Notes-Hammurabi

Hammurabi was king of the Mesopotamian city of Babylon around 1800 B.C.

He reunited Sumer after a period of great turmoil.

He was famous for giving judicial decisions and recording them in the form of a VERY LONG code of laws.

The laws were inscribed on an 8 ft stele (big rock), which is how we know about the laws.

Hammurabi proclaimed that he received his wisdom from the Shamash, the god of justice. He also said that one of his motivations as a lawgiver was to protect the powerless from the powerful.

Some of Hammurabi's laws:

1. If any one ensnare (accuse/frame) another, but he cannot prove it, then he that ensnared him shall be put to death.

25. If fire break out in a house, and some one who comes to put it out cast his eye upon the property of the owner of the house, and take the property of the master of the house, he shall be thrown into that self-same fire.

133. If a man is taken prisoner in war, and there is a sustenance in his house, but his wife leave house and court, and go to another house: because this wife did not keep her court, and went to another house, she shall be judicially condemned and thrown into the water.

134. If any one be captured in war and there is not sustenance in his house, if then his wife go to another house this woman shall be held blameless.

195. If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.

196. If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.

209. If a man strike a free-born woman so that she lose her unborn child, he shall pay ten shekels for her loss.

210. If the woman die, his daughter shall be put to death.

218. If a physician make a large incision with the operating knife, and kill him, or open a tumor with the operating knife, and cut out the eye, his hands shall be cut off.

219. If a physician make a large incision in the slave of a freed man, and kill him, he shall replace the slave with another slave.

229. If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.