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The complete Code of Hammurabi (~1750 BC)
- ConcernedCoder 2y agopeople got executed for EVERYTHING back then... sheesh...
- lazide 2y agoThat’s a paddlin’
- Razengan 2y agoYou'd think that with the relatively smaller populations of the past, they'd want to preserve manpower and not execute people willy-nilly. Or were these laws, as most today, just an excuse to consolidate wealth and power from the executed "convicts" into the hands of the already wealthy and powerful?
- Ekaros 2y agoSurplus of labour is entirely possible in agrarian society. Later in Europe there were periods when there was more labour than there was land. In situation like that losing some is not as big deal. Also "state" did not invest in their citizenry. So they did not lose anything by losing people.
- lazide 2y agoPre-birth control, there were usually more mouths to feed than food to feed them. Modern machines and energy allow things to scale and be decoupled from human productivity enough it’s easy to forget - but it used to be, a hand not helping make food and helping it’s neighbors, was a hand hurting them. In real, concrete ways. Back then, no one had the infrastructure or wealth to deal with putting a bunch of assholes in cages and feeding them regularly until they ‘behaved’. Usually anyway. Hell, unless the cages were intentionally horrific, that would often be a step up on most folks day to day living conditions anyway. So make an example, and make it a spectacle - and cheap. Hard to beat an execution on that front!
- dartharva 2y agoThose were times where premature deaths were extremely common and natural. This probably manifested a much reduced fear and intolerance of killing, as against today where murder is a very rare phenomenon and results in long-term trauma across all people who were even remotely involved.
- Tuna-Fish 2y agoVery trigger-happy laws are often not intended to be implemented exactly as written. If you have done something against a family that the law says you should be executed for, you can probably purchase your life from them. Same goes for all the eye-for-an-eye punishments. A very different time and place, but in early medieval Iceland if you poked out someone's eye, that someone now owns your corresponding eye. Then you can together come to terms on whether the eye should be also poked or if you can agree on a price to buy it back. A more statist example, at times in ancient China the law code had execution as punishment on basically every crime that the state got involved in at all. But most of the condemned were not executed, but eventually had their sentence commuted to internal exile (into some other part of China).
- weweweoo 2y agoI've read that also in medieval Finland crimes that were punishable by death rarely resulted in actual execution. Fines and other less harsh punishments were preferred, probably because that way the criminal could still remain a contributing member of the community. Makes sense considering how small the communities were back then in these parts of the world.
- lmz 2y agoThere are places even today where being caught stealing has a high chance of you being killed by a mob.
- llm_trw 2y agoTotal population doesn't matter. Carrying capacity does. And humanity before 1800 was _always_ close to carrying capacity.
- codesnik 2y agoseeing some genocidal tendencies in the current world, I sometimes think that maybe, just maybe ancient laws were not dictating the minimal possible punishment, but actually limited it. Like "Kill only you, not all your family". or "Take an eye for an eye, but just an eye, and you'll live"
- basementcat 2y agoThis document is actually pretty innovative in that it actually sets out a bunch of "legal remedies" for several situations and claims a right of violence by the state. In Medieval Europe, disputes were still legally settled via feud or vendetta until the 16th century. Even duels were still practiced centuries later. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewiger_Landfriede https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewiger_Landfriede
- drcode 2y agoKeep in mind this law code was likely designed to combat intergenerational grudges between clans, which are extremely brutal (look up the "Hatfield-McCoy feud") Without extremely harsh punishments, the clans likely would not have been willing to adopt any new code.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DonHopkins 2y agoHamurabi is a text-based strategy video game of land and resource management. It was first developed under the name King of Sumeria or The Sumer Game by Doug Dyment in 1968 at Digital Equipment Corporation as a computer game for fellow employee Richard Merrill's newly invented FOCAL programming language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamurabi_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamurabi_(video_game) Ahl, David (November 1978). BASIC Computer Games (2nd ed.). Workman Publishing. pp. 78–79. ISBN 978-0-89480-052-8. (archive) https://archive.org/details/Basic_Computer_Games_Microcomputer_Edition_1978_Creative_Computing/page/n91/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Basic_Computer_Games_Microcomput... Hamurabi - (1978) - Apple II - WIN! HD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIbiqMO0EY4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIbiqMO0EY4 Long before Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego or The Oregon Trail, there was The Sumerian Game. https://www.acriticalhit.com/sumerian-game-most-important-video-game-youve-never-heard/ https://www.acriticalhit.com/sumerian-game-most-important-vi... Game Mechanics That Are Older Than You Think Our mythbusting run that reveals the true pioneers behind physics, first-person shooting, and light-guns (not Half-Life 2, Doom, and Duck Hunt respectively). City Simulation - Credited to: SimCity (1989) - Beaten by 24 years https://web.archive.org/web/20160207152548/http://www.1up.com/features/game-mechanics-older https://web.archive.org/web/20160207152548/http://www.1up.co...
