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Hammurabi (or Hammurapi), who reigned from 1792 to 1750 BCE (according to the most widely accepted chronology of ancient Mesopotamia), was the sixth and most prominent king of the first dynasty of Babylon (1894–1595 BCE). Ethnically, the rulers of the first dynasty were a family of Amorites, a mostly rural group, some of whom nevertheless became rulers of city-states in Babylonia and Syria just after the beginning of the second millennium BCE. When the earliest member of the first dynasty, Hammurabi’s ancestor Sumuabum, began to rule (1894 BCE), Babylon was a relatively small and unimportant town. By the time of Hammurabi’s father, Sin-muballit (reigned 1812–1793 BCE), Babylon had grown somewhat in size, and its authority extended to several nearby towns, so that Hammurabi inherited a fairsized state, estimated to have been roughly 10,000 square kilometers.
Hammurabi proved to be both a skilled military commander and a clever and patient politician. He joined coalitions with rulers of similarly sized city-states to defeat common enemies, and, when the opportunity presented itself, changed allegiances or attacked former allies to enlarge his own territory. When he defeated the long-reigning king Rim-Sin (reigned 1822–1763 BCE) of the powerful city of Larsa, capital of the state of Emutbal to the south, he added most of southern Mesopotamia to his realm in one stroke. Two years later, in his thirty-second year on the throne, he conquered a former ally, the city of Mari some 400 kilometers up the Euphrates River, making Babylon the preeminent power in Mesopotamia, vying in extent and might only with the Syrian kingdom of Yamhad and its capital Aleppo. Little archaeological or textual material remains from Babylon itself during this period, because the rising water table has made excavation difficult. There is, however, an abundance of evidence from nearby cities that were under Babylon’s hegemony, so that we are well informed about the social structure, economy, and political intrigue of the period. The textual evidence includes many royal (dedicatory) inscriptions and vast numbers of legal documents and letters. Many of the letters are from Hammurabi himself (undoubtedly dictated to a scribe), addressed to his viziers in the major cities, commanding them, for example, to restore to a farmer a field illicitly taken from him, or to dredge the local canal, or to collect certain taxes; he clearly involved himself in the smallest details of administering his large realm. Much of our knowledge of Hammurabi’s military expansion derives from how the years of his reign were designated—in this period in southern Mesopotamia, years were designated by a significant royal event or activity, such as “(the year) he defeated Emutbal and its ruler Rim-Sin.”
In addition to his involvement in the kingdom’s day-to-day administration, Hammurabi carried out other traditional duties of a Babylonian ruler, such as building or rebuilding temples in many of the cities under his control, fortifying city walls, and serving as the prime dispenser of justice. Hammurabi seemed particularly keen to portray himself as a “King of Justice” (the name he gave to a statue of himself, after which his twenty-second year was named). And, indeed, Hammurabi is best known for the large stele of polished black diorite on which, near the end of his reign, he had some 282 laws inscribed. The “Code of Hammurabi,” as it is commonly, though imprecisely, called, is the longest text extant from the first dynasty. The text includes not only the laws, but also a prologue, in which the gods call upon Hammurabi “to proclaim justice in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil, that the strong may not oppress the weak” (author’s translation) and a lengthy epilogue of curses on anyone who destroyed the stele and blessings on anyone who refurbished it properly.
The laws do not constitute a code in the strict sense (i.e., a comprehensive and systematically arranged set of laws), but are rather a collection of individual cases. An example is No. 193: “If a son has struck his father, his hand will be cut off.” Among the topics covered in the laws are trials, theft and kidnapping, land tenure, commerce (regulation of merchants, financial transactions, debt), the family (women, marriage, inheritance, adoption), assault, professional fees and rates of hire, and slave holding. Although it is not the earliest such collection of laws in Mesopotamia, it is by far the most comprehensive. The interesting fact has been noted by scholars that Hammurabi’s “Code” is almost never referred to in the many legal texts attested from the period. Hammurabi and his code, however, remain of historic import because of the massive nature of the code—both as a physical monument and as the first such extensive collection of laws discovered.
Bibliography:
- Kuhrt, A. (1995). The ancient Near East, c. 3000–330 BC. London: Routledge.
- Oates, J. (1986). Babylon (Rev. ed). New York: Thames & Hudson.
- Sasson, J. M. (1995). King Hammurabi of Babylon. In J. M. Sasson (Ed.), Civilizations of the ancient Near East (Vol. 2, pp. 901–915). New York: Scribner’s.
- Van de Mieroop, M. (2005). King Hammurabi of Babylon: A biography. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell.
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