The last article talked about the birth of cuneiform, and how it allowed commerce and administration to thrive, but the greatest benefit, and one that would have the greatest impact on the West, was the concept of written law.
As the Sumerian city-states began to grow and flourish, a need for order began to arise, so the kings issued uniform laws, rooted in precedence, and applying to all citizens. The earliest evidence of this was two tablets uncovered from the city-states of Ur and Nippur from around 2100 BC, issued by the king Ur-Nammu. They contained about 17 ordinances that outlined various offenses, and the penalty for each one.
Unlike what would come later, such as the popular “eye for an eye,” these early laws focused on providing monetary compensation for harm done. The currency denoted was the mina, which was the equal of 60 shekels, or one 18 ounce bar of silver. The amount of minas that had to be paid out was based on the severity of the offense.
Administration of Justice
The task of administrating justice rested with the king, but his duties often made it impossible to hear every case, so he would often delegate them to a panel of justices who would rule on a particular case with his authority. There were no juries. Note the parallel to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A case usually required both parties to swear to tell the truth, plead their case before the justices, and present any evidence. If there was a conflict in the stories, it was assumed that the accused party was lying, so they would do a trial by ordeal, seeking divine guidance by throwing the accused into a river. If he/she survived, they would be deemed innocent.
Either party was allowed to appeal the verdict to the king if they felt the ruling of the justices was not fair. This concept of appeals still exists today, particularly in Anglo-Saxon law.
The Code of Hammurabi
The most well known, and often mistaken as the first set of written laws, it was the first complete set of written laws. Hammurabi was king of Babylon, a prosperous Sumerian city-state, from around 1800 BC. During his reigned, he issued a set of 282 laws, inscribed on a tablet, outlining various offenses and their penalties. Unlike Ur-Nammu, the penalties were not based on monetary compensation, but took a more brutal form.
For example, the penalty for murder was death by impalement or decapitation; the penalty for professional incompetence was often the removal of the limb used to perform the task (usually the hand). Sexual misconduct was also frowned upon, with drowning of the couple being the penalty for adultery, unless the woman’s husband interceded. However, the law was not completely heartless, since they did recognize mitigating circumstances. For example, a husband that remarried because his wife was sick was not punished for adultery as long as he still cared for his dying wife, and a married woman, whose husband had passed or was in prison, that slept with a man for money or some other type of consideration, was also shown leniency. In both cases, the welfare of the children was also considered, since the man may have remarried to have someone to care for his young children, and the woman may have sold her body to feed her children.
Incest was also brutally punished – sexual relations between mother and son resulted in both being burned alive, while relations between father and daughter resulted in exile for the father. The latter illustrates the double standard in justice when it came to ancient Sumerian law.
The laws of Ur-Nammu and Hammurabi were relatively tame and fairly equal in how they administered justice to both males and females, but a set of laws found in the city-state of Assur, roughly from around 1200-1300 BC, show a far more misogynistic twist to the penalties. Most of the penalties involved brutally punishing a woman, usually the wife, for any misdeeds of her husband. For example, if a man raped a young girl, the man’s wife would be raped as punishment; if a man brutally beat a woman, the same thing would happen to his wife. The law also stipulated that if the beaten woman was pregnant, and miscarried, the guilty man’s wife would also be beaten to the point of miscarriage.
Greg Woolf states that legislation in Mesopotamia moved backward from the more humanitarian origins of the early peoples of the region, probably a result of the militaristic society that would emerge later. Some of these laws would survive antiquity and make their way into present-day Middle Eastern society, as evidenced by honor-killings of young girls for keeping company with men, and the complete subjugation of women in some parts of that area.
Sources:
Woolf, Greg. Ancient Civilizations. London: Duncan Baird Publishers, 2005.
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