The Code of Hammurabi

Summary

The Code of Hammurabi is the best-known law collection of the ancient Near East. It was carved in Akkadian cuneiform on a black stone pillar, about seven feet tall, set up by Hammurabi, king of Babylon, in the eighteenth century BC. At the top a relief shows the king standing before the sun god Shamash, the god of justice. A French expedition found the pillar at Susa in Iran in the winter of 1901–1902, where it had been carried as war booty centuries after Hammurabi's death; it is now in the Louvre in Paris. The French scholar Jean-Vincent Scheil published the first translation in 1902, and the Cambridge Assyriologist C. H. W. Johns published the English version used here in 1903. The Code opens and closes with a prologue and epilogue in which the king praises the gods and his own care for his people; Johns's small book translates only the laws between them. There are some 282 laws, each in the form 'If a man has done this, then that shall follow.' They are cases, not abstract principles. The first sections punish false accusation and judges who alter their verdicts. Others deal with theft and burglary, soldiers and their land, farming and irrigation, loans and debts, trade, marriage, divorce, adoption, inheritance, assault, the fees and penalties of doctors and builders, the hire of oxen and workmen, and slaves. Several features stand out. Punishments are often harsh and often follow the rule of like for like: if a man destroys a gentleman's eye, his own eye is destroyed. Penalties also depend on rank, with different rules for gentlemen, commoners and slaves. Yet the Code also protects the weak: a debtor's family sold into service must be freed after three years; a man whose wife falls sick may take a second wife but must keep and support the first; a farmer whose crop is ruined by storm owes no interest that year. A surgeon is paid well for a successful operation and loses his hands if a gentleman dies under his knife, and a builder whose house collapses and kills its owner is put to death. Students who know the Law of Moses will notice resemblances and differences. The Code shows that written law, public and fixed, was already an ancient ideal of justice.

Top Lessons

• Law made public

  Hammurabi wrote his laws on a public monument so that anyone wronged could know his rights. Justice depends on laws that are known and fixed in advance.

• Justice and rank

  The Code punishes the same injury differently depending on whether the victim is a gentleman, a commoner or a slave. Students can compare this with the biblical teaching that the law should not favour the rich or the poor.

• Protecting the weak

  Alongside harsh penalties, the Code limits debt slavery and protects widows, orphans and sick wives. Even ancient rulers knew that law should defend the vulnerable.

• Responsibility for one's work

  Builders and doctors are held strictly responsible for harm caused by their work. Skilled people owe care to those who trust them.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Sections 215–223 set fees for surgeons and punishments for failed operations, the earliest known laws regulating medical practice.

• Sections 215–223

  Doctors' fees for successful operations graded by the patient's rank, and the loss of the surgeon's hands if a gentleman dies.