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Jair Lahens
Dr. Robert Oxely
HU 140
1 February 2010
Hammurabi’s Way to rule
Chapter one of Culture &Values, Cunningham and Reich showmany interesting ancient artifacts; one in particular caught my attention: “The Stele of Hammurabi”. It was found in 1901 by the Egyptologist Gustav Jéquier, a member of the expedition whose job was tofind rare artifacts in Egypt. The stele was discovered in what is now Khūzestān, Iran, where it had been taken as plunder by the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte in the 12th century BCE. It currentlystands seven feet, four inches tall on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. This Stele contains the code of Hammurabi, written in cuneiform; which is one of the earliest forms of writingdeveloped by the Sumerians.
This Stele was made around 1780 BCE out of polished black diorite, a costly material commonly used to make statues with important significance. The top part of the artifactshows Shamash, the sun god, dictating all the laws to King Hammurabi. This code consists of 282 laws that were established to help the Mesopotamian people live in “harmony, peace and justice”.
Wheninterpreting Hammurabi's Code, one must do so with the full conviction that these laws were created as a response to actions that were taking place in everyday Mesopotamian society. While Hammurabi'sCode was not the first set of laws, his organization and interpretation of previous laws covers many of the ills Mesopotamian people faced in the seventeenth century BCE. For example, Hammurabi's lawnumber fifty three states "If anyone be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does not so keep it; if then the dam breaks and all the fields be flooded, then shall he in whose dam the breakoccurred be sold for money, and the money shall replace the corn which he has caused to be ruined" (Johns). In accordance to this law, it can be suggested that there were problems in Mesopotamian...