Category: Hammurabi’s Code

The Code of Hammurabi is intriguing on numerous levels, one of which is to contrast the laws in this code and those in the Hebrew Bible. The correlation shows that the Bible was more empathetic than the Code. Coming up next is some data about the Code. The Code is unquestionably more unfair and ruthless than the scriptural laws. The Hammurabi laws contrasted significantly by the way they treated the different social classes. Rich men were dealt with as superior to all ladies, poor men, youngsters, and slaves. The Code set the discipline for some violations and mishaps with the rich men saving money.

Individuals were additionally murdered for taking a slave having a place with someone else, for undermining observers in a capital case, for helping a slave escape, and for burglary. An eye was taken from a man who took out the eye of another, and so too a bone or other body part, even a tooth. In any case, in the event that he took out a tooth of a poor man, he just paid a fine. Specialists needed to pay on the off chance that they caused hurt. On the off chance that, for instance, he caused the demise of a man’s slave he should give him another slave. On the off chance that a man hit his dad, his hand was cut off (Reading in World History, pg.2). In the event that a man slaughtered the child of someone else, his child was executed. Be that as it may, in the event that he just murdered a slave, there was a fine. A man who engaged in sexual relations with his mom is executed. A man who took a creature or ship must compensate thirty creases. In the event that the hoodlum has inadequate cash to pay the fine, he is slaughtered. In the event that a man asserts that someone else is holding property having a place with him and can’t demonstrate his case, he is murdered.

The Code mirrored some superstitious convictions of the Babylonians. Individuals were condemned to death for doing magic on another without valid justification. On the off chance that the explanation was not plainly advocated for throwing the spell, the man upon whom the spell was cast dove into ‘the sacred waterway,’ If he passes on there, it shows that the spell caster was defended, and he can return home free. In the event that he endures, it is evidence that the spell was inappropriate and the man who cast the spell is murdered. In their society as well it was.

The Twelve Tables were the primary legitimate code of the Roman Republic, drafted somewhere in the range of 451 and 450 BCE to assist resolve with clashing between well-off patricians and plebeians. These laws set up rights and obligations of Roman residents in territories of property, preliminaries, individual wrongs, open, and strict issues. Just like the Hammurabi code women were also restricted and not treated as women for example in table five “Female should remain in guardianship even when they have attained their majority” (Twelve Tables, pg 5). This can also reflect on their culture and how their outlook on women. The Romans twelve tables also played a part in their culture in specific table 10 which states “ A dead man shall not be buried or burned within the city” ( Twelve Tables, pg.6). The Romans accepted that the spirit of the dead would go underground to the waterway Styx. The spirit needed to cross the waterway. A coin was set in the mouth of the expired to pay Charon, the boatman of the black market, for the entry over.

The Ten Commandments were given to the Israelites by Moses in the Old Testament, they are as significant for Christians today. The Ten Commandments are a piece of God’s ethical law, and they are rehashed in various areas in the New Testament. They are given to devotees by God to tell us the best way to have a correct association with Him and with others. These ten rules are just as similar as the laws previously mentioned and that will be mentioned, for example. The sixth commandment is “Thou shalt not kill” and the eighth commandment is “ Neither shalt thou steal” ( The Ten Commandments, pg7). The difference though is how the punishment will be if you go against the commandment, usually, it will be something physically done, but with Christianity, you displease God which is more of a spiritual punishment.

Just as Christianity has the Ten Commandments Muslims have Islamic Law which is a segment of laws and practices under Sharia. Sharia law acts as a code of living that all Muslims should adhere to, including prayers, fasting, and donations to the poor. The Islamic culture by looking at their laws and practices put the males first while women are not valued as they should be. For example, the divorce law “ The woman who desires to be divorced needs the consent of her husband, if he consents she had to pay back the dowry” ( A segment of laws and practices under Sharia, pg. 9). Just like the code of Hammurabi they believe in an eye for an eye theory, “ Theft is punished by imprisonment or amputation of hands or feet, depending on the number of times it was committed” ( A segment of laws and practices under Sharia, pg.9).

Just like the last two mentioned, the Jews have their own commandments just like Christianity, but unlike 10, it is 613 commandments.

