Hammurabi combined his military and political advances with irrigation projects and the construction of fortifications and temples celebrating the patron deity of Babylon, Marduk. Hammurabi`s time Babylon is now buried beneath the region`s water table, and all the records he kept have long since been dissolved, but clay tablets discovered at other ancient sites give a glimpse into the king`s personality and statesman. Wolfram von Soden, who decades earlier called this way of thinking enumerating science,[119] often denigrated it. [120] However, recent authors such as Marc Van De Mieroop, Jean Bottero and Ann Guinan have either avoided value judgments or expressed admiration. Lists were at the heart of Mesopotamian science and logic, and their strong structural principles made it possible to generate endless entries. [118] The connection between the codex and the writing tradition in which the “science of lists” was born also explains why aspiring writers have copied and studied it for more than a millennium. [24] The codex appears at the end of the Babylonian (7th-6th century BC). List of literary and scientific texts. [121] No other body of law has been so firmly anchored in the curriculum.
[122] Instead of a legal code, it can therefore be a scientific treatise. [100] However, the arguments against this view are strong. First, it would result in a very unusual code – Reuven Yaron called the term “code” a “persistent misnomer.” [95] Important sectors of society and commerce are left out. [96] Marc Van De Mieroop, for example, notes that the Code “deals with livestock and agricultural fields, but almost completely ignores the work of herders, which is vital to the economy of Babylon.” [97] Second, contrary to legislative theory, highly implausible circumstances are generally recorded, such as threshing with goats, animals that are far too unruly for this task (Bill 270). [98] The laws are also strictly casuistic (“si. then”); Unlike the Mosaic law, there are no apodictic laws (general commandments). These would more clearly indicate a prescriptive law. The strongest argument against the legislative theory, however, is that most judges seem to have ignored the code.This criticism comes from Benno Landsberger in 1950. [87] No Mesopotamian legal document makes explicit reference to the Code or any other statute book,[92] despite the large size of the corpus. [99] Two references to recipes on “a stele” (narû)[100] come closest to each other. On the other hand, many judgments cite royal decrees of mīšarum. [92] Raymond Westbrook argued that this reinforced the silence argument that the ancient legal codes of the Middle East had legal significance. [101] Moreover, many ancient Babylonian judgments completely contradict the provisions of the Codex. [102] You`ve probably heard of the old “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” law. For a while, people thought that this idea, called lex talionis (law of vengeance), came from Moses and Hebrew law. The discovery of Hammurabi`s code raised doubts about this.
The codex not only contained lex talionis, but literally dictated such laws for eyes and teeth. If one extended the eye of the other, he would lose an eye. The same was true for teeth and bones. While this may be a bit weird for our modern feelings, it was perfectly rational and fair – at least for Hammurabi. Urartian stelae were freestanding stone obelisks that served various purposes and were erected in the Iron Age realm that existed in the Armenian highlands of modern Armenia, Turkey and Iran between the 9th and 6th centuries BC. Some were located in temple complexes, in monumental rock niches (such as the niche of the Rock of Van, discovered by Marr and Orbeli in 1916[11]) or were built next to tombs. Others stood in isolated positions and, like the Kelashin stele, had a memory function or served as milestones. Although sometimes simple, most bore a cuneiform inscription that would describe in detail the function of the stele or the reasons for its construction. The stele of the “western niche” of Van contained annals of the reign of Sarduri II, with events described in detail each year and separated each year by the phrase “For the god Haldi, I did these deeds”. [11] Urartian stelae are sometimes reused as Christian Armenian tombstones or as spolia in Armenian churches – Maranci suggests that this reuse was a conscious desire to harness the power of the past.
[12] Some scholars have suggested that Urartian stelae may have influenced the development of Armenian khachkar. [13] The Code is often referred to in case law, where its provisions are considered statutes and the document is considered a true code of law. This also applies outside of science. [181] Some authors falsely claim that the Hammurabi Code is the oldest legal code. [182] All emphasize its importance and positive qualities: the Louvre, for example, calls it “the emblem of Mesopotamian civilization.” [13] The Iraqi human rights organization Hammurabi was named after the code. [183] It is not clear whether your-Nammu wrote and published his Code of Law or whether it was published by Shulgi after his father`s death, but the stability he offered continued throughout the Third Dynasty of Ur until the reign of Ibbi-Sin (c. 1963-1940 BC), after which he was replaced by the Isin dynasty. which was founded by Ishbi-Erra around 1953/1940. The kingdom had become progressively weaker even before Ibbi-Sin, but during his reign it was too weak to repel the invasions of the Amorites and Elamites, which eventually brought down the third dynasty from your to your. Despite the uncertainty surrounding these issues, Hammurabi is considered an important figure in legal history outside of Assyriology, and the document is considered a true legal code. The U.S. Capitol has a relief portrait of Hammurabi alongside those of other lawmakers, and there are replicas of the stele in many institutions, including the United Nations headquarters in New York and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.