In 1901 Jacques de Morgan, a French mining engineer, led an archaeological expedition to Persia to excavate the Elamite capital of Susa, more than 250 miles from the center of Hammurabi’s kingdom. Penalties for malpractice followed the same scheme: a doctor who killed a rich patient would have his hands cut off, while only financial restitution was required if the victim was a slave. The edicts range from family law to professional contracts and administrative law, often outlining different standards of justice for the three classes of Babylonian society-the propertied class, freedmen and slaves.Ī doctor’s fee for curing a severe wound would be 10 silver shekels for a gentleman, five shekels for a freedman and two shekels for a slave. For example, if a man steals an ox, then he must pay back 30 times its value. Moreover, despite a few primitive survivals relating to family solidarity, district responsibility, trial by ordeal, and the lex talionis (i.e., an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth), the code was advanced far beyond tribal custom and recognized no blood feud, private retribution, or marriage by capture.The 282 edicts are all written in if-then form. The existing text is in the Akkadian (Semitic) language, but, even though no Sumerian version is known to survive, the code was meant to be applied to a wider realm than any single country and to integrate Semitic and Sumerian traditions and peoples. The background of the code is a body of Sumerian law under which civilized communities had lived for many centuries. Penalties varied according to the status of the offenders and the circumstances of the offenses. These 282 case laws include economic provisions (prices, tariffs, trade, and commerce), family law (marriage and divorce), as well as criminal law (assault, theft) and civil law (slavery, debt). It consists of his legal decisions that were collected toward the end of his reign and inscribed on a diorite stela set up in Babylon’s temple of Marduk, the national god of Babylonia. SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!Ĭode of Hammurabi, the most complete and perfect extant collection of Babylonian laws, developed during the reign of Hammurabi (1792–1750 bce) of the 1st dynasty of Babylon.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them!
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