Essay On Hammurabi's Laws

Imagine living in a city where punishment was death, or severe injury. A world like this was an ancient city called Babylonia, Babylonia was an ancient city in Mesopotamia. The ancient city was ruled by a man named Hammurabi, Hammurabi had three sets of laws, Family, Injury, and Property. Hammurabi's laws were harsh and extreme, and the longer people have lived we have realized how wrong and awful rules like this were, but in ancient Babylonia, citizens thought these rules were perfect! But truly, we can all agree how unjust these rules were.
Let's start by diving into law 129. Can you imagine being bundled up with a grown man, and being thrown into a river to drown, all for cheating on your husband? Of course now, we just would divorce, and that shows us how unjust this law was. Law 129 specifically states, "If a Married lady [in adultery] is caught with another man, they shall bind them and cast them into the water" This, as

the exact law written, is proof to how us fair the laws in Babylonia were. This law, is obviously very awful. The law explains a woman being thrown into a river were she cannot swim, for she has cheated on her husband, this helps my argument, that these laws were unfair. One way this helps my statement is, the law obviously kills a young man and woman, and of course today we have come up with much simpler laws, break up.
Next, there is the law 195, the law is, if a son has struck his father, his hands will be cut off. Now if you are looking at this from a Babylonia citizen this law is perfect for your time, but now we find these awful laws to much. These laws were cruel, and partially sad to think that a city once had to cope with laws like these. This law argues with me because is once again is clear abuse. A punishment were hands are to be chopped of would cause, extreme pain, blood loss, and may even cause death for pressure points being bothered, and organs too. We can obviously see that law 195 is cruel and unfair, and shall never be a part of our society, I hope.
Our last law is a simple property law, the law is that if a man is robbed and the robber is not caught, the man shall pray to gods for help.

Now at first this law may seem like it is fair, not harsh injuries, no death. But when you think about it, Hammurabi does nothing to help, the man just has to ask gods, who may not respond. He may not get his stuff back. To me it is almost like Hammurabi just pushing them away and saying, I'm not helping, this is not my business! And when we think about it, it is very cruel. And as I said, it is a better law for not having death, or injury, but the law does not help the man that was robbed, and the robber gets away. So if anything, this rule helps the robber and pushes away the man.
As you can see, Hammurabi's code was very well unjust, and although many of the laws were cruel and in fair, some laws were made for good reasons and were set to protect citizens. But otherwise, Hammurabi's laws were in fair, and are luckily no longer used. In conclusion the laws of the ancient Babylonia king were

unfair.