March 18, 2009 • 12 mins
The Code of Hammurabi is one of humanity's earliest, most intact code of laws. Historians continue to discuss the effects and importance of this code today. Listen in and learn more about the Code of Hammurabi in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined as always by writer Jane McGrath.
Hey there, Hey Jane. Have you ever been to the Loop?
(00:22):
I have once. Actually I had to rush through it
because I didn't have much time. But I did see
the Mona Lisa. Oh, well, did you see the Code
of Hamma Robbie. I didn't. I didn't get around to that.
It's one of those things that isn't as aesthetically appealing
as the Mona Lisa or the sundry other works of
art hanging in the Loop, but it's a pretty important
piece of well, big black stone. It's basically a big stilla,
(00:46):
which just means monument. Basically, I just kidding. It's more
important than that. It stands about a little over seven
ft tall. The monument itself isn't as important as what
actually has written on it, and it has about three
hundred laws on It's all written in sort of a
conditional if this then that format, and it's really it's
(01:08):
it's fascinating for archaeologists and historians because it's one of
the earliest and most intact codes of law that has
ever been found, and it was developed by Himurabi and
he is synonymous with Babylon, and Babylon was really one
of the first, really sort of bustling empires of the
ancient world. And he was a really intelligent ruler and
(01:29):
one of the things that he prided himself on was
being fair and just, and he really laid out his
expectations for his subjects in black and white, and the
Code of him A Rabi exemplifies this because he made
them available for everyone to see and he displayed them
in a very public place. So while Himmurabi was pretty
(01:51):
strict and he held his people accountable for their behavior
in a very severe way, there really was no excuse
for breaking the law, because you would have seen that
very clearly. And so the monument, like we said today,
is in the Louver and that's because in nineteen o
one a French archaeologist found it, and he didn't find
it in Babylon. He actually found it in a really
(02:14):
mountainous sort of remote region of Persia. And presumably it's
because one of the later conquerors who came in every
through Babylon would have taken the Code back as part
of the spoils, and it's really trophy of symbolic of
look at this very mighty empire and how it's fallen.
But what Jane and I are really interested in is
(02:35):
the code itself and what it means, not just in
the ancient Babylonian society but today. That's right, and historians
anyone who's interested in the history of law in general
love looking at the Code of Amara because it's one
of the earliest we know of. To give you an
idea of how it detailed, these laws can get um.
You look at number of fifty nine says if any man,
(02:57):
without the knowledge of the owner of a garden, fill
a tree in a garden, he shall pay half a
minor and money. This is incredibly detailed, specific law, and
this is one of the reasons why um historians actually
don't think the code stood on its own and sort
of an independent of itself, because it has these very
deep detailed laws like the one I mentioned, but it
(03:18):
doesn't have some more obvious ones that you would expect,
more overarching laws. This is what happens when you murder
someone in general, sort of something like that. But it's
it's very detailed, So historians tend to think that it
was sort of an addition to laws that were already
on the book so to speak. Um, but that have
been lost to history, so it's supplemental. And like Damon's mentioning,
(03:40):
they're so specific, one has to wonder if these laws
were written after some sort of event occurred that set
up president for needing a certain role. Like For instance,
one that struck me really interesting is this law that reads,
if a man give his child to a nurse and
the child die in her hands, but the nurse, unbeknownst
(04:00):
to the father and mother, nurse another child, then they
shall convict her of having nursed another child without the
knowledge of the father and mother. Here's the clincher, and
her breasts shall be cut off. So have I forbid
you'd be a wet nurse an ancient Babylon But um,
a law like this, really, it's just sort of smacks of, well,
something must have happened for them to have written this law.
(04:22):
It just doesn't see me later that Hammer Rabbi would have,
you know, written this as one of the codes without
some sort of precedent. Yeah, And I think historians like
we actually look at this and they say, you know, maybe, um,
there were laws on the books and everything, but that
specific cases would come up to Hammurabi himself and he
would make an executive decision that weren't addressed previously in
the law. And these decisions that he made ended up
(04:45):
being written because he was so proud of how just
he is obviously that he wrote them on the on
the books, on his stella. But also another reason why
historians saying didn't stand on its own was because there
are some inconsistencies, interestingly on the code of Hammurab. For instance,
if you were an ancient Babylon, you and me, and
I gave you like a mule for safe keeping. Thanks um,
(05:10):
So if I gave it to you, but I didn't
have any witnesses and I didn't have a contract, in
one law it says that I the giver, I don't
have a claim on the mule anymore. But in another instance,
a very the exact same kind of situation, it says
that you would be at fault and you would actually
be a thief and you would be put to death.
