Purpose of the Code of Hammurabi

It was estimated that the Code of Hammurabi was created after King Hammurabi’s thirty-eight year of rule, and it consists of a prologue, a series of 275-300 laws, and an epilogue (Van De Mieroop 100-102). Some of the most famous codes involving the concept of “’an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’” (Van De Mieroop 104), which basically means that whatever the crime, the punishment will be of equal severity (or sometimes, the punishment will be exactly the same as the crime). Obviously, the laws were not that simple: of course, if one is of higher status is committing the crime to one of a lower status, the punishments are definitely less severe, and vice versa. Only if they were of equal status did their punishments equal, and this was of great importance; in fact, this equality of punishment and crime is one of the reasons why the Code of Hammurabi is of great importance. This established a sense of justice in King Hammurabi’s rule, and Hammurabi has not failed to mention over and over that he was the just king who was the “’good shepherd’” (Van De Mieroop 98).

However, Van De Mieroop makes a very compelling argument that the purpose of the Code of Hammurabi was not to be our version of the Constitution, or the Laws of Napoleon. First of all, there were inconsistencies in the laws that were mentioned in the Code of Hammurabi. For example, “[o]ne law demands the death penalty when something is accepted for safekeeping without a proper document, because the recipient is a thief. A related law in another section of the code gives a totally different verdicts, however: ‘If a man gives goods for safekeeping without witnesses or contact and they deny that he gave it, that case has no basis for a claim’” (Van De Mieroop 106). Obviously, such inconsistency would obviously provide for some very colorful arguments in a court of justice, and so, it is probably not a law book that the people there relied on for criminal and civil justice. In addition, not all the possibilities of legal affairs were brought up in the Code of Hammurabi, and not only that, some of the simplest crimes don’t have any indication of a punishment in the codes. For example, there are codes where there is false accusations of murder, etc., but it never actually discusses the punishment for actual murder (Van De Mieroop 106-107). Finally, in documents of the court of law, it appears that the Code of Hammurabi is never actually used as the basis for the verdict, and many new “laws” have been formulated by Hammurabi himself given certain cases. Also, some of the same cases were given different punishments as a result, and so, the Code of Hammurabi was probably not used to totally standardize the punishments that are given.

Therefore, the real question is, what is its purpose? Van De Mieroop stated that possible purposes was for Hammurabi to help his people find solace in these codes that if a particular person was wronged, he or she will find justice in the near future, and all wrongs will be righted. In addition, Van De Mieroop suggests that these codes were for the reference of future kings and that these codes should be used as a guide for the rulings of future kings (Van De Mieroop 110-111). However, another possibility that Van De Mieroop probably forgot to consider was that this was possibly ANOTHER tactic for Hammurabi to control what information and history comes out of his ruling area. Because Hammurabi was dealing with so many of these small cases of injustice, he may have created these codes in order to paint a better picture of himself as a just ruler when he is not. Even if these codes were used for solace of a particular person who was wronged, they aren’t used in the court of justice, and so, why would anyone feel better about it? In addition, these codes of ruling can’t be used as guides since they are so specific to particular cases. In fact, it seems like these are the accomplishments of Hammurabi out of recent cases that he might have had to dealt with. This could be a record of the punishments he dealt out in specific cases. Yes, he has stated that these were to show that he is a just king, and indeed it does- but if someone has to explicitly say it, wouldn’t that be censorship and record-twisting to make it seem like he was a better ruler? Perhaps this was all a publicity device used to promote him as a good king for future generations.