- snvzz 2y agoAn example of interesting comment that unfortunately happens to be very easy to wrongly attribute to a LLM if only given a passing glance.
- DonHopkins 2y agoI typed it in and played it on my Apple ][, from David Ahl's BASIC Computer Games (or maybe an issue of Creative Computing). Also Super Star Trek, too! https://archive.org/details/Basic_Computer_Games_Microcomputer_Edition_1978_Creative_Computing/page/n171/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Basic_Computer_Games_Microcomput... I couldn't find the original FOCAL version of Hammurabi at first try, but with a little more digging I found an old scan of a partial listing on archive dot org: https://web.archive.org/web/20191013130905/https://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~storer/LunarLander/Hamurabi/HamurabiListing.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20191013130905/https://www.cs.br... And a scan of a ditto, Hamurabi Lexington High School Handout 9/9/1969: https://web.archive.org/web/20190307024621/http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~storer/LunarLander/Hamurabi/Articles/Hamurabi-LexingtonHigh.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20190307024621/http://www.cs.bra... From the archive of Jim Storer's FOCAL Lunar Lander web page: https://web.archive.org/web/20190307024621/http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~storer/LunarLander/LunarLander.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190307024621/http://www.cs.bra...
- bitwize 2y agoHammurabi went hard against people who accused others of serious crimes but couldn't build an airtight case -- which is like the opposite of what we do today. Imagine if cops and prosecutors had to serve the sentences of suspects they charged but couldn't convict.
- lordnacho 2y agoDid he have a separate judiciary? If not, I could imagine him getting sick of loads of people coming to him with accusations.
- bitwize 2y agoApparently there was an assembly of judges who heard cases. There are strict laws governing judges too; if a judge later reneges on a decision he made, he would be made to pay up to twelve times the original judgement and be disbarred from the assembly.
- snvzz 2y agoWay too many false accusations these days means we might have relaxed these standards too much.
- Ekaros 2y agoProvably false accusations should carry mandatory prison sentences. And life long mark disqualifying from any job that requires any level of trust.
- thinkingemote 2y agoIn medieval to modern times we try to balance this with having high burdens of proof, presumption of innocence, beyond reasonable doubt etc. In very recent times, the erosion of those values together with the ease of making baseless but effectively ruinous allegations lead to situations where we see ancient Babylonian codes as providing a solution!
- lordgrenville 2y ago
- haunter 2y ago§42 is something that is still relevant today, should be, with regardless of housing and such > If a man rented a field for cultivation but has not produced any grain in the field, he will be convicted of not working the field and will give the owner of the field grain corresponding to his neighbors.
- casenmgreen 2y agoForcing others to do what you want generally does not end well.
- superb_dev 2y agoThat’s kinda what the state does though. Any law is gonna be forcing someone to do (or not do) something.
- casenmgreen 2y agoThe basic rule I think of it that everything must be voluntary, and well-informed, except in self-defence. You can't force people, you can't trick people, unless it's self-defence, then all bets are off. I think the State to the extent it adheres to this acts justly, and to the extent it does not, does not. So when I say that forcing others to do what you want generally ends badly, I mean that but taking this rule into account.
- lazide 2y agoExcept the taxman doesn’t care what you think.
- logicchains 2y agoHe does care if enough people point their guns at him, and indeed America was founded on people taking up arms against the taxman.
