Hammurabi Code Analysis Essay

Hammurabi Code Analysis

Will Gadd, SPD1F

Part A

Most of the laws have something to do with criminal activities, which also most often includes some sort of punishment, seeing how Hammurabi’s technique to hold control must have been to keep his people in check by openly showing them the consequences that will follow their actions. Which is something we still do today.

Beginning with Law number 5, which describes what would happen if a judge writes an incorrect report, we are immediately told that being right is very important in Hammurabi’s society, at least when it has an impact on other people’s lives. Seeing that there is nothing in the law that tells us that different levels of incorrectness leads to different punishment, it leads us to

Because of this, I guess that women had to be watched over at all times- might it be their father or their husband, one of them must always “take care” of the female. Again, I come back to the point about women not being seen as independent human beings, but rather something you need to take care f, because it do not know better.

Lastly, in law 145, Hammurabi tells us that if a wife fails to provide her man with children, he is allowed to take in another wife, even if she shall not stand equal to the first wife. So it’s almost like the second wife is only there to bear children, meanwhilst the first wife isn’t good enough, so the man must take in another one ? It’s almost like women provides nothing to society except for carrying children. Or that might be the case ?

Since the women are most likely seen as incapable, they are probably only there to bear children, and maybe look over the slaves. A wife of a household without slaves might do the domestic chores on her own, but because of how common the mentions of slaves are in the code, something tells me that almost every household has at least one slave, even the poor