Code
of Hammurabi
Code of Hammurabi
Source:
World History Enciclopedia
What is the Code of Hammurabi?
The black stone
stele containing the Code of Hammurabi was carved from a single, four-ton slab
of diorite, a durable but incredibly difficult stone for carving.
At its top is a
two-and-a-half-foot relief carving of a standing Hammurabi receiving the
law—symbolized by a measuring rod and tape—from the seated Shamash, the
Babylonian god of justice. The rest of the seven-foot-five-inch monument is
covered with columns of chiseled cuneiform script.
The text,
compiled at the end of Hammurabi’s reign, is less a proclamation of principles
than a collection of legal precedents, set between prose celebrating
Hammurabi’s just and pious rule. Hammurabi’s Code provides some of the earliest
examples of the doctrine of “lex talionis,” or the laws of retribution,
sometimes better known as “an eye for an eye.”
Did you know?
The Code of Hammurabi includes many harsh
punishments, sometimes demanding the removal of the guilty party’s tongue,
hands, breasts, eye or ear. But the code is also one of the earliest examples
of an accused person being considered innocent until proven guilty.
The 282 edicts
are all written in if-then form. For example, if a man steals an ox, then he
must pay back 30 times its value. The edicts range from family law to
professional contracts and administrative law, often outlining different
standards of justice for the three classes of Babylonian society—the propertied
class, freedmen and slaves.
A doctor’s fee for
curing a severe wound would be 10 silver shekels for a gentleman, five shekels
for a freedman and two shekels for a slave. Penalties for malpractice followed
the same scheme: a doctor who killed a rich patient would have his hands cut
off, while only financial restitution was required if the victim was a slave.
The Code
of Hammurabi was a set of 282 laws inscribed in stone by the Babylonian king
Hammurabi (r. 1795-1750 BCE) who conquered and then ruled ancient Mesopotamia.
Although his law code was not the first, it was the most clearly defined and
influenced the laws of other cultures.
The
earliest extant set of laws from ancient Mesopotamia is the Code of Ur-Nammu
dating from c. 2100-2050 BCE and set down in the city of Ur either by King
Ur-Nammu (r. 2047-2030 BCE) or his son Shulgi of Ur (r. 2029-1982 BCE). These
laws were written by a king who ruled over a homogenous population and were
operating from a standard recognition of what was expected of the citizens. By
the time of Hammurabi’s reign, the population was more diverse, and his law
code reflects this in its precision to make sure everyone understood what was
expected of them.
The laws
address business contracts and proper prices for goods as well as family and
criminal law. Every crime inscribed on the stele is followed by the punishment
to be inflicted. No one could claim they were ignorant of the law as the over
seven-foot-tall stele was erected publicly. At the top, it was engraved with an
image of Shamash, the god of justice, handing the laws to Hammurabi and the
following text makes clear that these are laws of the gods, not arbitrary rules
created by mortals.
Hammurabi’s
empire fell apart after his death and Babylon was sacked repeatedly over the
years. Around 1150 BCE, Shutruk Nakhunte, King of Elam, sacked the city of
Sippar, near Babylon, and is thought to have taken the Code of Hammurabi along
with the statue of the god Marduk back to Elam as spoils of war. It was
discovered in 1901 in the ruins of the Elamite city of Susa and today is on display
at the Louvre Museum, Paris, France.
Code of
Ur-Nammu
The
earliest Mesopotamian law code was the Code of Urukagina (c. 24th century BCE)
which exists today only in fragments. The Code of Ur-Nammu, although also
fragmentary in the present day, is still cohesive enough to give a clear
understanding of what the laws addressed. The laws were written in cuneiform on
clay tablets and follow a model possibly first established by the Code of
Urukagina which would also influence the later Laws of Eshnunna (c. 1930 BCE),
the code of the king Lipit-Ishtar (r. c. 1870 - c. 1860 BCE), and Hammurabi’s.
Ur-Nammu
claimed the laws came from the gods and Ur-Nammu was only the administrator,
passing down to the people the will of their gods.
