Code of Hammurabi (Long Version)

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The Code of Hammurabi is inscribed on a diorite stela seven and a half feet tall. Diorite is a very hard, lustrous black stone that was a highly desirable material for the production of permanent, unalterable, and impressive royal monuments in ancient Mesopotamia. This diorite stela was left in an irregular, natural shape, with a flat front, uneven top profile, and rounded back. Both sides were carved, with image and text, almost in their entirety.

The text on the monument was written in Akkadian, a Babylonian-based Semitic language that was commonly spoken throughout Mesopotamia in the Old Babylonian period. Cuneiform (“wedge-shaped”) script was used to write Akkadian. On this stela, the cuneiform text was carved in a vertical orientation, as had been used to write Sumerian and early Akkadian documents. The vertical script orientation seems to have been going out of use in the Old Babylonian period, in favor of the horizontal orientation that became ubiquitous in the later Kassite period. But during the Old Babylonian period, the vertical script was retained for writing monumental texts, probably in order to create a visual connection with earlier Babylonian stelae and statues still on public display. By combining this archaic script orientation and the classic literary-prose style of the prologue and epilogue text with the contemporary style used to write the laws themselves, Hammurabi conveyed the historical legitimacy of his document while preserving the accessibility of its meaning.

Image

At the top of the monument on the front side, an engraved relief covers almost one-third of the stela's face. This engraved image shows Hammurabi standing before the god Shamash, who is seated on his throne, wearing the divine horned headdress, with the rays of the sun rising from his shoulders. Shamash was the god of justice and of the sun. In his hand, Shamash holds the “rod and ring”—traditional symbols of Mesopotamian kingship—which he offers to Hammurabi. The king holds his right hand in front of his mouth, which was a gesture of respect traditionally offered before a god. Hammurabi wears the thickly banded headdress typical of Mesopotamian rulers during the period of 2100–1700 BCE. Neither of the two figures is labeled, so it is based upon their visual attributes and the context of the text inscription that their identities are understood.

In this image Shamash is acting as a representative of all the gods, on whose behalf he bestows kingship upon Hammurabi. While Hammurabi was already well established as king of Babylon by the time this monument was carved, the image of divinely given kingship was important in justifying his rule over all his vast and diverse territory. The choice of Shamash as the gods' representative also would have provided religious legitimacy and a sense of justice to the royal authority Hammurabi used to proclaim and enforce his laws. These themes of divine legitimacy, for both Hammurabi's kingship and his lawmaking abilities, are continued and reinforced in the text of the prologue.

Prologue

The prologue of the Code of Hammurabi does not function, in the modern sense, as an introduction to or explanation of the laws. Rather, the text of the prologue is designed to glorify Hammurabi, giving importance and authority to his laws. This praise takes three forms, all of which were common on Mesopotamian royal monuments: explaining how the gods chose Hammurabi to rule, describing his admirable personal qualities, and demonstrating how he completely fulfilled his role as an ideal Mesopotamian king. This latter point is illustrated through the use of detailed examples, in which Hammurabi is described as piously restoring specific temples, venerating all the gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon individually, and providing for various named cities. All the cities and temples mentioned in this long list were under Hammurabi's territorial control. Included with each mention of a city or temple is a corresponding description of the king's relationship with the individual city god—relationships described in such terms as the god's hearing Hammurabi's prayers, the god's considering him “beloved” or “favored,” or the god's finding his offerings to be “bountiful” or “pleasing.” As with the stela's image, the overall effect of this list is to give the impression that harmonious and beneficial relationships existed between the king and all of the gods. Such relationships gave Hammurabi divine legitimacy for his kingship, for his power over vast territories, and for his law code.

Hammurabi makes this divine sanction for his law code more explicit when he emphasizes his special connection with the god Shamash. In the prologue, he compares himself and his role to that of Shamash: He is “to rise like the sun-god Shamash over all humankind, to illuminate the land.” In the epilogue, in turn, Hammurabi claims that Shamash has given him judicial wisdom: “I am Hammurabi, king of justice, to whom the god Shamash has granted (insight into) the truth.” All of these concepts were interrelated in the Babylonian idea of justice, whereby it was believed that if all facts could be brought into the light of the sun and fully seen, then the truth of a case would become obvious, and justice could be done. By saying that Shamash has given him the vision and light required to see that justice is served, Hammurabi provides the ultimate divine authority for his law code.

Laws

The Code of Hammurabi consists of 282 known laws. Because of gaps in the text caused by later damage to the stela done by the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte, it is unclear how many laws the stela originally included; there may have been as many as three hundred. On the stela, the laws are organized roughly into thematic groups, but the themes are not marked or formally divided, nor are the laws numbered. The laws are also not comprehensive: Many possible crimes (and even categories of crimes or disputes) are left undiscussed, even though very specific and elaborate descriptions of other crime scenarios are included.

