Hammurabi

CAMILO IVÁN SUESCÚN SUÁREZ

HAMMURABI

Hammurabi was the sixth and best-known ruler of the first dynasty of Babylon (reigning 1792–50 B.C.), during his rule he extended his control overMesopotamia by conquering a series of kingdoms and he succeeded in his mission of maintaining the conquered lands in his whole rule until he died. He was considered a real king because of his remarkableinterest for his people’s well-being and his name is so famous because of his surviving set of laws considered the first promulgation of laws in human history.
Hammurabi extended his empire northward fromthe Persian Gulf through the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys and westward to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. So part of his empire was what today is known as Iraq. To achieve this conquers heinvested a lot of money in military campaigns because he knew that the rivers had a lot of agricultural productivity. Other campaigns were over control of trade routes or access to mines in Iran. Thecampaigns started with cities such as Uruk and Isin to the south, and then he focused his attention in northwest and east. He reigned for 42 years and the last 14 years of his rule where devoted towar and to obtain more territories such as the older Sumerian cities.
Although there is not much about Hammurabi’s life in history books or other sources whatsoever, he is known because of his code oflaws with his own name: Hammurabi’s code, which is supposed to have been written around 1750, an exact date is not found because the code was found many years later in 1901 by Gustave Jéquier, amember of an expedition to Iran. The Code was inscribed on stone clearly intended to be in public view. It consists of 282 laws; it begins and ends with addresses to the gods. Once it was discovered wasconsidered as a primitive form of what we now call the Constitution and it also was the earliest example of the idea of presumption of innocence; that is the popular idea that everybody is innocence...