Examples Of Judgement In The Code Of Hammurabi

Judgments of Hammurabi According to Hammurabi, the god Marduk chose him to rule the land of Babylon. Hammurabi ruled ancient Mesopotamia, the land of two rivers, from 1792-1750 B.C.E. During his rule he made Babylon his capital and he wrote a law code, known as the Code of Hammurabi. It was discovered in 1901 and was written on a stone pillar. This law code set up a list of crimes and gave punishments for those crimes. It also made moral standards and distinguished the social classes. It focuses on administering justice, felons and victims, property rights, marriage and family rights, rights that protect the consumer, personal injury rights, debt slavery and the actions of wine-sellers. The laws themselves were applied to everyone, but the

There are many examples of this principle written throughout the Code of Hammurabi, a few are:under Personal Injury number 196 “if a man destroyed the eye of another man, his own eye shall be destroyed,” and written under Consumer Protection number 229 “If a builder has built a house for a man, and his work is not strong, and if the house he has built falls in and kills the householder, that builder shall be slain.” A flaw in the principle is the punishment did differ depending on the social class. For example if a normal person injured a peasant, the person would have to pay the peasant. If a person were to hurt someone of the same standing as him, the punishment was equal. In Hammurabi’s eyes, the judgments were written to be fair and equal, he was the one to determine what exactly fair and just was. Even though the punishment wasn’t as severe if a peasant was hurt, it was still a punishment that made up for the crime in some way. Hammurabi justified his judgments.Therefore, equal punishment was still the

Hammurabi was the one to write these judgments based only on what he thought was a suitable punishment for a crime. He assumed that everyone would agree with what he thought was a good punishment. Based on the writings by Hammurabi, it can also be assumed that men had the dominating role in Babylonian society. There is an entire section written for punishments for crimes against family and marriage. In the marriage and family section, the laws seem to protect the men more than the women. For example, if a woman wants to leave her husband, she may not do so unless he lets her. Also, throughout the Code of Hammurabi, the word man is used more than the word women. It distinguished between to two, favoring the men. It is often written that if a man destroys something, not a