This apparent disorganization exists because Hammurabi's laws do not operate as generalizable rules of behavior, in which statements such as “you will not do this” or “this is illegal” are used. Rather, Hammurabi's laws are prescriptive, with statements formulated as: “If a person does X, then Y will result.” In prescriptive law statements, the results of specific cases do not determine or extrapolate to more general rules. Thus, Hammurabi's laws were never meant to cover every eventuality. Historians cannot, therefore, assume that just because certain actions are not discussed, they were legal; indeed, records of actual law cases from the era show evidence that other laws or legal precedents were used. It is possible that the particular laws listed in the Code of Hammurabi were only the laws that the king wanted to make a particular point of decreeing with his royal authority equally across the whole kingdom. It is also possible that this law code was simply an impressive collection or sample of difficult cases that Hammurabi had personally judged, which he then selected to validate his claim, before both the gods and his subjects, that he was a king of justice.

Crimes in the Code of Hammurabi were generally punished according to a form of law known as talion law. Talion law, also known as the judicial system of retaliation (“an eye for an eye”), operates on the principle that a punishment or penalty should be in similar kind and equal severity to the original crime. This type of law was generally applied in the seminomadic and pastoral societies that lived west of Babylonia and was probably included in the Code of Hammurabi because of the king's Amorite heritage. In the code, offenses among individuals of the same social class—awilum (free people, including most craftsmen and laborers), mushkenum (commoners or dependents), and wardum (slaves)—were generally governed by talion laws. However, throughout his laws, Hammurabi emphasizes the state's right—and not the right of the victim or the victim's family—to judge the case and inflict the required punishment. Thus the government, under the rule of the king, claimed control and authority over all forms of justice, even those that had previously been the domain of the family.

The Code of Hammurabi prescribes talion punishments only to a certain extent. Punishments stronger than those usually used in talion law were also given out, particularly for liars and thieves, as well as for any low-status person who committed a crime against a person of higher rank. Liars were probably singled out for harsh punishment (usually death) owing to their active role in obscuring facts, which hindered the divinely mandated practice of seeking justice through the illumination of truth and subverted Hammurabi's royal power to oversee his kingdom. The Code of Hammurabi was also influenced by the earlier laws of Babylonian society, in which payments to the victim or victim's family were standard punishments. These types of monetary punishments were preserved in Hammurabi's law code, particularly for offenses perpetrated by high-status individuals against persons of lesser rank.

In addition to setting forth laws concerning violent criminal cases, theft, and lying, Hammurabi's code also deals in great detail with issues of land use, inheritance, adoption, slave ownership, merchant and contractor liabilities, establishing prices, loans and debts, divorce, and property disputes. These civil laws are not divided out from the criminal laws in the Code of Hammurabi, and many such civil cases have punishments equal to those stipulated for crimes where loss of person, property, or health resulted. The severe punishments meted out in some of these cases—particularly for fraud or misuse of property—supported Hammurabi's stated goals of protecting the weak from the powerful. While adult male property holders of the awilu class clearly had greater rights than others, their rights were not unlimited, and persons of lesser status could have recourse against their actions. This is particularly well illustrated in some of the laws concerning women and children: Divorced or sick wives could not be abandoned without monetary compensation, adulterous husbands were held to account, and children could not be disinherited without good cause.

Hammurabi's lengthy focus on the issues of land, economy, and contracts also demonstrates that he was fulfilling the traditional Mesopotamian royal role of being a good shepherd to his people. As a shepherd of humankind, Hammurabi's duty before the gods was to establish peace throughout the land. Peaceful communities depend not only on the absence of violent crime but also on a stable, reliable economic structure; trust in contractual relationships; and defined methods of conflict resolution—all of which Hammurabi provided through his law code. In his role as good shepherd, he was also expected to provide the necessities of life for his people. This explains the importance of land, farm animals, and mercantile activity in the laws. By legislating the fair and continuous use of resources, Hammurabi was taking an active hand in ensuring that produce yields would be high and prosperity would ensue.

Epilogue

In the epilogue, Hammurabi describes the purpose and function of his monument: It was set up “in order to render the judgments of the land, to give the verdicts of the land, and to provide just ways for the wronged.” This is the first indication in the entire text of how the monument should be used, which is further elucidated a few lines later, when Hammurabi encourages “any wronged man who has a lawsuit [to] come before the statue of me, the king of justice, and let him have my inscribed stela read aloud to him, thus may he hear my precious pronouncements and let my stela reveal the lawsuit for him.” This passage is remarkable not only because it is one of the very rare instances in which a Mesopotamian monument describes its own social function, but also because of its focus on helping the weak, oppressed, or wronged man. It was a traditional duty of Mesopotamian kings to provide justice, but this focus on justice specifically for the oppressed is undocumented in earlier Babylonian history. By virtue of Hammurabi's precedent, providing justice for the oppressed became a feature in later ancient Near Eastern law codes as well.

The majority of the epilogue is concerned with future rulers who would see the monument. Hammurabi sets himself up as an example for these future kings, who he believes should recognize and praise his wisdom. However, Hammurabi realized that future rulers were likely to destroy or remove his monument (as the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte eventually did), and so he spends the rest of the epilogue exhorting elaborate curses from the gods on anyone who would alter, displace, or destroy his stela. The use of such curses was common practice on Mesopotamian monuments as a way for kings to ensure the permanence of their stelae, the perpetual fame of their names, and the immortality of their accomplishments.