Hammurabi's Code

Gi Kim

Michaele Smith

History 111-02H

22 October 2014

Hammurabi’s Code There are numerous ways to record history, however, written records can impact the world powerfully and can spread throughout the world effectively. The Hammurabi’s Law is one example that people could use to understand history of earlier culture, belief, role of men and women, and society. The code of law powerfully influenced throughout southwest Asia because of its efficiency. Hammurabi’s code helps to give in-depth view of life in Mesopotamia in Ancient history. The most famous legal code of Hammurabi created Babylonian king named Hammurabi who spoke Akkadian. He reigned from 1792-1750 B.C.E. He called himself “king of the four quarters of the world.” At the beginning,

Hammurabi’s laws reflect with issues of taxes and trade, death and murder, and most importantly, marriage and divorce, because it came to signify important business and economic connections between families. As Mesopotamians built a patriarchal society, the Code of Hammurabi sex and gender relations demonstrate that women occupied a lesser legal and social position. However, because the society of Mesopotamian represented marriages and families as important business, Hammurabi’s laws protected children, marital partners and families by setting fair rules. As the law states, “128: If a seignior [a lord or a man of property] acquired a wife, but did not draw up the contracts for her, that woman is no wife.”2 And “138: If a seignior wishes to divorce his wife who did not bear him children, he shall give her money to the full amount of her marriage-price [money or goods that the husband paid to the bride’s family in exchange for the right to marry her] and he shall also make good to her the dowry [money or goods that the bride brought to the marriage] which she brought from her father’s house and then he may divorce her.” 2 These laws restrict husbands from doing unreasonable treatment against women. His law became the outline of actions and punishment for the societies, and it lead cultural unity for the