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.
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