HAMMURABI (HAMMURAPI). - Sixth king of the first Babylonian dynasty, son of Sin-muballit; he reigned 43 years.
I. LIFE
Babylon, under the first dynasty, of Amorite origin, represented the outpost of the Amorite invasion, which had come from the West and with a series of marches establishing themselves over all the lands along the Euphrates. With H. it became the heir of the entire Sumero-Akkadian civilization, more than a thousand years old, itself the heir of the great prehistoric civilizations (Jemdet Nasr, Uruk, Ubaid, and even more anciently Halaf in the north, Eridu in the south). The Amorites received this heritage of the past, directly or indirectly, reshaped it, and left upon it their imprint in so powerful and enduring a manner that Babylon became the great spiritual metropolis, whose radiance imposed itself even upon its enemies and endured through the centuries.
H.'s work in foreign policy was to establish the power of Babylon and to make it the center of an empire.
Other attempts at hegemony had been made before him and had achieved results more or less brilliant and ephemeral. But at the beginning of the second millennium the times were ripe; centuries of common life had caused the populations to interpenetrate one another, to harmonize their traditions, and the introduction of the new Amorite element, already assimilated by the first kings of the dynasty, without having lost its bite, permitted a renewal. What was needed now was the action of a skillful politician to organize the conquest, of a warrior to complete it, of a statesman and a legislator to make it stable. H. was all of these. The correspondence of H. himself and those of the subsequent kings of Mari and Assyria for this period allow us to witness a play of competitions, alliances, reticences and bold strokes, carried out with supreme cunning; with it H. eliminated, one after another, his principal adversaries, some of whom, such as Rim-Sin, king of Larsa, Zimrilim, king of Mari, and the sovereign of Ešnunna, were his equals. The dominion of Babylon thus extended over the entire territory of Sumer and Akkad and over the middle Euphrates (Mari and its dependencies); its influence extended still farther toward the north and the west, and its cultural radiance overstepped the limits of its political influence.
The conqueror knew how to administer, to reconcile, to make justice reign. All his correspondence, especially that with the provincial governor Sin-idinnam, with Šamaš-þašir, manager of the crown domain, and with other high officials such as Balmunambe, is very suggestive. Personally or through Lú (Awil)-Ninurta, who serves as prime minister, H. follows all important affairs. This correspondence, which is now completed by those of the court of Mari (Assyrian period and national period) and of Assyria (Šamši-Addu and Išme-Dagan), makes it possible to understand the life of the Mesopotamian states in one of the most brilliant epochs of their history. Numerous hypotheses have been made about the exact date of H., and the extreme conclusions range from the 22nd to the 18th century B.C. The recent discoveries at Mari have forced a revision of certain synchronisms that seemed established. The new excavations and the new texts discovered, the conquests of Oriental studies in recent years throughout the entire Middle East, force a reexamination of the chronological problem as a whole, as well as of the particular chronologies, absolute and relative. Some are inclined to bring H. forward, placing him in the 18th or even the 17th century. This tendency meets with ever greater favor among experts. On the whole, this opinion, which entails numerous variants, is highly probable: many even believe it demonstrated; nevertheless some scholars currently prefer to retain the traditional dates and to keep H. in the 20th or 19th century.
II. THE CODE OF HAMMURABI
The most important monument of H.'s legislative activity is his code. The principal copy is a block 2.25 m. high, found broken into three pieces at Susa by the French mission called the Délégation en Perse and directed by M. de Morgan, in Dec. 1901-Jan. 1902. This copy seems to have been first erected in the temple of Šamaš, at Sippar, and thus placed before the god of legislation himself (this is the opinion of V. Scheil), or else in the temple of Marduk at Babylon (according to others). However that may be, it was removed by the Elamite invaders and carried off to Susa as war booty. Some paragraphs have even been erased by the victors, perhaps to make room for an inscription. The text was copied, in different periods and countries; these copies have made it possible to reconstruct more or less the damaged parts and have provided variants sometimes of interest for the parts that survive. The Susa code was transported to Paris to the Louvre Museum. It was deciphered by V. Scheil (v.).
It is not a code in the modern sense of a systematization of laws, but in the sense of a collection made to be seen by all, and to which all can refer; it stands opposed to collections made above all for specialists, such as the collection of Assyrian laws.
It is not a code in the modern sense of a systematization of laws, but in the sense of a collection made to be seen by all, and to which all can refer; it stands opposed to collections made above all for specialists, such as the collection of Assyrian laws.
The code has a prologue and an epilogue, drafted in a dialect and style that is poetic, and a body of laws (divided by modern scholars into 282 paragraphs), written in the dialect and style of the royal chancery, clear and precise without technical jargon. The legislative part can be divided into three great sections: the law of property, family law, social law (criminal and civil). This division is not entirely adequate according to modern concepts, but it is convenient.
The code of H. was for a long time considered as an almost unique document, and there was a tendency to see in it a kind of miracle, attributing to H. an originality that it does not possess. The discoveries in recent years (1945-47) of the code of Ešnunna (or code of Bilalama) and of the code of Lipit-Ištar, the first in Akkadian, the second in Sumerian, earlier than that of H. by about two centuries and a century and a half respectively, and coming the one from the north-east, the other from the south of Babylonia, make it necessary to revise this judgment. The code of H. belongs within the great Sumero-Akkadian or Mesopotamian legal tradition. All the great Sumerian or Akkadian sovereigns had declared themselves legislators, and their legal activity is proved by acts and legal provisions, such as those of Urukagina (end of the dynasty of Lagaš). The originality of H. was to be a legislator of Empire and to enter into the legal tradition by completing it, harmonizing the customs, extending law and justice to all the subjects of his vast empire. Of course, there was also the jurisprudence created by the judgments of the courts, by administrative provisions, by decisions emanating from the sovereign power of the king.
It is impossible here even to sketch a comparison with the other legislations: the collection of Assyrian laws, the Hittite code, the customs of Nuzi. These partake of Mesopotamian law, modified, however, by the particular usages and laws of the civilizations that produced them.
Nor is it possible to institute a detailed comparison with Israelite law. It suffices to observe that Mesopotamian law is that of a commercial country, which lives on production, exchange and transit, in every sphere. The concern is to guarantee justice and security in a civilization at once stable and "open." Israelite law is influenced, certainly, by Mesopotamian law, but also by the customs of nomads and semi-nomads (in this it would come close to the customary law of Nuzi); it is the law of a small people threatened by the great empires, which seeks to preserve its faith, its traditions and its integrity, and for this reason it could almost be called a "protectionist" and "closed" law. Moreover, Israelite law has a very particular character of theocratic monotheism. Leaving aside what is revelation and monotheism in Israel, one may say that H. sought, while maintaining the religious spirit, to establish a distinction between all that belongs to priestly or clerical authority and what belongs to civil authority. The king, as religious head, is sovereign of the two orders, since religion is their foundation, but the functions must be distinct. There is likewise an abyss between Judaic monotheism and the religious unification attempted by H.
The age of H. is also that of Abraham (even if one does not admit the extremely doubtful identification of Amraphel [v.] with H.; and even if Abraham and H. are not exactly contemporaries). This age was that of the first classical Babylonian civilization, in which Mesopotamian culture, rich with a very long past, reached one of its highest expressions: a classical age, not only for the ancient East, but for all humanity.
Other personages bearing the name of H. have been revealed by the letters of Mari.
Bibliography4 works
Renato Follet