neglect to do so he had to pay the owner what was reckoned as the average rent of the land, and he had also to break up the land and plough it before handing it back.  As the rent of a field was usually reckoned at harvest, and its amount depended on the size of the crop, it was only fair that damage to the crop from flood or storm should not be made up by the tenant; thus it was enacted by the code that any loss from such a cause should be shared equally by the owner of the field and the farmer, though if the latter had already paid his rent at the time the damage occurred he could not make a claim for repayment.

[Illustration:  287.jpg THE VILLAGE OF NEBI YUNUS.]

Built on one of the mounds marking the site of the Assyrian city of Nineveh.  The mosque in the photograph is built over the traditional site of the prophet Jonah’s tomb.  The flat- roofed houses of the modern dwellers on the mound can be well seen in the picture.

It is clear from the enactments of the code that disputes were frequent, not only between farmers and landowners, but also between farmers and shepherds.  It is certain that the latter, in the attempt to find pasture for the flocks, often allowed their sheep to feed off the farmers’ fields in the spring.  This practice the code set itself to prevent by fixing a scale of compensation to be paid by any shepherd who caused his sheep to graze on cultivated land without the owner’s consent.  If the offence was committed in the early spring, when the crop was still small, the farmer was to harvest the crop and receive a considerable price in kind as compensation for the shepherd.  But if it occurred later on in the spring, when the sheep had been brought in from the meadows and turned into the great common field at the city gate, the offence would less probably be due to accident and the damage to the crop would be greater.  In these circumstances the shepherd had to take over the crop and pay the farmer very heavily for his loss.

[Illustration:  288.jpg Portrait-sculpture of Hammurabi, King of Babylon]

     From a stone slab in the British Museum.

The planting of gardens and orchards was encouraged, and a man was allowed to use a field for this purpose without paying a yearly rent.  He might plant it and tend it for four years, and in the fifth year of his tenancy the original owner of the field took half of the garden in payment, while the other half the planter of the garden kept for himself.  If a bare patch had been left in the garden it was to be reckoned in the planter’s half.  Regulations were framed to ensure the proper carrying out of the planting, for if the tenant neglected to do this during the first four years, he was still liable to plant the plot he had taken without receiving his half, and he had to pay the owner compensation in addition, which varied in amount according to the original condition of the land.  If a man hired a garden, the rent