That's what's so funny to me about the Kurd Hamarabi,
(05:30):
not the inconsistencies. But what you were mentioning before, If
if I didn't have any proof that you had given
me this mule, there's no room for hearsay. And the
code evidence is absolutely imperative. And so I guess that's
the good news. If you are an accused perpetrator not
yet an accused criminal. You know, if they say that
(05:51):
you've stolen something in ancient Babylon, well you better have
the thing that you are thought to have stolen in
your possession. If they say that you've committed adultery, well
some peeping tom better have seen you, you know, ravishing
somebody else's wife. There has to be evidentiary support. And
once you were accused as a criminal, there were sort
(06:13):
of two ways out. One of them was death, which
will get to in justin Mena, and the other was
this sort of witchcraft trial you could undergo and the
Euphrates River, and again historians conjecture that people in ancient
Babylon hadn't really mastered the art of swimming, so you
could wade into the river and if you sank and drowned,
(06:33):
then you were guilty, and you know, good riddence. You
were dead. You were put to death. But if for
some magical reason the water was able to convey you
back to shore and you came out alive, then you
were innocent and you were allowed to keep your life.
And it's interesting they're they're creative when it came to
ways to die as well. Um. I think it was
about twenty eight different crimes weren't death in these laws.
(06:56):
They've ranged from things like robbery, adultery, maybe witchcraft similar
to what you were talking about, and even harboring or
runaway slave, which kind of warkens back to our podcast
on the underground Railroad. So in some other ways you
could die besides this interesting witchcraft or whether you sink
or swim, was burning buried alive, which is my personal
favorite or least favorite, i should say, and also impalement.
(07:20):
So they were very creative when it came aways to die.
You say that with such relish, I feel like now
I have an ally in Maya my interest in medieval
formship Georgia. Um. Anyway, for all of you out there,
you think I'm I'm a strange bird. Um. The people
in ancient Babylon had a very specific idea of justice,
and it was rooted in a code called the lex talionis,
(07:41):
which is the law of retaliation or the law of retribution.
And surely you've all heard the expression and I for
an eye, and that's exactly what lex talionis was. It
was a form of justice based on the idea that
whatever wrongdoing you pay to your neighbor, your neighbor can
(08:02):
pay back to you. But an important difference under the
Code of Hammer Rabbi is that if you created some
sort of affront to your neighbor, your neighbor couldn't be
the one to turn around and pay you back for
that misdeed. It would have to come directly from the
state government. And that was to put an end to
a cycle of wrongdoing back and forth because it came
(08:24):
from a higher power, the sort of retribution. That's really interesting. Yeah,
And another thing that really intrigues historians, especially like as
soon as they found the quote of Farmer Robbie, was
that they had known the idea of lex talionis before
from from Mosaic law, you know, from Moses, and they thought, well,
you know, this outdates Moses by a couple of hundred years,
(08:45):
So that mean that Moses got these ideas from the
Code of Hammer Robbie or from Babylonia in general, and
that idea has sort of been um pushed aside for
the idea that they both have a common source among them.
Uh So it's interesting just to see the the differences
of similarities between the two different ways of handling. You know,
if someone plucks out your eye, what do you do
in response? One important difference, though, is that under the
(09:09):
coat of hammer Robbie, class actually made a difference. So,
for instance, if I were among the upper class in
ancient Babylonia called the Amalu, and Candice was a slave
in the wordy class, and I plucked out her eye,
shouldn't she couldn't necessarily have my eye plucked out as well.
