Hammurabi's Code Dbq

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Hammurabi was the bringer of death. According to the background essay around 1800 BCE a man named Hammurabi became king of a small city-state called Babylonia.He didn’t really get along with other kings as far as more than 50 miles away. According to the map Hammurabi ruled over half of Mesopotamia . Hammurabi also ruled over a population of 1,000,000, but we are not here to talk about who Hammurabi was. We are here to answer the question did Hammurabi rule fairly? I think Hammurabi wasn’t fair because of his family Law, Property Law, and Personal Injury Law. In one section of his code it talks about Family Law, which personally I think was unjust. According to document C in Law 195 it states that if a son strikes his father his hands shall …show more content…

According to document E in Law 199 it states that if he has knocked out the eye of a slave … he shall pay half his value. First of all isn’t the point of Hammurabi’s law supposed to be protecting the strong from the weak? Then why isn’t Hammurabi doing it with this law? Imagine if this slave isn’t worth much because he is weak then it wouldn’t really hurt the man who attacked him so they knock his eye out freely because it doesn’t affect them that much. This isn’t really protecting. If anything this is protecting the weak from the weak because some of the weak can’t afford his value. This isn’t fair to the slave because the punishment isn’t that big to some of the stronger people. Another Law 218 this law seems unjust to me as well. Law 218 states that if a surgeon has operated with a bronze lancet on a free man for a serious injury, and has caused death, … his hands shall be cut off. This law would make me not want to be a surgeon which they probably needed back then i’m assuming. The patient had a serious injury that could have possibly been untreatable and now they lost a surgeon which they probably had very little of . This isn’t fair at all they didn’t even have that big of a population with very little surgeons. So this brings it down every time a patient