Hammurabi Code

Hammurabi’s Code was a set of written laws created by the sixth king of Babylon, King Hammurabi. King Hammurabi became king after the abdication of his father, Sin-Muballit and ruled from 1792-50 B.C.E. When he was in power, he reigned over the largest empire of all Babylonian Kings, due to many victorious wars over neighboring Mesopotamian states, to the degree that he owned all of Mesopotamia at the time of his death. He is well known for his code, as it is considered one of the first written code of laws in written history. The Code of Hammurabi was written on man sized slates and consisted of 282 laws. Many of the laws concern commerce, land, and marriage. The code of Hammurabi is considered monumental, as not only were the laws set and applied to everyone but it also includes one of the

earliest examples of the presumption of innocence. However, some laws were brutal and the punishment for some small capital offenses was death, and unfair as many of the laws depended on the identity of both the lawbreaker and the victim.
The code puts emphasis on the division of the population into three classes, the Amelu, the Muskinu and the Ardu. The Amelu were of the gentleman class and consisted of the king and court, the higher officials, the professionals and the craftsmen. They had aristocratic power and responsibilities, which meant exact retaliation for corporal damage and highers fees and fines in the
case of crime and misdemeanor. The Muskinu are the free but landless. The biggest class in babylon was the Ardu, the slaves. The Ardu would be fed, clothed, and have their medical expenses paid by their masters but any fine for harm done to a man of the Ardu class would be paid to his master. The Ardu were often prisoners of war purchased from abroad and bore an identification mark. Slave owners would often make a slave girl his wife and the children he had with her would also be his slaves. If the master had no other direct family his first son would take his place as master. If a freed man were to help a slave escape, he would’ve been put to death. If a freedman returned an escaped slave to his master, the captor would’ve been paid a hefty two shekels. The Ardu class was essential to the Mesopotamian civilization in making the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers useful for irrigation as they flooded both irregularly and violently.
The list of things man or woman could be condemned death for areas follows: wrongly accusing another man, accusing a man whom was cast into the river and survived, stealing the property of the temple or court, buying from a minor or slave, not being able to pay the fine for theft of livestock, selling stolen goods to another, kidnapping the son of another, housing a runaway slave, breaking into a house, committing robbery, sleeping with a virgin betrothed woman, deceiving a barber into marking a man with the symbol of a slave wrongly, building a house that collapsed and killed its owner, being the son of a man that made a house that collapsed and killed its owner’s son, being the daughter of a man who struck a woman causing her to miscarry, commit incest, being a nun and be in a tavern, being a woman and committing adultery, committing adultery with another man’s wife, being a wife and while you husband is a prisoner of war, leaving his house while there is still sustenance, being a wife and trying to leave her husband without reason,or being a father and betrothing your daughter and then defiling her. The range of these offenses range from the understandable to the absurd. Which brings our society to the question, what is the value of a human life? At what point of crime should a man have his life taken from him? Are some lives not worth as much as others? These are questions that we struggle with today, even in America, concerning the death penalty.
The most common paraphase of Hammurabi’s Code is lex talionis, the law of retaliation, “an eye for an eye”, but this was only applicable if both involved parties were of equal rank.

As a man destroying the eye of a lower rank man or a slave was punished only by a fine and a man slapping a man of a higher class was punished by “ sixty blows with an ox-whip in public” according to the 202nd law. Also, women, although granted rights to land and divorce were punished more severely also. In most laws, their sexualities were sacrificed to ensure the legitimacy of their children. For example, men were allowed to have extramarital relationships with servants and slaves but philandering women were bound and thrown into the Euphrates along with her lover (unless her husband pardons her). The second law of Hammurabi states that an accused man could prove his innocence by jumping into the Euphrates. If he survived he was proven innocent by the gods and the accuser would be put to death. If the man died in the sacred river the accuser would come to own the dead man’s land. In other words, being a rich man who was also a swell swimmer during Hammurabi’s rule was quite

beneficial.
Among other things, Hammurabi’s Code also put price ceilings on crops and doctor fees. Farmer’s had to pay an archaic form of taxes where a percentage of their crops were contributed to the government to pay other workers. Many of laws concern the destruction and repayment of crops by others. Doctors still got paid exceptionally well for the time and got extreme bonuses for a successful attempt at surgery. The liability fees for an accident, however, were extremely high, such as losing his hands in the case of death of a patient. The cutting off of hands was common punishment amongst workers who did their jobs wrong.
The advantages of The Code of Hammurabi are that the laws were literally set in stone so that the king couldn’t change the rules as he liked. The laws were the first to entertain the idea of “innocent until proven guilty” and the laws were visible and everyone knew what the penalty for crime was, thus lower the rates of crime. The disadvantages to Hammurabi’s Code include inequality amongst the classes, difficulty in changing the law, harsh penalties, easy misinterpretation between some laws and no laws that specifically limited Hammurabi himself. While it may seem that the disadvantages widely outweigh the advantages of Hammurabi’s Code, it was vital in the evolution of how our laws are today. Could you imagine how chaotic it would be today, in this modern world of guns and violence, without any law?