Law in Babylon

In Marc Van De Meiroop’s King Hammurabi of Babylon, we learn that King Hammurabi did his part in providing laws for his beloved land. While there may have been instances that lead us to believe he may not have been the “best” king in terms of justice, the provision of a code of laws says otherwise.

Although having laws is not unique to King Hammurabi, we see that he does his part as king by providing such laws. These laws portray his want for justice in Babylon. Some of the laws are based off of previous laws enforced from previous rulers. In order to make his own set of laws seem more original, he would make laws that parallel previous ones, such as the ruled based off of “’an eye for an eye…’” (104-105). Other times, he would simply paraphrase rules like the rule about the ox found in the kingdom of Eshnunna (109).

The laws were separated into different categories, with each category divided into subcategories. This shows how organized the king wanted his laws to be, making it easier to be read and for rules to be found. Making it easier to read and/or find shows that he genuinely wanted others to be aware of the rules and not that he wrote them for the sake of writing them.

Laws are the fundamental building blocks for a society. If the rules enforced were non-existent, Babylon would not have been as prosperous as it seemed to be.