THE FIRST OF EMPIRES.
The First of Empires. By W. St. Chad Boscawen. (Harper and Brothers. 10s. 6d.)—This is an admirable, painstaking, and enthusiastic handbook of the "latest research" into that Babylon which largely owes its greatness as an Empire and as a model of civilisation to "Khammurabi the Great," the discovery of whose Code of Laws, Mr. Boscawen main- tains, is "even more important in its bearing on the study of Biblical archaeology than that of the Deluge or Creation legend, because it raises the whole question of the origin of the Mosaic law and Mosaic tradition." The chapters which lead up to the military, political, and legislative triumphs of Khammurabi, such as "The Lands of Nimrod," "Egypt and Chaldea," "The City Kingdoms," and "The Garden of the Orient," are in every way interesting and full of the latest research ; while the final chapter, on "The Beginnings of Literature," is especially valuable for the strong light it throws upon worship and folk- lore. Mr. St. Chad Boscawen, starting from the discovery of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, makes a great deal of the influence of Babylonia over Canaan, and argues that the laws embodied in the great Code of Khammurabi were known there, on the ground mainly that "if Babylonian myths, such as those which the Hebrews adapted in the story of Samson, or Saul, and the Witch of Endor, had become known in Palestine, surely so great and so simple and so suitable a code of laws must have been known throughout the whole of Western Asia." Of the effect of the Captivity he writes :—" The secret of the extraordinary change which came over the Hebrew people after the Captivity is not difficult to explain. They saw that the secret of the immense success and vitality of the Babylonian Empire lay in the centralisation of a secular and religious life in the capital. Babylon was the dwelling-place of the nation's god, the source of all government; so Jerusalem and the temple became the focus of all the vital elements of Judaism. By his policy of centralization instituted more than eighteen centuries prior to the fall of Babylon, Khammurabi had laid the foundations of the first of empires on a basis which made it able to outlive all empires, and, even after its downfall, to so powerfully influence its conquerors as to leave an indelible mark in all the world's history." There is hardly a superfluous word in this unpretending and well-written book.
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