[The Hammurabi Codex] represents the first known attempt to create a coherent body of abstract legislation for the whole country, encompassing various local practices and traditional law. There are several main sections (family law, including subsections on adultery, incest, divorce and inheritance; property rights and restitution; credit and rental agreements; and setting standards for fees and wages). It distinguishes fines and penalties according to the legal status of a person: free man, slave and an intermediate category. (106) How long will your-Nammu retain his place as the world`s first legislator? Maybe not for much longer. There is evidence that there were legislators in Sumer long before your-Nammu was born. Sooner or later, a lucky «digger» will find a copy of a code of law that predates your-Nammu`s by a century or more. (55) «Myth has two main functions,» wrote poet and scholar Robert Graves in 1955. The first is to answer embarrassing questions children have, such as: «Who created the world? How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death? » . The second function of . Unlike the Ur-Nammu Codex, the Lipit-Ishtar Code had to be more precise in order to meet the needs of a more complex society. Fines continue to act as a deterrent, but more detailed laws are needed for family law and commercial contracts.
It could no longer be assumed that everyone under the law was acting with the same understanding of what was good behaviour. The code of Lipit-Ishtar is also fragmentary, but among the laws were: Hammurabi, following the example of your-Nammu, claimed that his laws had been given to him by the god Shamash and had carved a stele with these laws, crowned by an image of Shamash giving them to the king, placed in the town square, where anyone who could read would have access to them; Those who could not, would have made them read it. Ignorance of the law is therefore no excuse to break it, because the laws have been promulgated publicly and can be consulted at any time. Unlike the your-Nammu code, which might presuppose a general understanding among the population, Hammurabi`s code had to be more explicit – and stricter – and it seems that its code was consulted by the courts. Leick describes the code and its provisions: Well, what is the oldest written law? What is the first set of laws made and written by man? Well, when most people talk about the early laws, they often refer to the codes of Babylon Hammurabi, as was taught to most of us in school. Finally, the first law in the world may also be: the law told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge. The first copy of the code, in two fragments found at Nippur, was translated by Samuel Kramer in 1952; Due to its partial preservation, only the prologue and 5 of the laws were recognizable. Other panels were found in your and translated in 1965, so that about 40 of the 57 laws could be rebuilt. Another copy found in Sippar contains light variants.
His family descends from the Amorites, a semi-nomadic tribe in western Syria, and his name reflects a mixture of cultures: Hammu, which means «family» in Amoritic, combined with rapi, which means «great» in Akkadian, the daily language of Babylon. Ur-Nammu understood how important it was to identify with these heroes of the past, who were no longer remembered in his time as oppressors, but as great father figures who had taken care of the country and its people. He therefore presents himself as such a father figure and establishes a patrimonial state that encourages his subjects to consider themselves as his children and all as members of the same family. However, for this model to work, the population had to accept it. Scholar Paul Kriwaczek comments: Although the people of Mesopotamia repeatedly rebelled against Sargon and his successors, Akkadian kings were revered as heroes of a golden age after the fall of the Akkadian Empire and the chaos resulting from gutish rule. The literary genre known as Mesopotamian literature Naru regularly featured Sargon or his grandson Naram-Sin (r. 2261-2224 BC) as central figures, embodying the principles of royalty or serving as warning figures on how to respect and heed the will of the gods in order to prosper. If a man to a man with a gun his bones of. Cut, 1 mina of money that he will pay.
However, there were a number of steps between the Ur-Nammu codex and that of Hammurabi and good reasons why your-Nammu`s rather benevolent code of law needed to be changed. The subjects of the Third Dynasty of your were more or less a homogeneous population of Sumerians, but at the time of the last monarch, Ibbi-Sin (r. 1963-1940 BC), the population was more diverse. This trend continued with the founding of the Isin dynasty by Ishbi-Erra around 1953/1940. Ishbi-Erra defeated the Amorites and Elamites, who had tried to fill the power vacuum after the fall of the Gutians, and some of these people now lived and worked among the Sumerians in greater numbers than before. Some of the oldest laws existed before they were drafted. As such, the oldest written law in the world is a different law from the oldest law that has ever existed. Hammurabi combined his military and political advances with irrigation projects and the construction of fortifications and temples celebrating the patron deity of Babylon, Marduk. Hammurabi`s time Babylon is now buried beneath the region`s water table, and all the records he kept have long since been dissolved, but clay tablets discovered at other ancient sites give a glimpse into the king`s personality and statesman. While earlier legal texts provided for relatively minor fines and other penalties for violations, Hammurabi`s penalties were much harsher: some modern scholars reject the term «Sumerian Renaissance,» claiming that there was never a decline requiring rebirth, but Sumerian accounts claim that the Gutian period was a time when «grass grew high on the roads of the earth» and no seeds were cultivated or No fish caught. and there was no wine or syrup due to mismanagement under Gutian rule (Kriwaczek, 130-135).
Ur-Nammu, posing as the true successor of the Sargonids, revived the country through its policies, which included public parks, irrigated orchards and gardens in and around cities and patronage of the arts. He restored or at least improved the Sumerian economy by offering jobs to all who wanted or needed them. Scholar Marc van de Mieroop comments: After conquering southern Mesopotamia, he walked north. In the most astonishing demonstration of his ability to turn against former allies, he attacked the Amorite kingdom of Mari, whose monarch Zimri-Lim (r. 1775-1761 BC) had supported him from the beginning of its expansion. During his campaigns, Hammurabi took a city – often either by damming the water until the defenders surrendered, or by damming the water and then suddenly releasing it to flood the city and create confusion just before the attack – and then rebuilding and renovating it.