Mesopotamia
had been governed by Sargon of Akkad (r. 2334-2279 BCE) who established his
Akkadian Empire beginning in 2334 BCE. The empire fell to the invading Gutians
c. 2083 BCE who, according to the records and literature of the time, refused
to recognize the gods of the region and the customs. The king of Uruk,
Utu-Hegal, led a successful rebellion against the Gutians and defeated them
but, soon after, drowned. He was succeeded in the ongoing war by his son-in-law
Ur-Nammu who, with his son, drove the Gutians from the land.
Although
the people of Mesopotamia had repeatedly rebelled against Sargon and his
successors, after the fall of the Akkadian Empire and the resulting chaos of
Gutian rule, the Akkadian kings were revered as heroes of a golden age. The
literary genre known as Mesopotamian Naru Literature regularly featured Sargon
or his grandson Naram-Sin (r. 2261-2224 BCE) as central characters who either
embody the principles of kingship or serve as cautionary figures in how one
should respect and heed the will of the gods in order to prosper.
Law Code
of King Ur-Nammu
Law Code
of King Ur-Nammu
Osama
Shukir Muhammed Amin (Copyright)
Ur-Nammu
understood the importance of identifying himself with these heroes of the past
who, in his time, were no longer remembered as oppressors but as great father
figures who had cared for the land and its people. He therefore presented
himself as just such a father figure and instituted a patrimonial state,
encouraging his subjects to think of themselves as his children and all as
members of a family. In order for this model to work, however, the people had
to agree to it. Scholar Paul Kriwaczek comments:
For a
patrimonial state to be stable over time, it is best ruled with consent, at
least with consent from the largest minority, if not from the majority.
Instinctive obedience must be the norm, otherwise too much effort needs to be
put into suppressing disaffection for the regime’s wider aims to be achievable.
(149)
The
Akkadian kings (in reality, not in the fictionalized form Ur-Nammu’s people
remembered them) had suffered numerous rebellions precisely because they did
not have the consent of the people. To prevent these same problems, Ur-Nammu
claimed the laws came from the gods and Ur-Nammu was only the administrator,
the middleman, passing down to the people the will of their gods and enforcing
their precepts. The laws all follow the pattern of the conditional sentence,
if-this-then-that, as in this brief sampling:
If a man
proceeded by force and deflowered the virgin slave-woman of another man, that
man must pay five shekels of silver.
If a man
appeared as a witness, and was shown to be a perjurer, he must pay fifteen
shekels of silver.
If a man
knocked out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out half a mina of silver.
If a man
knocked out a tooth of another man, he shall pay two shekels of silver.
(Kriwaczek, 150)
The fine
for infractions served as a deterrent, no harsher penalty required, because
Ur-Nammu had the consent of the governed who all understood – at least in
theory – what constituted acceptable behavior. Under Ur-Nammu and his
successor-son Shulgi, this model worked well and allowed for the great cultural
revival known as the Sumerian Renaissance under their reigns. The Laws of
Eshnunna seem to have used Ur-Nammu’s as a model but these applied only to the
city of Eshnunna and did not have as great an influence as the others.
Code of
Lipit-Ishtar
It is
unclear whether Ur-Nammu wrote and issued his law code or if it was published
by Shulgi after his father’s death but the stability it provided continued
through the Third Dynasty of Ur until the reign of Ibbi-Sin (c. 1963-1940 BCE)
after which it was succeeded by the Dynasty of Isin, founded by Ishbi-Erra c.
1953/1940. The kingdom had grown progressively weaker even before Ibbi-Sin but
during his reign was too weak to fend off invasions by Amorites and Elamites
who finally brought down the Third Dynasty of Ur.
By the
time of Lipit-Ishtar, it could no longer be assumed that everyone was operating
with the same understanding of what was proper behavior.
Ishbi-Erra
had been a clerk under Ibbi-Sin and criticized the king for weakness before the
invasions. He defeated both the Amorites and Elamites and restored order but
the population the Dynasty of Isin ruled over was not the homogeneous
patriarchal state of Ur-Nammu. Although the kings of Isin established and
maintained order, by the time of the 5th king, Lipit-Ishtar, a new law code was
necessary.
