Page:Laws of Hammurabi, King of Babylonia.djvu/28

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86
RECORDS OF THE PAST

it with grain, oil, dates and everything else that belongs to its outfitting, and that skipper is negligent and wrecks the ship and destroys its contents, the skipper shall replace the ship that is wrecked and everything that was destroyed in it.

238. If a skipper wrecks anyone's ship, but saves it [from total loss], he is to pay ½ of its price in money to its owner.

239. If anyone provisions a ship or a skipper he is to be paid therefor 6 "gur" for the year.

240. If a freight boat collides with a passenger ship and wrecks it, the owner of the ship which was wrecked is to seek justice before God [present his claim under oath]; and in event it is sustained, the owner of the freight boat, who has occasioned the wreck of the passenger ship, shall return to the owner of the passenger ship the ship so destroyed [or its value] and everything that was destroyed with it.

241. If anyone forces an ox not belonging to him to labor he is to pay ⅓ of a "mine" of money in penalty therefor.

242. If anyone hires a field ox for a year he is to give to the owner 4 "gur" of grain as hire for the field ox.

243. As hire for the heath (?) ox he is to give the owner 3 "gur" of grain.

244. If anyone hires an ox or an ass, and a lion [wild beast] kills it in the field, the loss falls on the owner.

245. If anyone hires an ox and kills him through bad treatment or blows he is to return to the owner an ox for the ox so killed.

246. If anyone hires an ox and he breaks one of its legs or cuts a neck ligament, the lessee is to return [an uninjured ox] to the owner.

247. If anyone hires an ox and knocks one of the ox's eyes out he is to give ½ of its value to the owner.

248. If anyone hires an ox and breaks off one of its horns, cuts off its tail or damages some part of its mouth, he is to pay ¼ the value in money.

249. If anyone hires an ox and God [an unavoidable accident] strikes him and he dies, then the one who has hired him shall swear before God and be blameless [shall make oath to the circumstances and be discharged from liability].

250. If an ox, while going upon the street, strikes anyone and kills him, there shall be no legal claim for damages [the law will not hold anyone liable therefor].

251. If anyone's ox is a butter [dangerous], and his fault has been pointed out to the owner, who shall fail to wrap its horns and does not restrain the ox, and the ox gores a freeman and kills him, the owner shall pay 2 "mines" of money.

252. If he kills anyone's slave he is to pay ⅓ of a "mine."

253. If anyone bargains [seeks to lease his farm to another] with another one to take care of his farm and trusts him with grain for planting and with draft animals, and bids him to plant the field, and the one to whom the property is intrusted steals the grain or plants raised thereon and takes them for his own use, he shall have his hands cut off.

254. If he takes the planting grain (?) [seed] for himself and does not use the draft beast, he shall return to the owner of the field the amount of the cultivation grain (?) [a sum equivalent to what might have been raised upon the land had he done his duty].

255. If he [the lessee] lets out the draft cattle of the man for rent or