Hammurabi at Babylon..
With passing generations the Amorites adopted Sumerian culture, and Sumerians were vanishing as an identifiable ethnicity, absorbed by Mesopotamia's other peoples. The Amorites fought off new waves of migrating peoples, and they increased their skills in the art of combat.
The Amorites spread through more of Mesopotamia. They joined in the trade that remained among Mesopotamian cities, and they extended their trade into Asia Minor, exchanging woolen cloth and tin for gold, silver and copper. Amorite merchants created colonies in parts of southern Asia Minor. The center of the new Armorite empire was the city of Ashur, and Ashur was the center of a kingdom that was to become known as Assyria.
In the 1790s BCE an Amorite king at Babylon, Hammurabi, sent his armies out and conquered other kingdoms, cutting down his enemies, as he put it, "like dolls of clay." Hammurabi overran Assyria and conquered Ashur. He established his authority from the Persian Gulf to the city of Haran. Like Sargon, he built a new network of roads. He created a postal system, and he delegated power to governors, who were to rule conquered territories in his name.
One of the earliest and most complete ancient legal codes was proclaimed by the Babylonian king Hammurabi, who reigned from 1792 to 1750 B.C. Hammurabi expanded the city-state of Babylon along the Euphrates River to unite all of southern Mesopotamia. His code, a collection of 282 laws and standards, stipulated rules for commercial interactions and set fines and punishments to meet the requirements of justice. Hammurabi’s Code was proclaimed at the end of his reign
HAMMURABI’S KINGDOM
Hammurabi was the sixth king in the Babylonian dynasty, which ruled in central Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) from c.1894 to 1595 B.C. His family was descended from the Amorites, a semi-nomadic tribe in western Syria, and his name reflects a mix of cultures: Hammu, which means “family” in Amorite, combined with rapi, meaning “great” in Akkadian, the everyday language of Babylon. In the 30th year of his reign Hammurabi began to expand his kingdom up and down the Euphrates, overthrowing Larsa, Eshunna, Assyria and Mari until all of Mesopotamia under his sway.
Hammurabi combined his military and political advances with irrigation projects and the construction of fortifications and temples celebrating Babylon’s patron deity Marduk. The Babylon of Hammurabi’s era is now below the water table, and whatever archives he kept are long dissolved, but clay tablets discovered at other ancient sites reveal glimpses of the king’s personality and statecraft. One letter records his complaint of being forced to provide dinner attire for ambassadors from Mari just because he’d done the same for some other delegates: “Do you imagine you can control my palace in the matter of formal wear?”
HAMMURABI’S CODE
The black stone stela containing Hammurabi’s Code was carved from a single, four-ton slab of diorite, a durable but incredibly difficult stone for carving. At its top is a two-and-a-half-foot relief carving of a standing Hammurabi receiving the law—symbolized by a measuring rod and tape—from the seated Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. The rest of the seven-foot-five-inch monument is covered with columns of chiseled cuneiform script.
The text, compiled at the end of Hammurabi’s reign, is less a proclamation of legal principles than a collection of precedents set between prose celebrations of Hammurabi’s just and pious rule. The 282 edicts are all written in if-then form. For example, if a man steals an ox, he must pay back 30 times its value. The edicts range from family law to professional contracts and administrative law, often outlining different standards of justice for the three classes of Babylonian society—the propertied class, freedmen, and slaves. A doctor’s fee for curing a severe wound would be 10 silver shekels for a gentleman, 5 shekels for a freedman and two shekels for a slave. Penalties for malpractice followed the same scheme: a doctor who killed a rich patient would have his hands cut off, while only financial restitution was required if the victim was a slave. Hammurabi’s Code provides some of the earliest examples of the doctrine of “An eye for an eye.”
Hammurabi's Babylonia, showing the Babylonian territory upon his ascension in 1792 BC and upon his death in 1750 BC. The river courses and coastline are those of that time period -- in general, they are not the modern rivers or coastlines. This is a Mercator projection, with north in its usual position.
There is some question to what degree the cities of Nineveh, Tuttul, and Assur were under Babylonian authority. While in his introduction to his code of laws, Hammurabi claims lordship over these cities, Roaf does not include any of these in his map, upon which this map is based, and Chevalas states that "Assur and Nineveh were held for a very few years" (p. 155). Therefore, I have not included them as under Hammurabi's control in 1750 BC.
There is some question to what degree the cities of Nineveh, Tuttul, and Assur were under Babylonian authority. While in his introduction to his code of laws, Hammurabi claims lordship over these cities, Roaf does not include any of these in his map, upon which this map is based, and Chevalas states that "Assur and Nineveh were held for a very few years" (p. 155). Therefore, I have not included them as under Hammurabi's control in 1750 BC.
Babylon was a city where trade routes crossed. Under Hammurabi it became a bronze-age city of commerce and agriculture. It was a city with skilled artisans, architects, bricklayers and businessmen, with an efficient secular administration and a chain of command. The city was at the hub of an intricate network of canals. It was surrounded by great fields of barley, melons, fruit trees and the wheat the Babylonians used in making unleavened, pancake-like bread. From their barley, the Babylonians made beer. They sheared wool from their flocks of sheep. And they imported wood from Lebanon and metals from Persia.
Like other emperors, Hammurabi operated a protection racket, offering towns he captured the security of his superior military might in exchange for their obedience and tribute (payment of taxes). He believed that where he had conquered he had put an end to war, and he wanted to protect his subjects from the terror of nomads
Hammurabi wished to promote what he saw as welfare and justice for his subjects. He saw that contracts between people had to be witnessed and ratified, that deeds of partnership had to be maintained, that properties had to be registered and wills written. Hammurabi established laws that protected landholders from the landless. He regulated the treatment of women and slaves. A law made a doctor liable if the doctor made his patient worse, and an architect might be executed if his negligence resulted in the collapse of a house he had designed.
Like other rulers among the civilized, Hammurabi saw some people as more worthy than others. His laws divided his subjects into three classes: the nobles; merchants and ordinary farmers; and slaves. All classes were to be protected from what he believed was unnecessary abuse, but punishments were to differ according to one's class. If a noble destroyed the eye of another noble he might have his own eye put out, or if he broke the bone of another noble he had one of his own bones broken. But if he broke the bone of a common person or destroyed that person's eye, he only had to pay a fine.
Hammurabi claimed that he received his laws from Babylon's sun god and god the of justice, Shamash. According to Hammurabi's scribes, the people of Babylon saw events as directed by the gods, and they saw Hammurabi as wise and as having created a world of order and justice under Shamash.
Decline in the 1700s
The Babylonians believed that the gods punished people for lack of respect for god-given laws. And during the reign of Hammurabi's son, Samsu-Iluna (between 1750-1712), the Babylonians believed that such a punishment had arrived in the form of more invasions. Hammurabi's son led an army that was able to drive the invaders away, but they would return. And Shamshu's reign was marked by violent uprisings in areas conquered by his father and by Shamshu abandoning cities in Sumer.
Mesopotamia would remain a mix of ethnicities, including Semites called Assyrians in Babylon and Assyria. And the preservation of Sumerian culture remained and would be passed on to new arrivals. The Assyrians had adopted and altered Sumerian stories, and they preserved the Sumerian language much as Christians were to preserve Latin
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