Babylon Laws

Code of Hammurabi is the first written law in the human history. It includes a lot of information about Babylon. You are going go to read an essay about the Babylon's social and economic life, how neolithic revolution devoloped them and signs of civilization, social stratification and comparision about todays justice and their justice according to the code of Hammurabi.

When we examine the the code of Hammurabi, we can understand Babylon's social and economic life in Babylon.

"When the loftly Anu, king of the Anunnaki gods and Enlil, lord of heaven and earth, he who determines the destiny of the land. . . . When Marduk sent me to rule the people and bring help to the country, i established law and justice in the language of the land and promoted the welfare of the people."(The Code of Hammurabi, p.21).

From these lines we can see that there is a polytheist religion in Babylon and gods are anthromoporfic in the kingdom of Hammurabi. We see that Hammurabi uses religion to have an influence on people to obey his laws as he says that he takes his power from the head god Marduk. People see Hammurabi as he was the representative of god on earth. So rebelling against Hammurabi means rebelling against god. According to 199. code, "if he destroy eye of a man's slave or broke a bone of man's slave, he shall pay one-half his price ." we see that there is social stratification in society. Also we understand that woman has some rights too when we look at code 142

"If a woman hates her husband and says:, 'You may not have me' the city council should inquire into her case; and if she have been careful and without reproach and her husband being going about greatly belittling her, that woman has no blame. She may take her downry and go to her fathers house."(The Code of Hammurabi, p.22).

It shows that Hammurabi thinks woman is important in society too. He doesn't see them as a thing only to born and provide increasing the population. Babylon's economy seem to depend on agriculture. From 53. code, "If a man neglect to maintain his dike and do not strengthen it, and a break is made in his dike and the water carry away the farmland, the man in whose dike the break has been made shall replace the grain which has been damaged."(The Code of Hammurabi, p.21) we see that agriculture is an important thing that harming it ends up with being sold to someone else.

Neolithic revolution is the main fact of devoloping. When human beings population increases they can't find enough food for themselves. People start to work on soil so they have a sedantary life. They start to get a surplus what causes a society to become complex. By surplus people need a leader to distribute it to society equally and store it in case of femine like flooding. So people get civilized. Later on time, these