- NooneAtAll3 2y agoI hope I'm not the only one who remembered Ancient Mesopotamia song Babylonians built roads They traded grain for gold They kept themselves united Under Hammurabi's Code! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdblRch6m3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdblRch6m3g
- mseepgood 2y agoI don't understand §2. If someone is a bad swimmer they're a witch, and if someone is a good swimmer they're innocent? What's the logic behind that?
- krapp 2y agoLikely the same logic that went into a lot of Western Christian belief about chivalry and witch-hunting - that God (or whatever Assyrian equivalent in this case) would judge innocence or guilt through the laws of nature. You have to remember that "logic" presupposed magical thinking and religion at the time.
- idoubtit 2y ago"Ordeal" was exactly the same process in Europe for centuries. In France at least, this "divine judgment" was mostly by fire and water. I remember reading about these "river ordeals" in Dominique Charpin's books about Mesopotamia. It was also used in "trials" for infidelity, to the woman, sometimes with her supposed lover. But we don't know the exact process: maybe the suspects were tied up if the authorities thought the accusation was well backed up!
- drcode 2y agoIt's likely a way for a judge to inject their own subjective judgement into an accusation of witchcraft: The hope is that people that are innocent are more likely to accept a "trial by water" because they hope the deities will help them survive that trial, and the judge can then also add a little of their own subjective opinion, after talking to both parties, to either say "yup they survived the trial, pull them out of the water" or (if they think they deserve it, for whatever reason) let the person drown.
- anvandare 2y agoWell, if she weighs the same as a duck... It seems to be a variation of §1 - because witchcraft is a serious crime and the god of rivers (Idlurugu) would obviously drown anyone who was a witch.[1] §1: accuse someone of murder -> (can't prove your case) -> your own life is forfeit §2: accuse someone of witchcraft -> (can't prove your case) AND (they prove they are not punished/drowned by the river god) -> your own life is forfeit Trial by ordeal was an ancient thing, even back then.[2] It is the sort of thing you see where there was no real distinction between legal and theological, between law and rite. Indeed, Töyräänvuori concludes: >Arbitration via suprarational trial seems to be required in cases where it is the word of one person against another, and no forensic evidence can settle the manner. Anthropologically, the ordeal is supposed to reveal whether the witness or accused is lying through the threat of supernatural punishment, functioning as a primitive lie-detector test. Its use in European witch trials likely also follows from this function, as accusations of witchcraft were often spread through social contagion. An important facet of the trials is that they seem to have been meant to acquit the accused innocent of the crime in most of the cases it was used.[2] It's interesting that unproven (false) accusations and perjury are at the very top of the legal code, with severe punishments attached. Which are exactly the sort of abuses you'd see pop up when a legal code is in place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idlurugu#Idlurugu_as_a_legal_procedure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idlurugu#Idlurugu_as_a_legal_p... [2] http://saa.uaic.ro/wp-content/uploads/6.-Joanna-T%C3%96YR%C3%84%C3%84NVUORI-SAA27.2.pdf http://saa.uaic.ro/wp-content/uploads/6.-Joanna-T%C3%96YR%C3...
- mseepgood 2y agoDid people back then have no sense of structure or desire to group the laws thematically? This text jumps back and forth between topics.
- krapp 2y agoI'm sure there is a structure and a theme that we don't understand because it's been lost to several thousand years of time and cultural context, just as we no longer get the ancient Sumerian joke "A dog walks into a bar and says, ‘I can't see a thing. I’ll open this one.’”
- drcode 2y agoI'm no expert, but one would imagine the list grew organically, adding new laws as they became necessary, like an append-only data structure.
- idoubtit 2y agoFrom the millions of tablets the historians have analysed, we know that Babylonian (educated) people loved lists. I've heard an Assyriologist make fun of it in his course. There are lists for everything: events, vegetables, mathematical results, year names, Sumerian gods... As far as I know, they're always flat lists. Some of them, like some intended for rote learning, have an obvious order. In many cases, Historian don't understand the order. But it may be there, just hidden: e.g. Hammurabi's articles could be sorted by chronological date. Or according to omens...
- edweis 2y agoThere are some articles marked as "Artifact destroyed", does it mean that the original document is lost forever? I see there are missing on another website [0] [0] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp