The Code of Hammurabi was written by the sixth ruler of the Babylonian Empire, Hammurabi. Hammurabi has enacted this set of laws sometimes during his reign from 1792-1750 B.C.E, with the intention of bringing justice and righteousness to the land he is ruling. Being one of the earliest and most complete of its kind, Hammurabi’s code gives us a first-hand account to Mesopotamian core values and sense of justice, which was solely based off Gods, class inequality and revenge.
In the second law from Crime, Punishment, and Justice: “…if he sinks in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he had escaped unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death.”, it could be seen that gods influence the Babylonians greatly. Here, the sentence of the accuser, whether he’d live or die, is entirely ‘determined by God’. Babylonians culture clearly has a strong sense of faith that could be indicated by the primary role gods play in the
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It is a concept targeted completely towards revenge, where a person who has injured another person shall receive the same penalty. As fair as it may sound, this so-called law of retaliation doesn’t always apply the same for different class of people, which brings us to another major compartment of the Hammurabi’s code, class inequality.
While women were treated as equals in Mesopotamian societies-dignified and allowed to own land and properties, social classes were not. Followed up with the “Eye for an Eye” law, if a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out. But if it is an eye of a freed man or a slave, he is only charged with fines of one gold mina or half of the slave’s value.
Other aspects of violence could easily be found in the codes of Hammurabi. Punishments as harsh as hand amputation and execution could still be applied for economic