But if it was the other way around, if Candice
plucked out my eye, uh, the thing, it would be
(09:31):
much much harsher on her as a punishment. So, just
to make sure I understand this, if I plucked out
your eye, I might face certain death. But if you
pluck my eye out, you might only owe me a
small monetary mountain compensation exactly, But I have to buy
a new eye exactly. But like if I if it
happened between people the same class, you would have that
(09:53):
eye for an eye thing business going on, whereas the
Moses Mosaic law didn't have that distinction. So that's one
big thing that that historians. It's a point that historians
want to make that it's very different. So I have
a couple of friends in law school, and I'm meant
to ask them about the kind of hamor Abbie over
the weekend, and I didn't get a chance because I
was busy watching the Academy Awards. But I'm wondering if
(10:14):
any of you out there are in law school or
any lawyers who might be fans of our podcast. Um,
I'm curious to know what you study about the code
of Hammurabie, if anything in law school. I mean, I'm
sure that there's a period of time in which you
look over laws of the ancient world and how they
might still be relevant today. And I I wonder if
this eye for an eye business is just sort of
a a clever phrase that people throw around, and if
(10:37):
that's all it's been reduced to, then I would like
to propose in its place another clever phrase which is
due into others as you would have done unto you,
Because I think the golden rule, and this instance at
least is pretty similar and much nicer, you know, turn
the other cheek thing. Yeah, I would like to not
have my eye plucked out, so I'm going to not
pluck Jain's out. It's still has a lot of real
(11:00):
events today, I mean, and just thinking of at the time,
it must have seemed very fair, you know. I mean,
if you look at it from just a cold point
of view, I mean that that's fair. I guess in
a weird way of looking at it. But I think
that the people of ancient Babylon were onto something. You
can't just have your neighbors, you know, sort of propagate
(11:20):
this this misdeed cycle to each other. There has to
be a higher level of government in place to put
an end, to deal out the final saying retribution. Otherwise
you've got a society that devolves into complete chaos. And
it's interesting that Hammarabbi himself found himself so just he
expresses and there's a prologue and epilogue on the stella
that that contains the code, and he expressed, like, oh,
(11:42):
I protect the oppressed from the oppressors. And it's interesting
that he still had these laws that they did distinguish
between the classes too. He was a pretty complex guy.
And if you want to learn more about Hammurabi and
his code and the peoples of ancient Babylon, be sure
to check out our website on how stuff works dot com.
That's right, and also be sure to check out a
(12:03):
blog that how stuff works dot com is launching pretty
soon and well. One of the blogs is a stuff
you Missed in History class blog written by Yours truly
and Candice. So our blog is another place where you
can contact us with your ideas and you can comment
on the entries that we post and in the m
trump be sure to keep sending us emails at history
(12:24):
podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff
works dot com
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined as always by writer Jane McGrath.
Hey there, Hey Jane. Have you ever been to the Loop?
(00:22):
I have once. Actually I had to rush through it
because I didn't have much time. But I did see
the Mona Lisa. Oh, well, did you see the Code
of Hamma Robbie. I didn't. I didn't get around to that.
It's one of those things that isn't as aesthetically appealing
as the Mona Lisa or the sundry other works of
art hanging in the Loop, but it's a pretty important
piece of well, big black stone. It's basically a big stilla,
(00:46):
which just means monument. Basically, I just kidding. It's more
important than that. It stands about a little over seven
ft tall. The monument itself isn't as important as what
actually has written on it, and it has about three
hundred laws on It's all written in sort of a
conditional if this then that format, and it's really it's
(01:08):
it's fascinating for archaeologists and historians because it's one of
the earliest and most intact codes of law that has
ever been found, and it was developed by Himurabi and
he is synonymous with Babylon, and Babylon was really one
of the first, really sort of bustling empires of the
ancient world. And he was a really intelligent ruler and
(01:29):
one of the things that he prided himself on was
being fair and just, and he really laid out his
expectations for his subjects in black and white, and the
Code of him A Rabi exemplifies this because he made
them available for everyone to see and he displayed them
in a very public place. So while Himmurabi was pretty
(01:51):
strict and he held his people accountable for their behavior
in a very severe way, there really was no excuse
for breaking the law, because you would have seen that
very clearly. And so the monument, like we said today,
is in the Louver and that's because in nineteen o
one a French archaeologist found it, and he didn't find
it in Babylon. He actually found it in a really
(02:14):
mountainous sort of remote region of Persia. And presumably it's
because one of the later conquerors who came in every
through Babylon would have taken the Code back as part
of the spoils, and it's really trophy of symbolic of
look at this very mighty empire and how it's fallen.
But what Jane and I are really interested in is
(02:35):
the code itself and what it means, not just in
the ancient Babylonian society but today. That's right, and historians
anyone who's interested in the history of law in general
love looking at the Code of Amara because it's one
of the earliest we know of. To give you an
idea of how it detailed, these laws can get um.
