![]() ![]() Then he shall obtain a receipt from the merchant for the money that he gives the merchant.”.“If a merchant gives to an agent, any commodities such as corn, wool, oil, or any other goods to transport, the agent shall give a receipt for the amount, and compensate the merchant.“If anyone is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death.”.“If a herdsman, to whose care cattle or sheep have been entrusted, be guilty of fraud and make false returns of the natural increase, or sell them for money, then shall he be convicted and pay the owner ten times the loss.”.Other laws are related to military service or the penalties for a judge who issues incorrect decisions. A third of the code deals with families and relationships such as inheritance, divorce, and sexual behavior. If one destroys the eye of a man’s slave or breaks a bone of a man’s slave, he shall pay one-half his price.”Īpproximately one-half of the code deals with matters of contract law. If one destroys the eye of a freeman or break the bone of a freeman, he shall pay one gold mina. If one breaks a man’s bone, they shall break his bone. “If a man destroys the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye. For example, the Law: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” depends on social status, of slave versus free man. The Law is set out in graded punishments. The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved law code of ancient Mesopotamia and has been found on many stele and clay tablets from the period. ![]() The Law Code of Hammurabi refers to a set of 282 rules or laws enacted by the Babylonian King Hammurabi, who reigned 1792-1750 B.C. The Law Code of Hammurabi stele is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length to be discovered. This particular example, which is nearly 4,000 years old, looks like the shape of a huge index finger with a nail and imperfect symmetry. It is a complete law code from Antiquity that pre-dates Biblical laws.Ī stele is a vertical stone monument or marker inscribed with text or with relief carving. It is a work of art, it is history, and it is literature. ![]() If the person killed was a slave, the murderer got away with a fine.įUN FACT: in the Code of Hammurabi, the so-called law of retaliation was also valid for the law concerning wine dishonest wine merchants were actually punished by being drowned in a river.The “Law Code of Hammurabi” is a Stele that was erected by the King of Babylon in the 18th century B.C. If a nobleman's son was killed by another person of the same rank, he could avenge himself by killing the perpetrator's son in return. In short, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!"Įquality of the punishment only affected people of the same social level. The norm governing the majority of the laws is the so-called law of retaliation, in other words the right to inflict damage in equal measure on those who intentionally harm you. The content covers various areas of human coexistence and different categories of offenses. The text you see on the lower part is in cuneiform characters, drawn in a very elegant hand, and contains 282 laws subdivided into articles. As you can see, the two figures are portrayed in a rigid, square fashion, very "unnatural" and typical of Babylonian art which aimed at portraying scenes and characters that were easy to recognize, with little concern to make them lifelike. The upright figure on the left is Hammurabi himself, symbolically receiving the laws from the sun god Shamash, the patron of Justice, recognizable by the flames behind him. The stele is in two parts: in the upper part you can see two figures in relief, and in the lower part the text of the laws. In addition to transforming Babylon into a rich and famous capital for the whole of Mesopotamia, Hammurabi was the first sovereign who decided to convert rules formerly passed on through the oral tradition into an actual code of laws. Basalt is an extremely hard volcanic rock that's difficult to work, so the accuracy with which the legal code is engraved is even more staggering. It was engraved in Babylon, in what is now Iraq, around 1760 BC, and was returned to the Iranian city about 3,000 years later as the spoils of war. Recovered at the beginning of the 20th century in Susa, in present-day Iran, the stele is a large block of basalt over two meters high. You are in front of one of the most exciting works in the Louvre, the stele on which the so-called Code of Hammurabi - the earliest collection of written laws in the history of man - is engraved. ![]()
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