What does Hammurabi’s Code reveal about Babylonian society? It was based on social hierarchy and showed the importance of class distinctions. It also reveals the significance of business, trade, and family in the Babylonian Empire.

If any one strike the body of a man higher in rank than he, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-whip in public.

If you’re not guilty your accuser is put to death and you get his house. If anyone bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.

1. If any one ensnare another, putting a ban upon him, but he can not prove it, then he that ensnared him shall be put to death. 2. If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house.

If he put out the eye of a man’s slave, or break the bone of a man’s slave, he shall pay one-half of its value. an eye for payment of one-half the slave value if the eyes belongs to a slave. 200. If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out. [ A tooth for a tooth ]

Laws 196-199 discuss putting out the eye of “another man,” a “free man” and a “slave.”a. According to this document, whose eye was worth the most? Free-born men.

§ 42. If a man has hired a field to cultivate and has caused no corn to grow on the field, he shall be held responsible for not doing the work on the field and shall pay an average rent.

Hammurabi’s Code is one of the most famous examples of the ancient precept of “lex talionis,” or law of retribution, a form of retaliatory justice commonly associated with the saying “an eye for an eye.” Under this system, if a man broke the bone of one his equals, his own bone would be broken in return.

An Act to regulate the Time and Manner of administering certain Oaths was the first law passed by the United States Congress after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. It was signed by President George Washington on June 1, 1789, and parts of it remain in effect to this day.

The best known ancient code is the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi. The Romans began keeping legal records, such as the Law of the Twelve Tables (451–450 bc), but there was no major codification of Roman law until the Code of Justinian (ad 529–565), which was compiled long after the dissolution of the Western Empire.

List of ancient legal codes

• Code of Urukagina (2,380–2,360 BC)
• Cuneiform law (2,350–1,400 BC)
• Code of Ur-Nammu, king of Ur (c. 2050 BC)
• Laws of Eshnunna (c. 1930 BC)
• Codex of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (c. 1870 BC)
• Babylonian laws / Code of Hammurabi (c. 1790 BC)
• Hittite laws (c. 1650–1100 BC)
• Code of the Nesilim (c. 1650–1500 BC)

Cuneiform law, the body of laws revealed by documents written in cuneiform, a system of writing invented by the ancient Sumerians and used in the Middle East in the last three millennia bc.

The second of the 282 laws in the Code of Hammurabi, dating from the eighteenth century bc, states, “If a man charge a man with sorcery, and cannot prove it, he who is charged with sorcery shall go to the river; into the river he shall throw himself, and if the river overcome him, his accuser shall take to himself his …

The importance of the Hammurabi Code, the Twelve Tables, and the Justinian Code is that they all served as set of rules/laws that were put in place to manage and maintain order in a society. The Hammurabi Code was put in place in 1792-1750 BC as a set of laws for the Babylon Empire.

A code of law, also called a law code or legal code, is a type of legislation that purports to exhaustively cover a complete system of laws or a particular area of law as it existed at the time the code was enacted, by a process of codification.

Law Code of Manu

Neelakanta Ramakrishna Madhava Menon

Manu-smriti

Interestingly, it was two Englishmen – James Mill and Thomas Babington Macaulay – who made the codification of Indian law possible.