Background Essay
Hammurabi lived 40 centuries ago and he ruled for 42 years.
About 350 miles
About 1,000,000
Land-owning freeman, non-landowning freeman and slaves
The code is list of 282 laws issued by Hammurabi for the people of Babylonia
Define
City-state: An independent city, sometimes walled, and often including a territory around it.
Babylonia: The kingdom ruled by Hammurabi, it included a number of city--states and was located in Mesopotamia, along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
Mesopotamia: A region in the middle east that included modern-day Iraq and sections of modern day Turkey, Iran and Syria. Mesopotamia means land between the rivers.
Cuneiform: A kind of writing used in Sumer and Babylonia. Letters were carved into stone or soft
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Hammurabi could have been using a popular god’s name to get the people on his side.
Document B: Excerpts from the epilogue of Hammurabi’s code, circa 1754 BCE
In text citation: (hammurabi, 1754)
His purpose was to protect the weak against the strong and to give the oppressed a chance to read the law and know their rights
The god justice, shamash.
Hammurabi sks the gods to put a curse on him, his family, his land, his people, and his soldiers,
Hammurabi’s purpose was noble; he wished to protect ordinary people from the powerful. Laws and judgements that try to be fair to the weak are likely to be just
We must wait to see examples from the code, but the mere fact that this code does not come from the people, or a representative of the people, makes one cautious. Also, the last paragraph is vindictive and not fair to the subjects of “bad”rulers.
What hammurabi does not say is that he borrowed heavily from other rulers. A number of these laws
Doc c
Law 129: they will get tied together and throw them into the