Hammurabi’s Code: An Insight Into Ancient Babylon

“I wish to proclaim law throughout the land, eliminate what is bad, and prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.” These bold words of Hammurabi’s, which are part of the prologue to his eponymous code of laws, set the basis for the earliest known law code of the Near East. Hammurabi’s Code can inform modern day historians about the daily lives of early Babylonians, as through laws, issues that people came into confrontation over and the importance that certain crimes had, can be discerned.

The most famous inscription of the code can be found upon an 8 foot high diorite stele, which is now displayed in the Louvre Museum, Paris. It was discovered in 1901 at the Ancient capital of Elam, Susa. It was most likely taken there from Babylon after the Elamites captured Babylon, showing how it was respected even by an enemy king. There are also many clay letters in Cuneiform which discuss various laws and are contemporaries with the diorite stele.

Hammurabi was the sixth king of the Early Babylonian, or Sumerian dynasty, his rule commonly being recognised as being from 1792 BC to 1750 BC. At the head of the Hammurabi Code, there is a bas-relief which shows King Hammurabi receiving the laws from Shamash, the Babylonian god of Justice. This was inscribed as part of the laws to demonstrate to the people that Hammurabi had the theological authority for the laws which he imparted. This would have made these laws seem to be final and binding to many Babylonians. It is inscribed in Basic Cuneiform, which would have been a more widely understood script. This was also the script used on clay tablets inscribed with contracts, documents and receipts. The fact that the stele would have been placed in public view would have followed that such a law was unilateral and binding over all Babylonians.

Apart from the relief, the stele contains a prologue, epilogue and 282 laws, which deal with many varied areas of everyday life. The laws are organized into sections and govern issues in the family, work, property, land, prices and wages, slavery, trade, finance, outlining detailed rights, responsibilities and punishments.

The bas-relief which heads the stele is extremely significant to the code in its entirety. As mentioned earlier, it shows King Hammurabi doing obeisance to Shamash, the Babylonian god of Justice, and receiving the laws from him. This is important as it links in with the laws, and more specifically, the standard of proof required by the code. For many crimes, an accused, giving his word to god, often to Marduk the high god of Babylon, was the only standard of proof required. One example of this standard of proof can be found in Law 9 which deals with lost property, sale of lost property, and theft. In the latter part it states; “the judges shall consider their evidence, and the witnesses in whose presence the purchase was made, along with the witnesses attesting to the lost property, shall declare they know in the presence of god, and since the seller was the thief, he shall be put to death.”