Code of Hammurabi (1752 BCE)
Impact
The Code of Hammurabi had its intended impact: The kingdom was consolidated and secured, Hammurabi's rule was seen as legitimate, and his royal line was able to rule successfully over most of his kingdom for a further 155 years. The lawmaking impact of the code, however, was not so straightforward. Most actual recorded legal cases from the Old Babylonian period do not follow Hammurabi's system of justice and punishments, and the prices set for goods in his laws were never instituted. Scholars still debate why such discrepancies existed between the Code of Hammurabi and actual Old Babylonian legal practice.
Hammurabi's laws did, however, influence Babylonian legal scholarship. The laws were distributed throughout the kingdom on clay tablets, dozens of which have been recovered from excavations around Babylonia. Extracts and commentaries on the laws have also been found, some of which are roughly contemporary with the erection of the stela, and some of which date to much...
