World Civilizations: Mesopotamia, Part 13 - Written Law Code

Written Law Codes

Today most countries have written legal codes and they have become the norm. But this was not the case in a larger civilisational context. Egypt did not have a written law code as we shall see in the next article. Mesopotamia was the first civilization to come up with an explicitly written code of law. There are so many famous law codes instituted by various rulers - for example: Ur-Namma [2100 BCE] and Lipit Eshtar [1870 BCE] (in Sumerian language), Dadusha [1800 BCE] and Hammurabi [1750 BCE] (in Akkadian language). There are also fragments of other law codes. The most prominent among them is the code of Hammurabi because it is the most extant and best preserved. Even though it was Hammurabi himself who wrote his law code, he credited its authorship to the god Marduk, the patron god of the city of Babylon.

All these law codes have a general feature - they are retaliatory. Basically under this system of justice, what you do to someone is done back to you as justice - so it is a retaliatory law code. For example, some laws from Hammurabi read as follows:

196: If a man has destroyed the eye of a man of the gentleman class, they shall destroy his eye.

197: If a man breaks another man’s bone, his bone shall be broken.

200: If a man knocks out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out.

This is the origin of the phrase “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot” which made its way into the Hebrew Bible (1) and from there, to the Western civilization.

But if there is serious injury, you have to take life for life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a bruise for a bruise. (Bible) Exodus 21:23-25

One fascinating area of comparative study is the extent to which Mesopotamian law codes have influenced the law codes of the Jewish Bible. These resemblances look uncanny and definitely there is an influence from the Mesopotamian legal tradition on the later Hebrew civilization. Some comparisons are given below:

One can expect that laws like do not murder or commit adultery are pretty universal principles and hence are expected to be the same across all cultures even without one influencing the other. But there are other specific laws that look arbitrary but are carried forward exactly from the Mesopotamian tradition to the Biblical tradition.

Eshnunna 53: If an ox gored another ox and caused its death, the owners of the oxen shall divide between them the sale value of the living ox and the carcass of the dead one.

Bible - Exodus 21:35 - If anyone’s ox injures someone else’s ox and it dies, the two parties are to sell the live one and divide both the money and the dead animal equally1 (2)

The epilogue of Hammurabi’s and other law codes end with prosperity for those who obey the law and curses for those who disobey (3). So does the Mosaic law in the book of Exodus in the Bible. There are entire books written on this subject of the relation between the Mesopotamian and Hebraic legal traditions (4). This is not surprising because Mesopotamian culture spread throughout the Middle East and influenced several other later civilizations. The Bible tells us that the ancestor of the Hebrew peoples - Abraham - is originally from the city of Ur in Mesopotamia. This mostly reflects a pre-historic memory of the Israelites in Mesopotamia. Also, the Jews were exiled to Babylon in the neo-Babylonian empire in the sixth century BCE.

For now, let us focus on where the fundamental “eye for eye” principle takes us. There are some laws that sound irrational and weird when viewed alone but are a logical consequence of taking the eye for eye principle to its extreme. For example, law 230 in Hammurabi states that if a house that a builder builds, collapses and kills the son of the owner, then the builder’s son will be put to death. One might ask what mistake did the son make - why is the son of the builder punished instead of the builder himself? But it is a casual consequence of the eye-for-eye principle between the builder and the owner of the house he built. If the owner is killed by the house falling, then the builder of the house is killed for retaliation. If the owner loses his son, then the son of the builder is killed so that the builder experiences the same fate as the owner. This causal chain is evident in the way and the sequence in which the law is stated (5).

Hammurabi 229: If a builder builds a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.

Hammurabi 230: If it kills the son of the owner the son of that builder shall be put to death.

Hammurabi 231: If it kills a slave of the owner, then he shall pay slave for slave to the owner of the house.

Hammurabi 232: If it ruins goods, he shall make compensation for all that has been ruined, and in as much as he did not construct properly this house which he built and it fell, he shall re-erect the house from his own means.

At some times, the law seems just by modern standards but in other cases, it seems unequal (the punishment for harming a slave or a woman is lesser than that of harming a free man) and at some instances, barbaric with the eye-for-eye principle.

But we also have lots of documentations of legal cases surviving from Mesopotamian archaeology and we do not find any references to them being actually quoted or used. Also, the actual outcomes of these cases do not match with the prescription of the law codes. So what role did these law codes exactly play? Were they mere ideals or imaginations of kings? This topic is debated among scholarly circles of Mesopotamian history.

Ashurbanipal’s Library gives modern historians information regarding people of the ancient Near East. In his Outline of History, H. G. Wells calls the library “the most precious source of historical material in the world.”

References

Exodus 21:23-27

Exodus 21:35

The Code of Hammurabi

David P Wright, “Inventing God’s Law: How the Covenant Code of the Bible used and revised the laws of Hammurabi” , Oxford University Press, 2009

The Code of Hammurabi

Biblical Covenants in Their Ancient Near Eastern Context

Authored by Rama Seshan Chandra Sekaran. Published by Brhat.