Page 19 - 100 Events That Made History

Crime and punishment
King Hammurabi ruled Mesopotamia with an iron
fist. He laid down the law and introduced severe
punishments for bad behavior. His set of laws
became known as the “CODE OF HAMMURABI,”
and it remains one of the earliest written records of
laws. Etched in stone, the laws of the land were listed
under a depiction of Hammurabi receiving the code
from Shamash, the Babylonian sun god of justice.

The King’s
eagerness to
please the
gods is shown
on the stele.

Set in stone
STONE PILLARS bearing the Code of
Hammurabi were displayed around his
kingdom for all to see. Only one has ever
been found, and it includes 282 laws grouped
by subject, such as household, trade, religion,
and slavery. Most people couldn’t read the
script, but lawbreakers could expect to have
their teeth knocked out, or end up Scribes copied
skewered on spikes as punishment. Ouch! the script onto
clay tablets for
centuries afterward.

Despite the strict How it changed the world
laws, there was time
for fun and games in Although Hammurabi’s Code seems too
Mesopotamia. The first
board games were brash and brutal now, it paved the way for
played here. They groundbreaking ideas at the heart of modern law.
included ornate boards Most notably, the ideas that a particular crime
and set pieces. attracted a particular penalty and that
punishments should not be arbitrary remain
integral to many of today’s legal systems.

What came after…

The warlike ASSYRIANS took The Persians under CYRUS
over in about 1200 BCE, THE GREAT established
destroying Babylon. Their themselves in the Middle East
clay tablets tell us much from about 550 BCE. Cyrus’s
of what we know about empire was the largest the
Mesopotamian history. world had ever seen.
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