The Hammurabi code
What is the Hammurabi code?
The Hammurabi code was a list of rules and laws for people of Mesopotamia to follow in order to obey the government. The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi enacted the code in 1780 B.C.E on a human sized stone stele and various stone tablets. The code consists of 282 laws, with punishments as "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" depending on social status. Like, if you were a merchant and if you knocked out the teeth of another merchant, you'll have your teeth knocked. Sometimes if a citizen hurt or use physical force on a person with a high rank, they usually would have to pay a certain amount of money or be whipped with an ox-whip sixty times in public.
The Hammurabi code explains that you can own a field and have someone work on it for you. So whoever works the land, owes something to the owner, like paying rent. A lot of people owe debts for loans for the grain in their field. So, people borrowed money for the debt and kept track of it on a stone tablet. If someone who owns a dam but is too lazy to keep it in good condition, then if it breaks, all the fields would be flooded. Then, the owner would be sold for money and replace all the ruined corn. If they do not replace the corn, then he and his possessions would be divided among the farmers whose fields he had flooded.
The people of Mesopotamia had a different money system than we do today. They call their money mina. While we call money dollars or cents these days. The citizens would have to pay money to replace things or as a punishment for causing harm to people with high ranks. Here is an example of replacing with money. If a person with out knowledge of the garden owner, allowed a tree to fall in the garden would have to pay half a mina in money.
Slaves could sell their family for money and give them away for forced labor or work. They would work for three years in the house of the free man who bought them and in the fourth year, they shall be free. If a man decides to divorce his wife who has no children, then he would have to give her half the amount of her purchase money which she brought from her father's house. Then he shall let her go.
The Hammurabi code was a list of rules and laws for people of Mesopotamia to follow in order to obey the government. The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi enacted the code in 1780 B.C.E on a human sized stone stele and various stone tablets. The code consists of 282 laws, with punishments as "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" depending on social status. Like, if you were a merchant and if you knocked out the teeth of another merchant, you'll have your teeth knocked. Sometimes if a citizen hurt or use physical force on a person with a high rank, they usually would have to pay a certain amount of money or be whipped with an ox-whip sixty times in public.
The Hammurabi code explains that you can own a field and have someone work on it for you. So whoever works the land, owes something to the owner, like paying rent. A lot of people owe debts for loans for the grain in their field. So, people borrowed money for the debt and kept track of it on a stone tablet. If someone who owns a dam but is too lazy to keep it in good condition, then if it breaks, all the fields would be flooded. Then, the owner would be sold for money and replace all the ruined corn. If they do not replace the corn, then he and his possessions would be divided among the farmers whose fields he had flooded.
The people of Mesopotamia had a different money system than we do today. They call their money mina. While we call money dollars or cents these days. The citizens would have to pay money to replace things or as a punishment for causing harm to people with high ranks. Here is an example of replacing with money. If a person with out knowledge of the garden owner, allowed a tree to fall in the garden would have to pay half a mina in money.
Slaves could sell their family for money and give them away for forced labor or work. They would work for three years in the house of the free man who bought them and in the fourth year, they shall be free. If a man decides to divorce his wife who has no children, then he would have to give her half the amount of her purchase money which she brought from her father's house. Then he shall let her go.