Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters

date is usually suppressed, for, unless we are following a series of transactions between the same parties, nothing more than the epoch is of importance. As the material is arranged by epochs, there can be no question in this regard. If any evolution of process or any reference to former transactions is involved, so that the date is important, it is given.

A collection of legal documents may be studied in a variety of ways.

Perhaps the least productive plan is to ransack them for illustrations of a theory, or a particular point. When the theory is already well known, as in the case of Roman or mediæval law, such a procedure is justifiable, but when the theory has to be made out, it is wellnigh inexcusable. Some valuable monographs have followed this method, but they can hardly expect to give permanent results. For comparative purposes our material is so new, and so little worked, that it is sheer waste of time to seek for parallels elsewhere until everything is clearly made out to which pa