Unlike
the Code of Ur-Nammu, the Code of Lipit-Ishtar had to be more precise to address
the needs of a more complex society. Monetary fines were still in place as
deterrents, but more detailed laws were required for family law and commercial
contracts. It could no longer be assumed that everyone under the law was
operating with the same understanding of what was proper behavior.
Lipit-Ishtar’s code is also fragmentary but among the laws were:
If the
master of an estate or its mistress has defaulted on the tax of said estate,
and a stranger has borne it for three years, the owner may not be evicted but,
afterwards, the man who bore the tax of the estate will possess said estate and
the former owner cannot contest the claim.
If a
man’s wife has not borne him children, but a harlot from the public square has
borne him children, he shall provide grain, oil, and clothing for the harlot.
The children which the harlot has borne him shall be his heirs and as long as
his wife lives the harlot shall not live with the wife.
If a man
cut down a tree in the garden of another man, he shall pay one-half mina of
silver. (Duhaime, 1)
It is
unclear what motivated Lipit-Ishtar to draft his law code, but he was honored
during the reigns of his successors as a great king who defeated the Amorites
and maintained order. Hymns were written praising him and his code provided the
necessary stability up through the reign of the last king of the dynasty,
Damiq-ilishu who was overthrown by Sin-Muballit (r. 1812-1793 BCE), fifth
Amorite king of Babylon, and father of Hammurabi.
Code of
Hammurabi
Sin-Muballit
could not compete commercially with the lucrative trade center of Larsa which
was aligned with the Dynasty of Isin, so he attacked it and was defeated by its
king Rim-Sin I. The details of the peace are lost but one stipulation was that
Sin-Muballit had to abdicate in favor of his son. Hammurabi began his reign
quietly by continuing his father’s domestic policies and building programs in
and around Babylon, raising temples, and giving Rim-Sin I and the other
monarchs of the region no reason to suspect that he was also enlarging and
equipping his army and planning the campaigns that would enable him to conquer
Mesopotamia.
.webp)
Code of
Hammurabi - Detail
Code of
Hammurabi - Detail
ctj71081
(CC BY-SA)
He may
have instituted his law code c. 1772 BCE in order to ensure the kind of
stability he required at home to successfully launch these campaigns though the
date could be later. As Kriwaczek observed above, a king needed the consent of
the governed for a stable social base if he had any hope of expanding his power
and enlarging his territory. The Code of Hammurabi served this purpose by
letting the populace know precisely how they should behave to live in peace
under the law.
Whereas
the earlier law codes set fines and other fairly minor penalties for
infractions, Hammurabi’s punishments were far more severe:
If a man
put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.
If he
break another man's bone, his bone shall be broken.
If a man
knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out.
If a
builder build a house for someone, and does not construct it properly,
And the
house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put
to death.
If it
kill the son of the owner of the house, the son of that builder shall be put to
death. (Pritchard, 161)
Hammurabi’s
Code exemplifies the law of retributive justice known as Lex Talionis defined
by the concept of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. This was necessary
because the population was now even more diverse than it had been under
Lipit-Ishtar. Kriwaczek comments:
Hammurabi's
laws reflect the shock of an unprecedented social environment: the
multi-ethnic, multi-tribal Babylonian world. In earlier Sumerian-Akkadian
times, all communities had felt themselves to be joint members of the same
family, all equally servants under the eyes of the gods. In such circumstances
disputes could be settled by recourse to a collectively accepted value system,
where blood was thicker than water, and fair restitution more desirable than
revenge. Now, however, when urban citizens commonly rubbed shoulders with
nomads following a completely different way of life, when speakers of several
west Semitic Amurru languages, as well as others, were thrown together with
uncomprehending Akkadians, confrontation must all too easily have spilled over
into conflict. Vendettas and blood feuds must often have threatened the
cohesion of the empire. (180)
To
prevent the possibility of such feuds contributing to social instability,
Hammurabi made sure his laws were understood to be absolute. In the same way
that Ur-Nammu claimed he had received his laws from the gods, so did Hammurabi
but, in order for this to be perfectly clear, he had an image of the god of
justice, Shamash, engraved at the top of the stele handing the laws down to
Hammurabi. The laws which then follow down from that image in rows of cuneiform
refer back to their divine origin as well as the greatness of Hammurabi as bani
matim (“builder of the land”) who raised majestic temples to the gods, built
canals, and irrigated the lands, and who was administering these laws for the
good of all the people.
