40 Fun Facts About Code of Hammurabi

Which principle, lex talionis in Latin, underlies the Code of Hammurabi's laws on bodily injury?

An eye for an eye was meant literally: law 196 blinds a man who blinds another, and law 200 knocks out a tooth for a tooth.

Under the Code of Hammurabi, what happened to a builder whose house collapsed and killed its owner?

He was executed under law 229, and law 230 went further: if the collapse killed the owner's son, it was the builder's own son who had to die.

Which museum is home to the original Code of Hammurabi stele?

The Louvre gives the 2.25-metre pillar a room named after it, the Salle du code d'Hammurabi, where it stands in the open rather than inside a glass case.

Under the Code of Hammurabi's second law, an accused man proved his innocence by leaping into what?

The river acted as judge: if the accused sank, his accuser took his house, but if he came out unharmed the accuser was killed and lost his own house to the survivor.

Under the Code of Hammurabi, a woman running which business could be cast into the water for overcharging?

A tavern keeper who cheated drinkers on the price faced the water under law 108, and law 109 condemned her if plotters met in her house and were not handed over.

What penalty did the Code of Hammurabi set for a surgeon whose knife killed a noble patient?

His hand was cut off under law 218 when a well-born patient died, but if the dead patient was a slave the surgeon simply had to supply a replacement slave.

Shamash, the god facing Hammurabi atop the famous law stele, ruled justice and which heavenly body?

The sun was his domain, and the carving shows it: flames rise from the shoulders of Shamash as he sits enthroned before the standing king.

The ruins of Babylon, Hammurabi's capital, lie beside the city of Hillah in which modern country?

Iraq is home to the ruins, about 85 km south of Baghdad, and Saddam Hussein later rebuilt parts of the city using bricks stamped with his own name.

Which script, usually pressed into clay tablets, was chiselled into the Code of Hammurabi stele?

Cuneiform fills about 4,130 lines of the stele, set out in bands of boxed signs, a layout that was already old-fashioned by Hammurabi's day.

In the Code of Hammurabi's prologue, the gods crown Hammurabi to prevent which wrong?

The strong oppressing the weak is the wrong Hammurabi vows to prevent, a phrase he liked enough to repeat in the epilogue thousands of lines later.

The best-known copy of the Code of Hammurabi is carved on a stele, which is what kind of object?

An upright slab is all a stele is: a monument taller than it is wide, set up in public, where Hammurabi hoped any wronged man could have his rights read out to him.

Modern editors divide the legal section of the Code of Hammurabi into how many numbered laws?

282 is a modern division, not Hammurabi's own: on the stele the text runs on with no visual break, even between the prologue and the first law.

Nearly every law in the Code of Hammurabi follows which sentence pattern, opening with šumma?

If this, then that is the mould for each law, a style scholars call casuistic; the Code contains none of the flat general commands found in the Ten Commandments.

What did the Code of Hammurabi decree for a man who looted a burning house he had come to help save?

Thrown into the fire he had come to fight, says law 25; law 21 has the same grim logic, killing a burglar in front of the hole he broke into a house.

Which trainees studied the Code of Hammurabi as a set text for over a millennium?

Scribes learned their craft on it for more than a thousand years, which is why over 50 manuscripts survive from cities such as Nineveh, Nippur and Assur.

What does Hammurabi call down, at great length in the epilogue, on any ruler who defaces the stele?

Divine curses close the text, each god asked to turn his own powers on the offender: the storm god Adad is to withhold the rain, and Ea, god of wisdom, to take his wits.

Which humble job does Hammurabi claim in his prologue, a favourite image of Near Eastern kings?

Shepherd is the first title he gives himself in the prologue, just before a boast of more than 200 lines that forms one unbroken sentence.

Which dark volcanic rock was chosen for the great stele of the Code of Hammurabi?

Basalt was used for the stele, which archaeologists found broken into three large fragments that proved easy to fit back together.

The Code of Hammurabi is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of which ancient language?

Akkadian in this regular, repetitive style is approachable enough that the laws serve as a standard first reading text for students learning the language.

Which room of the US Capitol holds marble relief portraits of Hammurabi and 22 other lawgivers?

The House Chamber has had them above its gallery doors since 1950, with Hammurabi in profile, turned like the others toward a full-face Moses at the centre.

