Looking at the Babylon's Society during Hummurabi's regime by analyzing the Code of Hammurabi.

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Hermony Lee        第  页        5/10/2007

To:        Professor E. L. Chan

Fm:        Lee Sun wah Hermony (student number 020012)

        Contact telephone number (81028818)

CLASS:        General Western History

TOPIC

Looking at the Babylon’s Society during Hummurabi’s regime by analyzing the Code of Hammurabi
                        

CONTENTS 

Introduction        

Objective:        

Methodology:        

Approach:        

Remarks/Legends:        

God be the Judge        

The King        

Offence to the King        

King being Ultimate Beneficiary        

King being Setter of Standards        

The Elders        

D. Economical Aspect        

Introduction        

Agriculture Industries        

Agricultural        

Herd Raising        

Commerce        

Unit        

Money        

Trading        

Banking        

E. Sociological Aspect        

Social Structure        

Social Class        


Introduction

Background

Hammurabi is amongst the famous rulers in the Ancient Babylon.  The discovery of the Hammurabi Code and the legal principle it has on the western legal system is vital in many respect.  In fact, scrutinizing the code in details reveals a lot of legal principles tablete I the code is still widely adopted in many cotinential legal systems.  The Code is now recognized the oldest proved legal piece.  The introduction of the Code in the Ancient Babylon brings stability and rapid growth in those days. The author is interested to look at the society of the  Ancient Babylon as revealed in the code.

Research Problem:

1.        how did the ancient society look like?

Objective:

  1. To understand the society of Ancient Babylon by studying the code of Hammurabi. Areas of focus are:
  1. Political Aspect
  2. Economical Aspect
  3. Sociological Aspect
  1. To find out how the code of Hammurabi provides a foundation for the society to grow? 

Methodology:

Given the limited resources both in terms of manpower and time, decided to focus on analyzing contents of the Code of Hammurabi and from the Code to develop profiles of the Ancient Babylon Society.

Approach:

The Code of Hammurabi was downloaded from the web site of The Avalon Project at Yale Law School.  Extensive search were conducted over the web to trace similar research papers about the Anicent Babylon.

Content Analysis of the The Code of Hammurabi was conducted, along with web research data available.  Result is grouped under the aspects of focus.

Remarks/Legends:

Definition of Terms used in this document:

-        The Code, refer to the Code of Hammurabi.

  • Ancient Babylon, Ancient Babylon Society, that time, those days – all the terms refer to the period and society during which Hammurabi  served as the King of the Ancient Babylon.
  • (Snnn) refers to the corresponding code within the Code of Hammurabi e.g. S4 means article number of the Code of Hammurabi.

B. Hammurabi & his Codes

Hammurabi was the ruler of Ancient Babylon during 1800 B.C. His outstanding contribution is principally in establishing the greatness of Babylon - the world’s first metropolis.  He has been widely praised for formalizing the first written law system in the world.

The code was carved upon a black stone monument, eight feet high, and clearly intended to be reared in public view. This noted stone was found in the year 1901, not in Babylon, but in a city of the Persian mountains.  The Code is now on display at Louvre Mucuem.

C. Political Aspect

God

Politics and religion was closely connected in the ancient society.  Probably, this is because of inadequate knowledge about nature. This leads to fear amongst people.  Fear is a powerful weapon for rulers to maintain order and stability within their domain.  Rulers of an ancient societies, in order to legimitize and mamixise their power, always claimed to be viceregent of God.  Therefore, God and king in many respects were deemed to carry either identical status and power in regard to classes below (serfs, freed man, slaves).

Temple is the place for worshipping god and Properties belonging to the Temple equivalent to that belongs to the God.  The slightest offence against any symbol of the God would be heavily punished.  This often meant death penalty in those days.

In Ancient Babylon, the same doctrine applied.  This explains why many codes are related to God, either directly, or, indirectly by the king as agent.  Moreover, God is often referred as witness or judge in the event of accident or in the equivalent of force majeure.

I try to group the influence of God by:

  • Offence to God
  • God be the judge
  • God be the witness

Offence of God

He who steals the properties or receives knowingly the stolen proprties belonging to the God would be heavily punished (S6) (S8) (S110).

God be the Judge 

God is referred to as judge and judge of final resort. God is also the mighty one before which one should swear to claim one’s innocence. God is magnificent and it is presumed that no one facing God will  dare tell lie or behave dishonestly and therefore swearing before God often confers innocence (S103, S266, S107, S249). One’s claim against someone will also be regarded when swearing in front of God (S120).

God be the Witness

God is also witness for testimony and in times for someone to attest affidavit (S106).  It is interesting to note in some cases such claims are deemed genuine and unchallenged, in other words, the act itself would be final and conclusive (S126)(S240)

God be the Final Resort

The temple is symbolic presence of god and the temple buys prisoner on war (S32) 

The King

The army is essential in defending the country and in protecting the king’s interest.  Hammurabi was quick to spot this.  He needs the soldiers to be loyal and supportive to him.  For this he needed to protect the soldiers’ interest. Within the army the key is chieftain.  Therefore, he needs to protect the chieftain to reinforce the center piece of the hierarchy.  As such, he built into the Code many provisions which protect the chieftain.  A chieftain’s property while he goes to the battle field and when he returns home safely are carefully regulated (S27).  By law, His property should be passed to his son should the chieftain be caught at war (S28).  Every endeavour should also be taken to save a chieftain caught in war and a general provision is there to provide incentive for such act by merchants (S32).

Offence to the King

Hammurabi formalized the Code.  It is of course to this interest to include provisions to protect his own interest in addition to issues of public concerns.

