When I was in ‘Junior High’ school – oh, so long ago – the curriculum included learning about the Code of Hammurabi. I don’t think I really understood the significance of the lessons at the time, and I have my doubts that Hammurabi is mentioned much in schools today, so let me fill any gaps in knowledge that you or I may have in this particular respect.
Hammurabi lived in Ancient
Mesopotamia, regarded today as a “cradle of civilization” in the land bordered
by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The
two rivers run almost parallel to each other; the Tigris passes through today’s
Baghdad, and both rivers flow into the Persian Gulf. Politically-speaking the area was known as
the First Empire of Babylon, and Hammurabi’s Code dates from around 1790 BCE.
Hammurabi was a lawmaker who saw
himself as a “king of justice,” and his code of laws are highly significant,
for they are recognized as the first known manifestation of the rule of law (as opposed to 'rule by law') anywhere in the world. According to
Hammurabi, law should be a source of inspiration, and he wanted all future
kings to be bound by the same set of rules.[1]
Hammurabi was also an early
believer in accessibility. The Code is
written in everyday language, and for those who weren’t literate he made sure
it was read aloud, so all could be informed. He believed in the idea of justice for
everyone. And he imagined that the laws
would last for all time.
Hammurabi not only introduced the
rule of law to the world, he also saw transparency – wrapped in the
notion of accessibility - as implicit to the legal system. There is no justice without
transparency. This concept, which began
in Mesopotamia, was continued by the Romans, for example, who ensured that all
schoolboys memorize their own code of laws known as the Law of Twelve Tables.[2] In other words, “justice” and “transparency”
have been integral to the rule of law for a very long time.
For those kings who did not abide
by Hammurabi’s rules, he set aside a series of unpleasant curses, for example:
… should a man not heed my
pronouncements which I have inscribed upon my stela, and should he slight my curses and not fear the curses of the
gods, and thus overturn the judgements that I rendered, change my pronouncements,
alter my engraved image, erase my inscribed name and inscribe his own name (in
its place) – or should he, because of fear of these curses, have someone else
do so – that man, whether he is a king,
a lord, or a governor, or any person at all,
May the great god Anu, father
of the gods, who has proclaimed my rein, deprive him of the sheen of royalty,
smash his scepter, and curse his destiny.
May the god Enlil, the lord
who determines destinies, whose utterance cannot be countermanded, who magnifies
my kingship, incite against him even in his residence disorder that cannot be
quelled and a rebellion that will result in his obliteration; may he cast as
his fate a reign of groaning, of few years, of years of famine, of darkness
without illumination, and of sudden death; may he declare with his venerable
speech the obliteration of his city, the dispersion of his people, the
supplanting of his dynasty, and the blotting out of his name and his memory from the land.[3]
And so on.
[1]
For a good introduction on Mesopotamia, see: Fernanda Pirie: The Rule of
Laws: A 4,000-Year Quest to Order the
World (New York: Basic Books, 2021), pp.17-44
[2] Ibid.,
p. 111.
[3] Martha T Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, ed. Piotr Michalowski, 2nd ed. (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997) pp. 136-137.
No comments:
Post a Comment