This document was written by Hammurabi, who was the sixth king of the Babylonian Dynasty. After reading the document, along with the codes, I feel that some of the biases Hammurabi had were unfair due to some of his laws being unjust. It seems that his laws were gender biased. An example of this is the role of women. It looks like some of these laws did not give women individual rights. Law 128 says, “If a man takes a woman to wife, but have no intercourse with her, this woman is no wife to him.” This shows that women were not treated equally as laws were based on the perspective of men and not women. These laws were unfair towards gender, so Hammurabi was biased in gender among under things.

This was written in Babylon around 1750 B.C. During the reign of Hammurabi, he began to expand his kingdom along the Euphrates River, overthrowing other kingdoms in order to unite southern Mesopotamia. After his kingdom expanded, it looks like he didn’t consider his work done. I feel that he wanted to improve the way of life for all the people in his kingdom. So, this is what led him to create this set of laws.

This document is basically describing all of Hammurabi’s code in his own word. All of the 282 laws are stated in the document as well as a message by him in the introduction and conclusion. I feel the reason why this was written was to establish control and justice towards his empire. Pretty much there is a political goal involved. I feel that the author wants people to follow his message. The intended audience at the time was the Babylonian people. So, Hammurabi made these laws thinking this was the best thing to do for the Babylonians in order to accept the authority of a king, in this case, him. He did it though, the way he wanted to. I can interpret that this kind of control was a selfish and unfair one because the king created these laws according to what he thought was right.

After reading this document, I learned that during that era, rules were much stricter and unfair than they are now. This set of laws stated in the document included all sorts of examples of unfairness towards gender and resulting punishments. Equality wasn’t a thing back then, so the level of control and discrimination was pretty high at the time.

Works Cited

1. The Code of Hammurabi, The Avalon Project At the Yale Law School: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy. New Haven, Conn. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp
2. The Code of Hammurabi, History. Nov 9, 2009. https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/hammurabi

Law code of Hammurabi has 282 law codes regarding revenge, faith in the gods, a sense of justice, and inequality all recorded on an 8ft tall stone tablet around 1700 BCE. The document I am analyzing was written by Leonard William King in 1915 and is titled Law Code of Hammurabi. Leonard William King was an English archaeologist who translated many historical documents including Babylonian religion and mythology, the seven tablets of Creation, and many more historic articles related to Babylonian society. His purpose in writing this was to narrow down all the law codes of Hammurabi and translate them for everyone to understand. This document is translated from Cuneiform to English and shows the importance of Hammurabi as a leader and all his 282 law codes. The document shows how the law code of Hammurabi is extremely strict, and almost cruel regarding wrongs against family, labor, personal property, real estate, trade, and business but on the other hand it gave the Babylonian society a sense of right and wrong. The laws were unfair to the different social classes as they treated the upper class and lower class differently.

The code of Hammurabi gives us insight into Babylonian society and how the law codes were regulating the order of the society. Hammurabi was a great leader and was sent by God to rule over men to give protection to the right and bring well-being to the oppressed. His law codes were harsh with some even sentencing him to death. The law codes can be described as unfair towards the slaves and females. The slaves were the lowest class in Babylonian society and were mostly prisoners of war or free men turned into slaves to pay depth. The code of Hammurabi punished the upper class and lower class differently as code 205 tells that,” if a slave of anyone has smitten the privates of a free-born man, his ear shall be cut off” However the law code is different for the upper class. It says that “if a man has smitten the privates of a patrician of his own rank, he shall pay one mina of silver”. A mina is estimated to be valued at three-month wages and according to today’s earnings, a mina could be worth approximately 4200 USD. Babylonian slaves had the least amount of power but the slave owners on the other hand had a sense of superiority because the law codes were in constant favor of them. If you break someone’s bone that is a slave, you must pay the owner money. If you are a slave owner, your identical bone to the other slave owner is broken. This shows how if a slave’s bone is broken then the punishment is money but if something similar happened to the upper class the similar bone is broken of the accused because the slaves weren’t considered human, they were considered as a medium of exchange and counted them among lands, cattle, vessels. Similarly, another law code says If a man killed a pregnant maidservant he was punished with a monetary fine, but if he killed a free-born pregnant woman, his own daughter would be killed as retribution. This shows how the feelings of slaves were just put down using money but if something similar happened to a man in the upper-class justice is served. The slaves were usually prisoners of war or free people who were in debt. Law code 117 says if a man is in debt and sells his wife, son, or daughter, or binds them over to service, for three years they shall work in the house of their purchaser or master; in the fourth year, they shall be given their freedom. Slaves have almost no rights, but for the few rights they do have, they also have responsibilities. The responsibility of being a slave is to cater to their master’s every need. Law number 282 says, ‘If a slave says to his master: ‘You are not my master,’ if they convict him his master shall cut off his ear.’ Similarly, code 282 states that, if a slave were to say to his master, I don’t need you then his ear would be cut off. The law codes were clearly hard on the lower class compared to the upper class.

