A small caravan is here seen approaching the city at sunset before the gates are shut.  Samarra was only founded in A. D. 834, by the Khalif el-Motasim, the son of Harun er-Rashid, but customs in the East do not change, and the photograph may be used to illustrate the approach of an early Babylonian caravan to a walled city of the period.

The houses, too, at this period must have resembled the structures of unburnt brick of the present day, with their flat mud tops, on which the inmates sleep at night during the hot season, supported on poles and brushwood.  The code furnishes evidence that at that time, also, the houses were not particularly well built and were liable to fall, and, in the event of their doing so, it very justly fixes the responsibility upon the builder.  It is clear from the penalties for bad workmanship enforced upon the builder that considerable abuses had existed in the trade before the time of Hammurabi, and it is not improbable that the enforcement of the penalties succeeded in stamping them out.  Thus, if a builder built a house for a man, and his work was not sound and the house fell and crushed the owner so that he died, it was enacted that the builder himself should be put to death.  If the fall of the house killed the owner’s son, the builder’s own son was to be put to death.

[Illustration:  285.jpg A SMALL CARAVAN IN THE MOUNTAINS OF KURDISTAN.]

If one or more of the owner’s slaves were killed, the builder had to restore him slave for slave.  Any damage which the owner’s goods might have suffered from the fall of the house was to be made good by the builder.  In addition to these penalties the builder was obliged to rebuild the house, or any portion of it that had fallen through not being properly secured, at his own cost.  On the other hand, due provisions were made for the payment of the builder for sound work; and as the houses of the period rarely, if ever, consisted of more than one story, the scale of payment was fixed by the area of ground covered by the building.

[Illustration:  286.jpg THE CITY OF MOSUL.]

Situated on the right bank of the Tigris opposite the mounds which mark the site of the ancient city of Nineveh.  The flat-roof ednouses which may be distinguished in the photograph are very similar in form and construction to those employed by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians.

From the code of Hammurabi we also gain considerable information with regard to agricultural pursuits in ancient Babylonia, for elaborate regulations are given concerning the landowner’s duties and responsibilities, and his relations to his tenants.  The usual practice in hiring land for cultivation was for the tenant to pay his rent in kind, by assigning a certain proportion of the crop, generally a third or a half, to the owner.  If a tenant hired certain land for cultivation he was bound to till it and raise a crop, and should he