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Hammurabi was the 6th King of Babylon, between 1792 and 1750 B.C.
He reunified the Babylon Reign and conquered most of of Mesopotamia; the Sumer, the Akkadic and Assyr reigns.
But what really made him a milestone of the law history, was the code of 282 laws written on a stone stele, 2.40 m high, discovered in 1901 in the Persian mountains.
Originally, the stele was created and exposed in Babylon and it was carried in Persia most probably as a war prey.

This law code is divided in chapters concerning various social categories and crimes about all the possible situations of human life in Mesopotamia (family, commerce, buildings, State administration and justice).

These laws are very detailed and form the FIRST law code we know in the history; they were exposed to the public, free to be consulted, so that laws were clear for everybody, at least for those able to read in that period.

The code used extensively the "eye-for-eye, tooth-for-tooth" law, well know in the Jewish-Christian world and also at the base of Moses laws, maybe, inspired by the Hammurabi Code.
The punishment was equal to the damage caused.
For the murder, there was the death penalty; if the victim was the son of another man, a killer's son had to be killed.
If the victim was a slave, the killer had to pay a fine, proportional to the slave's value.

The Code classifies the population in 3 classes:
1) Aw-lum (literally, "man") the full-rights citizen, often noble, similar to the Athenian citizens of the Classic Greece.

2) Musk-num (half-free man) free men, but not owner, maybe, similar to the Latin "plebs", but rather difficult to be socially defined.

3) Wardum, in the practice, slaves, but similar to the medieval "servants of the soil".

The various classes had different rights and duties and also different were the punishments that could be corporal or in money; in the last case, these were proportional to the economic conditions of the guilty and to the social status of the victim.

The Hammurabi Code appears surely cruel for our sensibility, but it was, however, a great first step forward for mankind forward a first form of democracy, with the laws as a certain reference point for everybody.

Learn more about this author, Aldo Bonincontro.
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