Women were not treated quite as badly, but they are also treated unfairly, just like the slaves. The role of Babylonian women in their society, as in most cultures throughout time, was primarily that of wife, mother, and housekeeper. Women did not attend the schools run by priests or scribes unless they were royalty. Most of the Women usually stayed home and learned the household tasks they would perform when they grew up and got married. There were several laws that favored men over women. Shortly after a young girl reached puberty, her father arranged a marriage for her. Marriages were legal contracts between two families and women didn’t have a say in who they wanted to marry. After the marriage, if a woman wanted to get a divorce she had to go through a legal process as the law code 141-143 said if the woman wanted out of the marriage or if the husband wished to avoid returning the dowry the courts had to be involved. Women could only take their dowry and children and return to their father’s house if they could demonstrate their innocence and his neglect. But if she had neglected her house and husband, then he sent her away without dowry or children and if he wished, he could decide to keep her as a servant. These law codes highlight how women had to fight in courts to get a divorce whereas, on the other hand, men can even send the woman home without dowry and children or keep her as a slave if she can’t prove her innocence. The wife was considered property just as slaves were considered property and a wife’s sexual relations belonged exclusively to her husband and if any other man interfered with this, he was to be punished with the wife. The law code says, “If a man’s wife be surprised with another man, both shall be tied and thrown into the water, but the husband may pardon his wife and the king his slaves.” Even if a woman wasn’t intimate with another man, but she said no to having intercourse with her husband according to the law codes she isn’t considered his wife. Infertility was another issue that put women lower than men. The importance of having children, especially boys was so high that men were even permitted to engage in sexual relations with other women, such as the maid, just for the sake of having a child. If the child wasn’t a boy and the husband didn’t like the child, he had the option to disown the child. Another set of law codes emphasizes how if a woman loses her child due to the man being physical, the man must pay money. This gives us insight into how men were allowed to hit women as the law code 209 says, “If a man strikes a free-born woman so that she loses her unborn child, he shall pay ten shekels for her loss” but according to law code 213, “If he strike the maid-servant of a man, and she loses her child, he shall pay two shekels in the money”. This also shows how the law codes were unjust towards women but also slaves because life in a Babylonian society was worth few shekels and if a man killed the maidservant, he only must pay one-third of a mina. Law codes of Hammurabi did give women some rights with land on dowry but at the same time were completely unfair if we were to compare the rights and allowance given to men.

These are regulations that Hammurabi established so that the world, specifically Babylonian society could have a stable and fair government, but some law codes were still unfair towards the slaves and women. His law codes followed the system of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth but when the punishments were for the upper class and men, they would mostly be fines. The law codes did not allow explanations and had harsh punishments for people of different ranks therefore they were unjust and did not give society a sense of justice.

Ethical monotheism, the faith that an individual, benevolent, all-knowing God demands submission to spiritual laws of the right manner, would convert the primary system of three great world religions- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Ethical monotheism, adherence to a contractual moralistic method set ahead by an all-powerful god, is more than a creed; it is the foundation of a standard system of social justice by Hebrew monotheism and Hammurabi’s Code (Fierro, 2006).

