The Code of Hammurabi
Channel: BH Audiobooks
Date: 2022-02-23

The Code of Hammurabi (also known as the Codex Hammurabi and Hammurabi's Code), created ca. 1780 B.C.E., is one of the earliest sets of laws found and one of the best preserved examples of this type of document from ancient Mesopotamia. The code is a collection of the legal decisions made by Hammurabi during his reign as king of Babylon, inscribed on a stele.

The text contains a list of crimes and their various punishments, as well as settlements for common disputes and guidelines for citizens' conduct. It focuses on theft, property damage, women's rights, marriage rights, children's rights, slave rights, murder, death, and injury. The Code does not specify a procedure for defense against charges, though it does imply one's right to present evidence. The stele was openly displayed for all to see; thus, no one could plead ignorance of the law as an excuse. Scholars presume that few people could read in that era and that much of the code was handed down through oral communication.

The laws (numbered from 1 to 282, but numbers 13, and 66-99 are missing) are inscribed in Old Babylonian on an eight foot tall stela of black diorite. It was discovered in December 1901 in Susa, Elam, which is now Khuzestan, Iran, where it had been taken as plunder by the Elamites in the twelfth century B.C.E. It is currently on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France.

URL: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Code_of_Hammurabi&oldid=1003616


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