Code Hammurabi, When Revenge Becomes The Law

What would the world be like, if those mafia stories ever became law?

Imagine a world where the basis of judiciary was revenge for wrong-doings. And I’m not even talking about financial compensations. I mean literal an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth law.

This law did exist at some point in history. It’s called Code Hammurabi of Babylon.

Who is Hammurabi anyway…?

Hammurabi was on Babylon’s ancient rulers, living around 1800 B.C. Yes, that is almost 3800 years ago! Let’s just be grateful that it wasn’t a jungle back then.

But Hammurabi wasn’t just a regular ruler, in a long chain of forgotten ancients. He was quite significant, and pretty much responsible for starting what was to be eventually known as the great Babylonian Empire.

It should be taken into consideration, that Babylon was just a few cities large back then. And it was surrounded by many different kingdoms, where almost all of them would be wiped out during Hammurabi’s rule.

Interesting isn’t it? You’d think that a violent power drive would push Hammurabi of Babylon to conquer, right? Wrong.

The wars that wiped out neighboring kingdoms, and established and expanded Babylon, were basically a series of revenge matches…

At least we now know where the vengeful mindset comes from.

The surrounding Kingdoms.

It all started with the Kingdom of Elam, which conquered the neighboring Kingdom of Eshunna. Being a congregation of city states that were around this area, Hammurabi was aware that Babylon would be targeted next….

And it was. And so with the allied efforts of another Kingdom, that being of Larsa, the Kingdom of Elam was crushed. So that’s one vendetta there for you.

It doesn’t stop there. Apparently, Hammurabi was pissed at the fact that Larsa didn’t contribute appropriately to the way against Elam. 

So Larsa was crushed too. That’s another vendetta.

Hammurabi also had northern allies, of Mari and Yamhad that would take care of northern threats while he tended to the south (the position of his Kingdom). But there was extreme unrest there, and the incompetence made Hammurabi restless. So guess what happened to those two states…

Brutality, and the Hammurabi code of law.

Hammurabi was quite harsh with his external policy. Same applied to domestic policy. There was to be no joking with the law.

And so you’d get the eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth law sets.

While it is one of history’s earliest recorded law codes, and while it does contain some policies which are way ahead of its time (minimum wage), most of the retaliation was harsh.

It was also quite class-centric too. The higher your social status, the more brutal the punishment.

Brutality in execution, but it wasn’t excessive. Hammurabi’s code of law valued evidence, and specifically the presumption of innocence.

Such values were to make this law as something preserved by many empires, long after the destruction of Babylon, and some would even adopt it as their own constitutions.

Such a law would be preserved, up to its discovery in the early 20^th century by archaeologists.

Ancient archaeology is wonderful, isn’t it?