Hebrew monotheism endured alone from other antique representations of holiness in yet another way like its ethical thrust. The Hebrews envisioned their God as the source of moral law and the arbiter of social justice. On the contrary, Hammurabi’s Code is extra cruel with the principle ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ people follow punishing and executing people. I believe the laws of these particular civilizations composed these differences because they developed. As several times in history, errors of history were used to improve the present.

The Code is far more prejudicial and brutal than the biblical rules and laws. The Hammurabi judicature separated significantly in how it approached the various social groups. Wealthy individuals were treated better than all women, poor men, children, and slaves. The Code set the sentences for various crimes and misfortunes with the wealthy men paying less (Silva, 2016).

The immense majority of The Code of Hammurabi regards capital, property, and business activities. While these are addressed in Moses, the locus on moral laws, embracing, loving, and honoring God, and taking care of man’s connection to God are great accents in Moses (Sarr, 2012).

Sanctity of human life. The Code of Hammurabi denotes a weaker prospect of human life than Moses. For example, Code of Hammurabi, the outcome of burglary is to repay ten- to thirty-fold. If that is not achievable, the criminal is beheaded. That is nevermore the predicament in Moses (Sarr, 2012).

The Code of Hammurabi differentiates from the Code of Moses, which originates from the true God, is encouraged, and reveals God’s righteous and unchanging essence.

Ethical monotheism, the faith that an individual, benevolent, all-knowing God demands submission to spiritual laws in the right manner, would convert the primary system of three great world religions

The Code is the constitution addressed by a man, we have suggested an example of a system of laws that represents man’s best attempt at fairness, and it has bloomed extremely by Hammurabi’s self-promotion and self-interest. The Code of Hammurabi differentiates from the Code of Moses, which originates from the true God, is encouraged, and reveals God’s righteous and unchanging essence.

Code of Hammurabi

The code of Hammurabi is the law that the Mesopotamians used to follow, it was a set of laws that were written by Hammurabi on a stone tablet. This is important because it showed that this civilization of Mesopotamians were advanced enough to have its own set of laws. Its effect on human development is the fact that it was one of the things that established how humans should behave in their own societies. The code also shows what Hammurabi thought were acceptable laws during this time such as killing the builder of a house if the house collapses and kills its owner due to its poor construction quality. The code also provides evidence that the Mesopotamians were more like modern times by having their own established rules.

Confucianism

Confucianism is a relationship that was going on a long time ago. It was essentially, a relationship that had the rich telling the poor what to do and the poor had to obey what the rich asked of them. In return, the rich were to be role models. In Confucian relationships the poor were unable to do anything in self-defense, they couldn’t do anything if a rich man attacked them. The poor couldn’t do anything that the rich deemed them unable to do.

Neolithic Revolution

The neolithic revolution was a revolution that brought many notable things with it, such as agriculture, cities, and specialized jobs for specific people. The neolithic revolution was important because it was the time when humans started settling down at places and started having agriculture and sedentary houses. It had a huge effect on human development, it was the reason we stopped hunting and gathering and was when we started learning how to produce our own food.

The neolithic revolution is indirectly responsible for the establishment of specialized jobs, this happened because people began to need specific things done instead of everyone hunting and gathering for survival. This also shows that this is when humans began to have civilizations that started to resemble our modern one.

Iron Weapons

Iron weapons are weapons that were made from iron when iron was discovered as being able to be turned into weapons. Iron weapons were important because they showed that human beings constantly improved things, in this case, weapons. These iron weapons were important during human development due to the fact that they were able to make weapons that were better and stronger than their previous weapons which were better for surviving during these times. These weapons were able to keep humans alive when other civilizations started attacking. Iron weapons were important because they helped different types of civilizations alive so that they could eventually thrive.

In one paragraph each, explain/summarize the topic presented and address its importance in its effect on human development.

Trade

Trade is when two ( or more ) people agree to exchange each other’s items. Trade is important because it is how many civilizations without specific resources acquired the resources that they needed. Trade helped humans in civilizations keep their civilizations alive and growing. Trade was done so that multiple parties could each get what they wanted, essentially, getting what you needed while incidentally helping out the person or country you’re trading with. Trade helped many places flourish and is also something that we still do in today’s modern society when we need something that somebody else can provide and when in return they want something we can provide.