severity of punishments could be inferred.
Legal agreements were ratified through the
swearing of oaths before pagan gods, and
contracts, carved into clay tablets, were placed
in temple archives for safekeeping. In order to
ensure all citizens knew the law, it was often
inscribed on stone and displayed in public.
Lex talionis was born of one of these stone
documents: the famous Code of Hammurabi,
which dates back to around 1780 BCE.
Inscribed in Akkadian on a black stone pillar
over two metres high, the text comprised 282
decrees by King Hammurabi, the first king
of Babylon. These ancient statutes outlined
punishments for different crimes, and contain
the famous adage under rule 196: “If a man
puts out the eye of another man, his eye
shall be put out.” This code is topped with a
carving of the king receiving the laws from the
Babylonian sun god, Shamash. agSumerian, Akkadian,
Amorite
Ancient Mesopotamian
religion (polytheism)
POPULATION
LANGUAGE
RELIGION
mesopotamia:
the cradle of
civilisation
Over
100,000 (^) egypt
saudi
arabia
yemen
oman
uae
iraq
R e d
Sea
Persian
Gulf
A region where the earliest agriculture
and civilisations flourished
left The Code of Lipit-
Ishtar (circa 1860 BCE)
inscribed on a stone
slab, discovered at
the site of the ancient
Sumerian city of Nippur
in modern-day Iraq
preceding the world’s earliest code of laws by
Sumerian king Ur-Nammu: “I did not deliver
the orphan to the rich. I did not deliver the
widow to the mighty. I did not deliver the man
with but one shekel to the man with one mina.
I did not deliver the man with but one sheep
to the man with one ox.”
When disputes did arise, parties often
pleaded their case before the king himself or
his appointed judges, and rulings created a
body of precedents from which the general
PHOTO © WIKICOMMONS
The Fertile Crescent
mesopotamia
phoenicia
assyria
elam