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Hammurabi's Code of Laws

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King Hammurabi was the ruler of Babylon from 1792 to 1750 B.C.E. Believing that he was bestowed with the authority over Babylon by the will of Babylonian god, Marduk, Hammurabi saw it as his responsibility to protect the interests of his subjects by laying down a set of 282 laws that were believed to treat all the different classes of people in Babylon under a uniform code of justice, that would unify and consolidate the entire empire by setting a benchmark for moral values and equality in classes. The law code is believed to have been presented to Hammurabi by the sun god and god of justice, Shamash, in whose name Hammurabi "fulfilled the moral responsibility imposed on him as a divinely installed monarch  (Hunt et al), by creating a system that would guarantee justice being delivered righteously, irrelevant of class or stature in society. The law code is in itself an insight into the time and culture of the Babylonian civilization in the way that it lends a lens into the elements of class structure, gender roles, intolerance of thievery or deception and importance of receipts and contracts in the Babylonian society. The purpose of this paper is to develop upon these key elements by drawing examples from the law code itself and elaborate on how the code is an illustration of the Babylonian culture. The very first of the key elements that stands out in Hammurabi's Law Code is the class structure. The code segregates the Babylonian society into three main classes: the free persons, the commoners and the slaves. While the code boasts of providing justice to everyone equally and protecting the weaker (or poorer) people against exploitation, the contrary seems to be true. For instance, the law " If a patrician has knocked out the tooth of a man that is his equal, his tooth shall be knocked out. If he has knocked out the tooth of a plebeian, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver. In the stated law, the patricians are the free people and the plebeians are lower than them. Looking at the aforementioned law closely, we come to see that the law code serves its purpose of giving equal justice only when the parties involved are of the same class. Another example th

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