The Relation of Certain Gods to Equity and Justice in Early Babylonia

THE DAILY LIFE of the Sumerians in Early Babylonia was regarded as in constant touch with some divinity or divinities. The gods regulated their every day activities, adjusted their difficulties, relieved their distresses, and fixed their destinies. These divine supervisory benefactions were reciprocated on the part of the people by numerous and abundant offerings to each several divinity, often in temples of resplendent proportions and befitting appointments. The Sumerian pantheon was conceived of as having surveillance of all the accidents and contingencies of economic, social, and religious life. There were gods of agriculture, of weather, of storms, of battle, of sickness, of evil, and of goodwill and justice. And each one of these made certain requirements of its devotees and worshippers. And these claims and charges gradually increased in number and in their exactions until they became bodies of rules that today form some of the most interesting and instructive literature from that ancient time. But of all the manifold regulations for the daily lives and conduct of the people we are especially concerned at this time with those that touched the equitable adjustment of differences and difficulties, and especially with the gods and their deputies who administered those rules and laws. Each district or city-state had its own god or gods, and in the course of long development the specific deity whose task it became to adjust contests and clashes of interest, was credited with being a promoter of equity and justice. Within the realm of his or her authority, regulations made operative were designated as laws. Now of all the many Sumerian gods a few only were specifically designated in any large sense as gods of equity and justice. Lack of time and space bars anything more than merely a cursory recital of their judicial character, and the claims made for their usefulness and popularity in the courts of that early day. The oldest laws from early Sumerian times are credited to Nisaba, the goddess of writing, and to Hani, her husband (Jean, Milieu bibl., II, 46). These laws are said to have been inspired if not 174