Justice: The Babylonian Definition Of Justice

At the time, it was cruel to give harsh punishments to the accused if he/she cause a minor problem and they don’t do anything to help the victim. The property laws are unnecessary to the accused and even if the accused did something on accident, they still maybe end up killing him/her. The personal injury laws don’t even help because the laws punishments are basically killing the accused or chopping off a body part. In that time, the people thought that these laws were fair, But all in all, this is why the laws in Hammurabi’s code were unjust to not only the victim and the accused, but to society as

Questions How did Babylonian law try to reconcile the needs of the state with the fact that it could not afford a large professional bureaucracy? How did the state use “volunteers”? How did it arrange for public works? Babylonian law try to reconcile the needs of the state with the fact that it could not afford a large professional bureaucracy by making it a problem between the accused and the accuser. They put set laws and whoever is wrong is the one who receives the punishment.

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” This quote by Mahatma Gandhi means that if someone does something bad to us, we shouldn’t do the same thing to them. Hammurabi, who was king of the Babylonian Empire from 1792 to 1750 BC was most famous for his code of laws that governed all parts of Mesopotamian life. His laws are important because they were the first laws that applied to everyone, although they still didn’t treat everyone the same. Hammurabi’s code is unjust because it doesn’t treat everyone the same, some punishments are too harsh, and because it doesn’t take into account intent, or why someone did the crime, whether it was on purpose or on accident.

The Hammurabi Code of Laws is a set of rules enacted by the Babylonian King whose name was Hammurabi. The Babylonian King created a total of two-hundred eighty-two punishments that the citizens will receive if they do not abide by the laws that were given to them. The king ruled from 1792 BC to 1750 BC. The Hammurabi Code of Laws is very violent in terms of punishments. For example, one of the laws are “If anyone breaks into a house to steal, he will be put to death before that point of entry and be buried there (walled into the house)”. This is a clear example of how violent and inhumane the punishments of the Babylonians were, to us at least. This essay will be explaining a set of laws from the Hammurabi’s Code of Laws.

Dating back to about 1772 BCE the Amorite King Hammurabi issued a set of laws by the name of law codes of Hammurabi(source 2.1). After conquering Mesopotamia he issued the laws. It was to place boundaries and penalties on people due to their choice of action. In source 2.1 of our book it says that, Hammurabi done it in order to “cause justice to prevail in the land” and to “further the welfare of the people which supports that idea. Just like the Magna Carta the Hammurabi law codes were put in place so that people with higher power could not take advantage of the people that was not in a high social rank. An example from the Hammurabi’s code is, “if a man accuse a man, and charge him with murder, but cannot convict him the accuser shall be put to death,”

The Law code of Hammurabi is an inscription of laws on a well preserved stele artifact. The Babylonian King Hammurabi included not only new laws but law codes from the Sumerians and Akkadians. Since Hammurabi included these ideas from previous codes this can prove that these laws were not only written but also enforced. The laws of Hammurabi have a common theme of solving problems with getting even or unjustly consequences so that they don’t go against his laws, the topics such as domestic situations, work relations, and exchange all exemplify this theme within their law.

In regards to the Hammurabi Code of Law, Hammurabi claimed that the gods had picked him to “promote the welfare of the people …to cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and evil, so that the strong might not oppress the weak…” His intention was to hold those under his rule accountable for their actions and inspire “appropriate behaviors”. In fact, according to literature, the code functioned on the principle of “lex talionis” which basically translates as the “law of retaliation”. The idea was that the punishment would fit the crime, at least in theory. Similar to today’s laws, individual judges were allowed discretion and did not always follow the code specifically. Never the less, the code was always utilized as a reference for solution. (Bentley and Zeigler, p. 30)

The Mesopotamian laws, in contrast, were hard and unfortunate, which were set by King Hammurabi himself during his long reign of Babylon. In Hammurabi's court, it did not matter if you were rich or poor, if you broke the law, and were found guilty, you would be punished and required to follow the laws and punishments that were clearly written in stone (the code of Hammurabi).

The Law Code of Hammurabi is a native Babylonian text that served as the basic law code of society. The way of life was of the former Babylonians culture is totally different than what we are used to today. The text gives readers a vision of how ancient societies lived in these times. This law code gave society a diverse arrangement for citizens to follow. The social structure isn’t about wealth, they are judged by different standards (such as trial by ordeal). The husband is the dominant role of the house. The family structure is a patriarchal household and the power of the father is absolute. The Law Code of Hammurabi gives readers a clear thought of how unfair the earlier civilization of Babylonians existed through class structures, gender relations, and family structures.

Hammurabi’s Code shows that when Hammurabi ruled the Empire of Babylon justice was typically just doing what had been done to the victim to the wrong doer. Passages 196 and 197 are perfect examples of this. Passage 196 says if a man destroys another man’s eye,

There was a king named Hammurabi. He came to power in 1792. He made a code of laws to bring justice to all. He had many laws. Hammurabi’s code was fair since it protected the weak, in law 148 it talks about a husband’s responsibility to his wife “he shall not divorce his wife whom the disease has seized” also, law 168 says that a judge shall decide what is right “if the son has not committed a grave misdemeanor... the father shall not disinherit his son.”

With the code of Hammurabi, you stood trial. If one person and one person only believed you were guilty, then not even God would save you. If the judge couldn’t determine who was the guilty and who the innocent was, you had to do some extreme things that were totally uncalled for. For example, “if any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take

There are about three hundred codes of laws and one of the principles of justice that the people had to follow was," an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. "It is "the most comprehensive set of civil, criminal, and family laws from the ancient times" (Levin, 16). This quote tells us that Hammurabi is forward and understanding how he values his ideas to make peace for the people. Hammurabi's code of laws is the most significant document from ancient Babylonian that archaeologists have found. According to Ascaso et al., "the Hammurabi Code was the earliest example of a Constitution" (760).

Everyone in Babylon was held accountable in these law codes. Hammurabi distinguished social classes in these laws, and it is clear that the severity of punishments was also determined by where a person stood in society. Considering that only a fraction of Babylonian society could read, and the people who could read were usually the upper class, perhaps not all Babylonians knew that their actions could suffer strict consequences.

So the just part of the laws are that Hammurabi is not the one to blame but the god of justice Shamash. That is why it is just and unjust. Also the evidence of this is’’shows Hammurabi standing before Shamash , the god of justice, who is seated on his throne. Shamash is instructing Hammurabi in the laws”