Hammurabi and Shamash
Conquest
& Consolidation
Hammurabi
had shown himself a good and just king to his people and, having won the
consent of the governed through his policies and laws, he was ready to expand
his reach. When the Elamites invaded southern Mesopotamia, Hammurabi allied
himself with Larsa and defeated them. He then quickly broke the alliance and
took the cities of Uruk and Isin, which were under Larsa’s control, and drew on
those resources to take others. Hammurabi repeatedly made alliances, kept them
as long as they served his purpose, and broke them when he found they were no
longer useful.
Once he
had conquered southern Mesopotamia, he marched north. In the most startling
display of his ability to turn on former allies, he attacked the Amorite
kingdom of Mari whose monarch, Zimri-Lim (r. 1775-1761 BCE), had supported him
from the beginning of his expansion. Throughout his campaigns, Hammurabi would
take a city – often by either damming up the water until the defenders
surrendered or damming and then releasing the water suddenly to flood the city
and create confusion just prior to attacking – and then afterwards rebuild and
refurbish it. In the case of Mari, however, he completely destroyed the city
and left it in ruins while he continued his campaigns throughout the region and
consolidated his control over the whole of Mesopotamia by 1755 BCE.
Babylon
at the time of Hammurabi
Conclusion
Hammurabi’s
code was instituted throughout the land, unifying the people under law instead
of only by conquest. Unlike the Akkadian Empire, which had found it necessary
to position hand-picked officials to administrate their conquered cities,
Hammurabi controlled his empire through law. In the prologue to his code, he
not only makes clear that these are divine laws but that he had only the
people’s best interests at heart in administering them:
When the
lofty Anu, King of the Annunaki and Bel, Lord of Heaven and Earth, he who
determines the destiny of the land, committed the rule of all mankind to
Marduk, when they pronounced the lofty name of Babylon, when they made it
famous among the quarters of the world and in its midst established an
everlasting kingdom whose foundations were firm as heaven and earth – at that
time Anu and Bel called me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, the worshipper of
the gods, to cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and
the evil, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak, to enlighten the land
and to further the welfare of the people. Hammurabi, the governor named by Bel,
am I, who brought about plenty and abundance. (Durant, 219)
The
concept of the law as an institution that protects the weak from the strong, as
a force before which all people were equal, encouraged respect and admiration
not only for the laws but also the lawgiver. Even though Hammurabi had taken
the cities through conquest, during the last five years of his reign there is
no evidence of revolt or dissent. The people recognized the laws of Hammurabi
as working in their own interest and so upheld them, encouraging further
stability and allowing for cultural advances.
Unfortunately,
the empire of laws Hammurabi had created did not survive long after his death.
His son and successor, Samsu-Iluna, who had co-ruled with him after 1755 BCE,
was not up to the task of becoming a second Hammurabi. The city-states that had
been content under Babylonian rule while the great king lived, revolted after
his death, and while they may have kept his laws in their individual
communities, they seem to have seen no need for the kind of unity Hammurabi had
created.
This lack
of unity made the city-states easy prey for invaders. The Hittites invaded in
1595 BCE and the Kassites shortly after and then the Elamites c. 1150 BCE under
their king Shutruk Nakhunte. At this time, it is thought, the stele of the Code
of Hammurabi was taken back to Elam where it would be found in 1901 CE broken
in pieces. Its influence is notable, however, in the creation of later law
codes such as the Middle Assyrian Laws, the Neo-Babylonian Laws, and the Mosaic
Law of the Bible, all of which follow the same model as Hammurabi’s code in
providing people with an objective, universal directive on how to treat others
and how one should expect to be treated in a civilized society.