In this regard, one who offends the King would be punished and of course Babylon people are at the mercy of the King.

There is provision relating to military service whereby one who has been ordered to be engaged for war would be put to death if he hired mercenary but withheld the compensation (S26)

To ensure his soldiers be ease in mind whilst engaging at war, there is also provision to punish anyone who wants to take advantage of a captain (S34)

The King would give gifts to chieftains in recognition of distinguished performance. The give-away is normally in form of cattle and sheep.  These items are not for sale and one who buys for such item will lose his money (S35).

King being Ultimate Beneficiary

The king is also the beneficiary to some unwarranted properties.  The Code allows a man, who had found his wife be surprised with another man, to pardon his wife and make her the king’s slave. (S129)

King being Setter of Standards

The king is also a setter of standard to avoid dispute that may otherwise arise.  The setting of standard provides yardstick for transaction and clarity for course of action.  This generally expedites activities.

Interestingly, interest on judgment (i.e. when one is at default in meeting one’s obligation, the interest on the defaulted loan shall be levied per the Royal Tariff (S51).  The instatement of standard default interest rate further rule out possibility of the creditor from manipulating interest rate to the detriment of the debtor.

The Elders

There are limited information about Elders in regard to their political influence.  It seems the Elders are respected ones’ for their knowledge, experience & wisdom. The Elders often act in the capacity of informal judge, probably in less severe cases. They are privileged to impose fine (S4) and where false action is brought in front of the Elders, the one who falsifies would be put to death (S3)

D. Economical Aspect

Introduction

The Babylonian economy was booming in those days. Trading activities were enormous.  Primary production, in the form of agriculture, gardening and running of Shepard & hardship were all very advanced.

A the economy continued to expand, excessive supply were evident in benefit of mass scale of production.  This in return  leads to the prosperity for trading of surplus.  This was evidenced by a lot of codes dealing with business mechanism and its disciplines. Ancillary Services, such as banking, shipping, transportation and warehousing were all highly developed to facilitate logistics movement and money flow.

The following paragraphs cover some areas of interest relating to the economic aspects reflected by the Code.

Gold Standard

Agriculture Industries

Agricultural

Agricultural industry was well established. Such development was reflected by the sophistication of land usage as evidenced in the Code.

Role of Ox

Ox was the primary source of force for agriculture. There are many codes dealing with the hiring, fee of hiring ox and also clearly determine the rights and responsibilities of the respective parties to the contract. The role of ox was so important to Babylon economy such that surgery would be performed to save the animal instead of dumping it. Interestingly, the Code also provides for the liability caused by the Ox due to negligence and of accident.

If any one impresses an ox for forced labor, he shall pay one-third of a mina in money (S241), Rate of hiring oxen for plow-oxena year is fixed at four gur of corn  (S242). Probably, lions were commonly found in the Ancient Babylon.  Lions took oxen as food.  To alleviate hirers’ concern about their liability, the Code provides for the loss  (in case a hired ox be killed in the field by a lion), be rested upon the ox owner (S244).  

However, one who is found to have mistreated a hired ox and caused its death would be required to compensate the ox owner (S245).  This extends to the case of hurting the ox to an extent that the ox becomes dysfunctional (S246), whether intentional or not, the hirer would have to compensate the ox-owner.  

Where the extent of hurt does not make the ox dysfunctional, different rates would apply on hurts being caused on different parts of the body (S247).  The elaborative details on hiring ox and damages thereto reflected that ox-hiring was very common in Ancient Babylon.  

In those days, ox was an animal and was required to run heavy duty in field, rate of casualty (S249), getting hurt was high as much as it would hurt somebody by accident (S248) (S250) (S251), it was imperative to set standard for assessment of damages to the hiring parties or to innocent third parties, so as to remove uncertainty.

Types of corps

In those days, main corps were grain, corn and sesame.  They are essential for daily life and are mentioned in many codes: (S4), (S43), (S44), (S46), (S48), (S49), (S50), (S51), (S52), (S53), (S54), (S55), (S58), (S62), (S108), S(113), S(114), (S115), (S120), (S121), (S239), (S242), (S243), (S253), (S257), (S258), (S261), (S271), (S272).

Of these, corn is mentioned most to suggest that corn was the principal food for the Babylonian people. Corn is as valuable as money in safe custody.  Unlike sesame and grain, corn can stand tougher weather and inferior storage condition (S113).

These corps were also used as medium of exchange in business transactions (S46) (S49) (S51) (S108), even in fine (S4) (S43) (S44), in parallel with money in the Agricultural society.

There are also provisions to deal with misstatement of ownership over corn (S114)

Herd Raising

Herd-raising was another important industry in Ancient Babylon. Animals raised were sheep, cattle, ass, pig & goat.

Herdsman worked mainly as contractor for stockholder but receive fixed rate remuneration (S261). In this regard, a herdsman is liable for the care taking of the herd entrusted (S263).  The Code even deals with the birth of animals when the flock is being taken care by herdsman (S264) (S265).  It extends to specify the liability of the herdsman when any member of herd hurt any person (S267).

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Commerce

Unit

  1. Area

“Gan”is measurement unit for  area in field (S44). “Sar” appears to be a  measurement unit and is used more in house-building (S56).

  1. Weight & Volume

“Gur” is a measurement unit for corn and grain (S44) (S56) (S57) (S63) (S121) (S234) (S239) (S242) (S243) (S255) (S257) (S258) (S261).  This is no reference to indicate if this is a unit of weight or just unit of volume (like barrel).

There is reference to another unit known as “Ka”.  Specifically, it provides “ If any one store corn in anotm storage at the ...

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