Compare Mesopotamia And China

As civilizations grew, their people realized the need for laws to keep the civilization unified under the ruler 's power. Mesopotamia, India, and China, being three of the biggest civilizations of the ancient world, have exceedingly different and extremely similar laws of societal conduct. At the time of King Hammurabi 's rule, there was constant warring between neighboring states. He wrote the Code of Hammurabi, consisting of 282 laws to reinstate his order and unify Mesopotamia under one law code. Han Fei’s belief that human behavior was not determined not by moral sentiments like the beliefs of Confucius, but by economic and political conditions and the life the individual. The Five Vermin were written to ensure an efficient bureaucracy

In the preface, Hammurabi states that his code, along with himself, was given a divine origin, emphasized by the quote, “...then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind,” (Hammurabi’s Code of Laws, translation of L.W. King) which reveals his power that is to be used to unify Mesopotamia. Babylon was given these law codes to produce order and peace among all classes under Hammurabi. The individual punishments in the codes were to be harsh, constituting the phrase “an eye for an eye,” but equal in Babylonian society to the wrongdoing among any gender or social class, which is expressed through code number twenty-two, “If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death,” (L.W. King) and law fourteen, “If any one steal the minor son of another, he shall be put to death,” (L.W. King) which, to ensure order, justly punish kidnappers or