Hammurabi’s Laws
During the 18th century, our social codes would be changed forever. In Mesopotamia, King Hammurabi of Babylon created was we know as the first set of laws to establish swift justice and order among the people. Believing it was his divine duty to bring about truth, he wrote 282 codes of law that were the basis of laws we still use today. Without the Code of Hammurabi, who knows what social order would’ve been like for the last couple hundred years (if it wasn’t scary enough now). King Hammurabi believed it was his absolute purpose in life to make sure that chaos did not come upon society, sent from the gods themselves; “When the god Marduk commanded me to provide just ways for the people of the land in order to attain appropriate behavior, I established truth and justice as the declaration of the land, I enhanced
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Created during a patriarchal time in society, women were not held to the same respect as men when it came to serving justice. They were grouped with artisans and merchants if they were of normal status as far as sentencing punishment goes. If the woman was enslaved, the treatment surrounding her was much worse; “15. If a man should enable a palace slave, a palace slave woman, a commoner’s slave, or a commoner’s slave woman to leave through the main city gate, he shall be killed.” (25).
As mentioned before with the laws pertaining to the role of man and woman in marriage terms, it leads me to assume that sexual activity was a lot more of an open subject (for men at least) in society. Some of the laws even specifically say “if a man sleeps with another man’s wife” (26) like it’s an everyday occurrence! Clearly the situations had to have been brought about for Hammurabi to distinctly point them out, so sex was a huge issue then as it still is now. The sanctity of marriage existed, but it seems like only for the female was it really