The Code of Hammurabi stele was dug up in which ancient city, the setting of the Book of Esther?

Susa lies in what is now south-western Iran, far from where the stele was carved; it arrived there as war booty about 600 years after it was made.

Shutruk-Nakhunte, the king thought to have looted the Code of Hammurabi stele, ruled which kingdom?

Elam was ruled by a keen collector of trophies: he also hauled home the far older Victory Stele of Naram-Sin and added an inscription of his own to it.

Which patron god of Babylon does the prologue say asked Hammurabi to establish truth and justice?

Marduk owes his own authority to an older god in the prologue: the sky god Anum grants him rule over humanity, and he then makes Babylon the centre of his power.

In the Code of Hammurabi, what decided whether knocking out a man's tooth cost a tooth or a fine?

The victim's rank set the price: a tooth for a tooth applied only between equals, while knocking out a lower-ranked man's teeth cost a third of a mina.

What relief did the Code of Hammurabi give a debtor whose crop was ruined by storm or drought?

A year without repayments, interest included, was his due under law 48, which pictures the debtor wetting his clay tablet to wash the terms away.

The Code of Hammurabi made a man divorcing a childless wife pay her the bride price and return what?

Her dowry, the property she had brought from her father's house, went home with her under law 138, so a divorced wife did not leave with nothing.

Which animal's deadly gorings are covered by both the Code of Hammurabi and the Mosaic Law?

An ox known to gore had to have its horns bound or be tied up; if the owner failed to do so and it killed a free man, law 251 fined him half a mina.

Which biblical book holds the Covenant Code, the laws most often compared with the Code of Hammurabi?

Exodus sets out the Covenant Code straight after the Ten Commandments, and most scholars put the likeness down to shared tradition, not direct borrowing.

Under the Code of Hammurabi's final law, what did a slave lose for denying his owner was his master?

An ear was the price, but only once the owner had proved the man really was his slave; the ruling comes last of all, just before the epilogue.

Which Sumerian king's law code, the oldest to survive, is three centuries older than Hammurabi's?

Ur-Nammu of Ur is credited with a code that fines offenders for bodily harm instead of maiming them in return, a gentler approach than Hammurabi's.

Hammurabi's dynasty sprang from which people, who ruled most Mesopotamian kingdoms of his era?

Amorites had held Babylon for nearly a century before Hammurabi, but it was still a secondary city with no notable history when their dynasty took root there.

Which city-state did Hammurabi conquer in one swift campaign once its king Rim-Sin had grown old?

Larsa had been the region's dominant power when Hammurabi took the throne, and after seizing it he left its administration running much as before.

Hammurabi turned on his ally Zimri-Lim and destroyed which city, famed for its palace archive?

Mari was captured and then destroyed, burying a hoard of more than 25,000 tablets that came to light after the site's discovery in 1933.

Which people, led by King Mursili I, sacked Babylon and ended the dynasty Hammurabi made great?

Hittites struck about a century and a half after Hammurabi died, and their raid opened the way for the Kassites to take power in Babylon.

A catalogue from which Assyrian king's library at Nineveh lists a copy of Hammurabi's judgments?

Ashurbanipal reigned more than a thousand years after Hammurabi, and his collection of over 30,000 tablets and fragments also held the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Why do many Assyriologists doubt the Code of Hammurabi was ever enforced as binding legislation?

Court records never cite it, despite the huge number of surviving legal documents, and many Old Babylonian judgments run flat against what the Code prescribes.

What did the Code of Hammurabi decree for a judge who altered a verdict he had already delivered in writing?

Removed from the bench for good, and in public, he also had to pay twelve times the penalty at stake in that case.

On the Code of Hammurabi stele, which pair of emblems does the god Shamash hold out to the king?

Rod and ring may not be royal regalia at all: one leading reading takes them for the measuring rod and coiled rope used to lay out temples.

Which term in the Code of Hammurabi names its highest class of person, often translated 'gentleman'?

Awilum sat above the mushkenum, or commoner, a word that outlived Babylon itself: it survives in French as mesquin and in Italian as meschino.

Which unruly animal has its threshing hire fixed by law 270 of the Code of Hammurabi?

A goat is far too wild to thresh grain, so scholars suspect the entry exists only to complete a list: the laws just before it price other threshing animals.