The city wall and river gates were closed every night, and when Babylon was besieged the people were able to feed themselves.  The gardens and small farms were irrigated by canals, and canals also controlled the flow of the river Euphrates.  A great dam had been formed above the town to store the surplus water during inundation and increase the supply when the river sank to its lowest.

In Hammurabi’s time the river was crossed by ferry boats, but long ere the Greeks visited the city a great bridge had been constructed.  So completely did the fierce Sennacherib destroy the city, that most of the existing ruins date from the period of Nebuchadnezzar II.[267]

Our knowledge of the social life of Babylon and the territory under its control is derived chiefly from the Hammurabi Code of laws, of which an almost complete copy was discovered at Susa, towards the end of 1901, by the De Morgan expedition.  The laws were inscribed on a stele of black diorite 7 ft. 3 in. high, with a circumference at the base of 6 ft. 2 in. and at the top of 5 ft. 4 in.  This important relic of an ancient law-abiding people had been broken in three pieces, but when these were joined together it was found that the text was not much impaired.  On one side are twenty-eight columns and on the other sixteen.  Originally there were in all nearly 4000 lines of inscriptions, but five columns, comprising about 300 lines, had been erased to give space, it is conjectured, for the name of the invader who carried the stele away, but unfortunately the record was never made.

On the upper part of the stele, which is now one of the treasures of the Louvre, Paris, King Hammurabi salutes, with his right hand reverently upraised, the sun god Shamash, seated on his throne, at the summit of E-sagila, by whom he is being presented with the stylus with which to inscribe the legal code.  Both figures are heavily bearded, but have shaven lips and chins.  The god wears a conical headdress and a flounced robe suspended from his left shoulder, while the king has assumed a round dome-shaped hat and a flowing garment which almost sweeps the ground.

It is gathered from the Code that there were three chief social grades—­the aristocracy, which included landowners, high officials and administrators; the freemen, who might be wealthy merchants or small landholders; and the slaves.  The fines imposed for a given offence upon wealthy men were much heavier than those imposed upon the poor.  Lawsuits were heard in courts.  Witnesses were required to tell the truth, “affirming before the god what they knew”, and perjurers were severely dealt with; a man who gave false evidence in connection with a capital charge was put to death.  A strict watch was also kept over the judges, and if one was found to have willingly convicted a prisoner on insufficient evidence he was fined and degraded.