and see that due care was taken of the royal flocks and sheep.  The sheep-shearing for all the flocks that were pastured near the capital took place in Babylon, and the king used to send out summonses to his chief shepherds to inform them of the day when the shearing would take place; and it is probable that the governors of the other great cities sent out similar orders to the shepherds of flocks under their charge.  Royal and priestly flocks were often under the same chief officer, a fact which shows the very strict control the king exercised over the temple revenues.

The interests of the agricultural population were strictly looked after by the king, who secured a proper supply of water for purposes of irrigation by seeing that the canals and waterways were kept in a proper state of repair and cleaned out at regular intervals.  There is also evidence that nearly every king of the First Dynasty of Babylon cut new canals, and extended the system of irrigation and transportation which had been handed down to him from his fathers.  The draining of the marshes and the proper repair of the canals could only be carried out by careful and continuous supervision, and it was the duty of the local governors to see that the inhabitants of villages and owners of land situated on the banks of a canal should keep it in proper order.  When this duty had been neglected complaints were often sent to the king, who gave orders to the local governor to remedy the defect.  Thus on one occasion it had been ordered that a canal at Erech which had silted up should be deepened, but the dredging had not been carried out thoroughly, so that the bed of the canal soon silted up again and boats were prevented from entering the city.  In these circumstances Hammurabi gave pressing orders that the obstruction was to be removed and the canal made navigable within three days.

Damage was often done to the banks of canals by floods which followed the winter rains, and a letter of Abeshu’ gives an interesting account of a sudden rise of the water in the Irnina canal so that it overflowed its banks.  The king was building a palace at the city of Kar-Irnina, which was supplied by the Irnina canal, and every year it was possible to put so much work into the building.  But one year, when little more than a third of the year’s work was done, the building operations were stopped by flood, the canal having overflowed its banks so that the water rose right up to the wall of the town.  In return for the duty of keeping the canals in order, the villagers along the banks had the privilege of fishing in its waters in the portion which was in their charge, and any poaching by other villagers in this part of the stream was strictly forbidden.  On one occasion, in the reign of Samsu-iluna, Hammurabi’s son and successor, the fishermen of the district of Rabim went down in their boats to the district of Shakanim and caught fish there contrary to the law.  So the inhabitants of Shakanim complained of this poaching to the king, who sent a palace official to the authorities of Sippar, near which city the districts in question lay, with orders to inquire into the matter and take steps to prevent all such poaching for the future.