The Code of Hammurabi

What It Covers

Three Assyriology scholars examine the Code of Hammurabi — a nearly 300-law basalt stele carved around 1750 BC by Babylonian king Hammurabi — exploring its legal structure, social stratification system, divine authority framework, practical enforcement, and its rediscovery in 1901 and subsequent influence on modern legal tradition.

Key Questions Answered

• •Legal authority through divine framing: Hammurabi structured his laws between a prologue and epilogue invoking the gods Anu, Enlil, and Marduk to establish absolute divine mandate. The epilogue specifically called each god to curse anyone erasing Hammurabi's name using that deity's unique power — making legal legitimacy inseparable from religious consequence and deterring future rulers from appropriating the code.
• •Punishment scaled by social class, not crime alone: The code's "eye for an eye" principle applied only between members of the upper class. An upper-class person blinding a lower-class person paid a fine instead. Harming a slave cost half the slave's monetary value. Understanding this tiered system reveals that equivalence in punishment was status-dependent, not universally applied across Babylonian society.
• •River Ordeal as evidence-of-last-resort: When human judges could not resolve cases — particularly witchcraft or adultery accusations — defendants were sent into the Euphrates River, designated a divine entity with a godhood marker in cuneiform. Letters from the city of Mari confirm people genuinely died during this process, with eight defendants in one documented case abandoning their property claim after witnessing a woman drown.
• •The code functioned as judicial philosophy, not binding statute: Judges never cited the code as legal precedent in recorded decisions. Scholars interpret it as Hammurabi's vision of a just society rather than enforceable law. However, Hammurabi's own letters show him personally intervening in individual cases — including dispatching soldiers to recover a man enslaved for eight years — demonstrating active engagement with the code's underlying principles.
• •Internal contradictions reveal underlying legal principle: Two laws directly contradict each other on property deposited without witnesses — one prescribes death for the recipient, the other denies the depositor any legal claim. Examining both laws in context shows they appear in different thematic sequences, and both ultimately reinforce the same principle: always establish documented evidence with witnesses before any property transaction.