was very similar. Such thoughts of the future life left nothing for either fear or hope. In later times, however, the Hebrews came to believe in the resurrection of the dead

1 Job, x, 21.

future life