You look at number of fifty nine says if any man,
(02:57):
without the knowledge of the owner of a garden, fill
a tree in a garden, he shall pay half a
minor and money. This is incredibly detailed, specific law, and
this is one of the reasons why um historians actually
don't think the code stood on its own and sort
of an independent of itself, because it has these very
deep detailed laws like the one I mentioned, but it
(03:18):
doesn't have some more obvious ones that you would expect,
more overarching laws. This is what happens when you murder
someone in general, sort of something like that. But it's
it's very detailed, So historians tend to think that it
was sort of an addition to laws that were already
on the book so to speak. Um, but that have
been lost to history, so it's supplemental. And like Damon's mentioning,
(03:40):
they're so specific, one has to wonder if these laws
were written after some sort of event occurred that set
up president for needing a certain role. Like For instance,
one that struck me really interesting is this law that reads,
if a man give his child to a nurse and
the child die in her hands, but the nurse, unbeknownst
(04:00):
to the father and mother, nurse another child, then they
shall convict her of having nursed another child without the
knowledge of the father and mother. Here's the clincher, and
her breasts shall be cut off. So have I forbid
you'd be a wet nurse an ancient Babylon But um,
a law like this, really, it's just sort of smacks of, well,
something must have happened for them to have written this law.
(04:22):
It just doesn't see me later that Hammer Rabbi would have,
you know, written this as one of the codes without
some sort of precedent. Yeah, And I think historians like
we actually look at this and they say, you know, maybe, um,
there were laws on the books and everything, but that
specific cases would come up to Hammurabi himself and he
would make an executive decision that weren't addressed previously in
the law. And these decisions that he made ended up
(04:45):
being written because he was so proud of how just
he is obviously that he wrote them on the on
the books, on his stella. But also another reason why
historians saying didn't stand on its own was because there
are some inconsistencies, interestingly on the code of Hammurab. For instance,
if you were an ancient Babylon, you and me, and
I gave you like a mule for safe keeping. Thanks um,
(05:10):
So if I gave it to you, but I didn't
have any witnesses and I didn't have a contract, in
one law it says that I the giver, I don't
have a claim on the mule anymore. But in another instance,
a very the exact same kind of situation, it says
that you would be at fault and you would actually
be a thief and you would be put to death.
That's what's so funny to me about the Kurd Hamarabi,
(05:30):
not the inconsistencies. But what you were mentioning before, If
if I didn't have any proof that you had given
me this mule, there's no room for hearsay. And the
code evidence is absolutely imperative. And so I guess that's
the good news. If you are an accused perpetrator not
yet an accused criminal. You know, if they say that
(05:51):
you've stolen something in ancient Babylon, well you better have
the thing that you are thought to have stolen in
your possession. If they say that you've committed adultery, well
some peeping tom better have seen you, you know, ravishing
somebody else's wife. There has to be evidentiary support. And
once you were accused as a criminal, there were sort
(06:13):
of two ways out. One of them was death, which
will get to in justin Mena, and the other was
this sort of witchcraft trial you could undergo and the
Euphrates River, and again historians conjecture that people in ancient
Babylon hadn't really mastered the art of swimming, so you
could wade into the river and if you sank and drowned,
(06:33):
then you were guilty, and you know, good riddence. You
were dead. You were put to death. But if for
some magical reason the water was able to convey you
back to shore and you came out alive, then you
were innocent and you were allowed to keep your life.
And it's interesting they're they're creative when it came to
ways to die as well. Um. I think it was
about twenty eight different crimes weren't death in these laws.
(06:56):
They've ranged from things like robbery, adultery, maybe witchcraft similar
to what you were talking about, and even harboring or
runaway slave, which kind of warkens back to our podcast
on the underground Railroad. So in some other ways you
could die besides this interesting witchcraft or whether you sink
or swim, was burning buried alive, which is my personal
favorite or least favorite, i should say, and also impalement.
(07:20):
So they were very creative when it came aways to die.
You say that with such relish, I feel like now
I have an ally in Maya my interest in medieval
formship Georgia. Um. Anyway, for all of you out there,
you think I'm I'm a strange bird. Um. The people
in ancient Babylon had a very specific idea of justice,
and it was rooted in a code called the lex talionis,
(07:41):
which is the law of retaliation or the law of retribution.
