Hammurabi's Code and Mesopotamian society

¶ … Code of Hammurabi:

Influences on History and Contemporary Law and Society

In the 1700s B.C. Hammurabi managed to do what the modern state of Britain has still not attained to this day, create a written law. Probably the first example of a legal contract or laws that were written down to suggest that they could not be changed, even by rulers and kings, Hammurabi's code signified an important step in law, society, and politics for the human race as a whole. Based on this code, researchers can draw conclusions about law, politics, and society in ancient Mesopotamia and surrounding regions, knowledge that allows students of history to determine the roots of modern political and social orders such as law, the rule of law, and different types of political systems. In order to do this, however, students of history must examine both the impact of Hammurabi's code on his own society as well as the surrounding societies. After examining the affects of the ruler's code on both societies, one can determine the importance of the code on history, modernity, and the future.

While Hammurabi's code formalized the laws of the land by literally etching them in stone, it was not the first example of law and rule of law in Mesopotamian culture. According to Veenhof's book the Law's Beginnings, Hammurabi only put into writing what had been developing as part of an oral tradition for years. With crime, real estate, and other legal issues arising from the problem of urbanization, Mesopotamia would probably not have survived if some sort of oral legal system were not in place, and Veenhof aggress that he the absence of any legislation at all during this period is unlikely and improbably (137). Still, the formalizing of the law was an important step for the Mesopotamians, having a drastic impact on their culture. For instance, Veenhof argues that the legal system in Mesopotamia must have been of a great deal of interest, since scholars had studied it for centuries, scribes and schoolteachers used it to teach, and Hammurabi finally saw the necessity of writing it down. Because of this preexisting interest in education, Hammurabi's decision to formally pen the code has cultural significance in two areas. Not only did this decision establish the law as a solid and unbreakable force that not even kings could penetrate, but also it served to give credence to the area's love for learning by encouraging the importance of the law and the necessity of its continued study. Furthermore, Veenhof suggests the decision to write the law was important because it allows a comparison between the laws of today and the ancient laws of Hammurabi, offering ambitious scholars the chance to develop an evolution of law as we know it (138).

While the laws contained in Hammurabi's law affected Mesopotamian society both by setting forth an unbreakable, equal law for all and by encouraging further legal study, the laws similarly impacted neighboring cultures. Probably the culture and society that had the most contact with the Mesopotamians were the Jews with their Mosaic law. Remarkably, the Mosaic Law and Hammurabi's code are relatively similar. Both laws are reputedly gifts of the gods or god, punish severely crimes resulting from dishonesty, including bearing a false witness or falsifying evidence against another. Both laws also allow for capital and corporal punishment for a variety of crimes, allow for retaliation, and include different punishments for those of different classes ("Comparing the Codex"). Both the code of Hammurabi and the Mosaic law were descended from a "common morality: that was inspired by "human conscious" and the "knowledge provided by creation. Hammurabi's code, which came first, may have inspired some of Mosaic law, which focused on certain rights and wrongs, and both codes also acknowledged the existence of a God and the importance of animal sacrifice ("Theological Implications").

In the chronological history of law, the next major law or code put forth was that of the Christian ruler Justinian, whose law emerged around 500 a.D. While Hammurabi's code and the Mosaic law's primary purpose was to define laws of social order that were, for the most part, already existent as an oral tradition, Justinian's law was necessary for keeping the peace in the chaos of his empire ("Theological Implications"). Because Justinian attempted to keep portions of the Mosaic law because of his own Christianity, Hammurabi's code, which influenced Mosaic law, continued to influence the legal system of cultures even into the Christian era. All three laws legislated both public and private life, including sexual life and family relations, and prescribed death as a punishment for a variety of crimes, including adultery (Norsoto). One major difference between the laws of Hammurabi, Moses, and Justinian was the "eye for an eye" concept of revenge. While this legal concept was prominent throughout Hammurabi's law, and clearly influenced concepts with the same premise in Moses' law, Justinian generally showed more compassion through sentencing, and did not include the concept in his code. Similarly, while Hammurabi's code often issued the sentence of death, and Moses' code followed suit, or at least prescribed bodily harm, the Justinian law instituted a more formal system of judges and jury in determining one's guilt, and sentences were often lenient for the first offense (Nosotro). Thus, Hammurabi's code can presently be seen in the evolution of legal systems of the cultures around him. Both the law itself, and the act of writing down the law, which can also be seen in Mosaic Law, have been passed down throughout generations and cultures because of Hammurabi's original decision.