Did you
like this definition?
Babylon
is the most famous city from ancient Mesopotamia, whose ruins lie in modern-day
Hillah, Iraq, 59 miles (94 km) southwest of Baghdad. The name is derived from
bav-il or bav-ilim, which in Akkadian meant "Gate of God" (or
"Gate of the Gods"), given as Babylon in Greek. In its time, it was a
great cultural and religious center and, at its height, the largest city in the
world.
The city
was referenced with awe by ancient Greek writers and was reportedly the site of
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Its reputation has been tarnished by the many unfavorable references to it in
the Bible, beginning with Genesis 11:1-9 and the story of the Tower of Babel,
associated with the Etemenanki ("House of the Foundation of Heaven and
Earth"), the great ziggurat of Babylon.
The city
also appears unfavorably in the books of Daniel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and, most
famously, the book of Revelation. Scholar Paul Kriwaczek notes that Babylon
"can blame her evil repute squarely on the Bible" (167). Although
none of these narratives speak well of the city, they were ultimately
responsible for its fame (or infamy) in the modern age, which led to its
rediscovery by the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey in 1899.
Babylon
was founded at some point prior to the reign of Sargon of Akkad (the Great,
2334-2279 BCE) and seems to have been a minor port city on the Euphrates River
until the rise of Hammurabi (reign 1792-1750 BCE), who made it the capital of
his Babylonian Empire. After Hammurabi's death, his empire quickly fell apart.
The city was sacked by the Hittites in 1595 BCE and then taken by the Kassites,
who renamed it Karanduniash.
The
earliest mention of the city comes from an inscription from the time of Sargon
of Akkad.
It was
briefly ruled by the Chaldeans (9th century BCE), whose name became synonymous
with Babylonians to later Greek writers (notably Herodotus) and biblical
scribes, and then was controlled by the Neo-Assyrian Empire (912-612 BCE)
before being taken by Nabopolassar (reign 626-605 BCE), who established the
Neo-Babylonian Empire. Babylon fell to the Persians under Cyrus II (the Great,
reign circa 550-530 BCE) and was the capital of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330
BCE) until it fell to Alexander the Great in 331 BCE.
It
continued as a trade center under the later Seleucid Empire (312-63 BCE),
Parthian Empire (247 BCE to 224 CE), and Sassanian Empire (224-651), but it
never attained the heights it had known under Hammurabi or the Neo-Babylonian
king Nebuchadnezzar II (reign 605/604-562 BCE). The city declined after the
Muslim Arab conquest in the 7th century and was finally abandoned.
It was
known only through biblical narratives and classical writers until its
discovery in the 19th century. In the 1980s, restoration attempts were made
under then-president Saddam Hussein, including a reconstruction of the Ishtar
Gate (the actual gate is presently in the Pergamon Museum of Berlin, Germany).
In 2019, the ruins of the great city were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site
Bibliography
1860 BC:
The Code of Lipit Ishtar by Lloyd Duhaime, accessed 23 Jun 2021.
Bertman,
S. Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Bottéro,
J. Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Durant,
W. Our Oriental Heritage . Simon & Schuster, 1997.
Kriwaczek,
P. Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization. St. Martin's Griffin,
2012.
Leick, G.
The A to Z of Mesopotamia . Scarecrow Press, 2010.
Pritchard,
J. B. The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, Volume I.
Princeton University Press, 2010.
Van De
Mieroop, M. A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 - 323 BC. Blackwell
Publishing, 2006.
World
History Encyclopedia is an Amazon Associate and earns a commission on
qualifying book purchases.
About the
Author
Joshua J.
Mark
Joshua J.
Mark
Joshua J.
Mark is World History Encyclopedia's co-founder and Content Director. He was
previously a professor at Marist College (NY) where he taught history,
philosophy, literature, and writing. He has traveled extensively and lived in
Greece and Germany.
With
affection,
Ruben
.webp)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.webp)
.jpg)
.jpg)