And surely you've all heard the expression and I for
an eye, and that's exactly what lex talionis was. It
was a form of justice based on the idea that
whatever wrongdoing you pay to your neighbor, your neighbor can
(08:02):
pay back to you. But an important difference under the
Code of Hammer Rabbi is that if you created some
sort of affront to your neighbor, your neighbor couldn't be
the one to turn around and pay you back for
that misdeed. It would have to come directly from the
state government. And that was to put an end to
a cycle of wrongdoing back and forth because it came
(08:24):
from a higher power, the sort of retribution. That's really interesting. Yeah,
And another thing that really intrigues historians, especially like as
soon as they found the quote of Farmer Robbie, was
that they had known the idea of lex talionis before
from from Mosaic law, you know, from Moses, and they thought, well,
you know, this outdates Moses by a couple of hundred years,
(08:45):
So that mean that Moses got these ideas from the
Code of Hammer Robbie or from Babylonia in general, and
that idea has sort of been um pushed aside for
the idea that they both have a common source among them.
Uh So it's interesting just to see the the differences
of similarities between the two different ways of handling. You know,
if someone plucks out your eye, what do you do
in response? One important difference, though, is that under the
(09:09):
coat of hammer Robbie, class actually made a difference. So,
for instance, if I were among the upper class in
ancient Babylonia called the Amalu, and Candice was a slave
in the wordy class, and I plucked out her eye,
shouldn't she couldn't necessarily have my eye plucked out as well.
But if it was the other way around, if Candice
plucked out my eye, uh, the thing, it would be
(09:31):
much much harsher on her as a punishment. So, just
to make sure I understand this, if I plucked out
your eye, I might face certain death. But if you
pluck my eye out, you might only owe me a
small monetary mountain compensation exactly, But I have to buy
a new eye exactly. But like if I if it
happened between people the same class, you would have that
(09:53):
eye for an eye thing business going on, whereas the
Moses Mosaic law didn't have that distinction. So that's one
big thing that that historians. It's a point that historians
want to make that it's very different. So I have
a couple of friends in law school, and I'm meant
to ask them about the kind of hamor Abbie over
the weekend, and I didn't get a chance because I
was busy watching the Academy Awards. But I'm wondering if
(10:14):
any of you out there are in law school or
any lawyers who might be fans of our podcast. Um,
I'm curious to know what you study about the code
of Hammurabie, if anything in law school. I mean, I'm
sure that there's a period of time in which you
look over laws of the ancient world and how they
might still be relevant today. And I I wonder if
this eye for an eye business is just sort of
a a clever phrase that people throw around, and if
(10:37):
that's all it's been reduced to, then I would like
to propose in its place another clever phrase which is
due into others as you would have done unto you,
Because I think the golden rule, and this instance at
least is pretty similar and much nicer, you know, turn
the other cheek thing. Yeah, I would like to not
have my eye plucked out, so I'm going to not
pluck Jain's out. It's still has a lot of real
(11:00):
events today, I mean, and just thinking of at the time,
it must have seemed very fair, you know. I mean,
if you look at it from just a cold point
of view, I mean that that's fair. I guess in
a weird way of looking at it. But I think
that the people of ancient Babylon were onto something. You
can't just have your neighbors, you know, sort of propagate
(11:20):
this this misdeed cycle to each other. There has to
be a higher level of government in place to put
an end, to deal out the final saying retribution. Otherwise
you've got a society that devolves into complete chaos. And
it's interesting that Hammarabbi himself found himself so just he
expresses and there's a prologue and epilogue on the stella
that that contains the code, and he expressed, like, oh,
(11:42):
I protect the oppressed from the oppressors. And it's interesting
that he still had these laws that they did distinguish
between the classes too. He was a pretty complex guy.
And if you want to learn more about Hammurabi and
his code and the peoples of ancient Babylon, be sure
to check out our website on how stuff works dot com.
That's right, and also be sure to check out a
(12:03):
blog that how stuff works dot com is launching pretty
soon and well. One of the blogs is a stuff
you Missed in History class blog written by Yours truly
and Candice. So our blog is another place where you
can contact us with your ideas and you can comment
on the entries that we post and in the m
trump be sure to keep sending us emails at history
(12:24):
podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff
works dot com
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