Excursus

In this chapter, we explore how the way in which Mesopotamian scribes were educated sheds light on how the Laws of Hammurabi was composed. It is important to move away from the image of a scribe mindlessly copying text: that was not the reality of Mesopotamian scribes. Scribes who mastered Mesopotamian tradition used phraseology, topics, or textual structures in composing a new work. They learned and absorbed legal terminology, model contracts, court records, and administrative documents. This allowed scribes to find employment in many realms, whether in institutions or as freelance scribes working for private individuals, because they could compose whatever legal or administrative document was needed.

The Stela of the Laws of Hammurabi and the Representation of Political Power

This chapter explains how the Stela (stone monument) of the Laws of Hammurabi was employed as a manifestation of political power. A royal investiture scene is at the top of the Stela, and the artist manipulated the imagery cleverly to enhance the legitimacy and authority of Hammurabi. Standard imagery is skillfully reconfigured to exalt him. The king stands alone before Shamash, the god of justice, and the direct gaze between them symbolizes their close bond and the near equality of their status. Other elements in the imagery vividly promoted the message that Hammurabi had been exalted and authorized as king by the gods. It is not surprising, then, that a number of stelas inscribed with the Laws of Hammurabi were set up. Ironically, the Stela itself was seized centuries later by another king wanting to manifest his authority, and then by a modern state displaying its cultural power.

Introduction

The fame of the ancient Babylonian king Hammurabi is due to the collection of laws written under his patronage. The Laws of Hammurabi was recopied for more than a thousand years after it was promulgated, and when the text of the Laws of Hammurabi was lost to history, the style and content exemplified in it left traces on the laws of other cultures. In December 1901–January 1902, during an excavation of Susa in present-day Iran, French archaeologists discovered the Laws of Hammurabi, inspiring great publicity and interest. It is crucial evidence for the history of law and for understanding the human experience in general.

Adoption in the Laws of Hammurabi

This chapter explores how the statutes on adoption, a prominent institution in Mesopotamian society, in the Laws of Hammurabi illustrate a number of the compositional techniques the scribe employed to demonstrate his flair for legal reasoning and conceptualization. Among these methods of composition are the use of incremental variants, the incorporation of explanation, and the designation of specific types of punishment. Legal records demonstrate the artificiality of the statutes because the extant records are about the adoption of adults. By contrast, the statutes are about the adoption of minor children, a sampling that does not accord with the historical reality of adoption in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia.

The Laws of Hammurabi as a Royal Inscription

This chapter addresses the rich treasury of rhetorical devices the Laws of Hammurabi uses to present its message. It is structured in the form of a royal inscription, but it is not an ordinary agglomeration of hackneyed bromides repeating standard wording. It is inventive and subtle in the way it fuses together a number of models from Hammurabi’s royal inscriptions, amplifying the authority of the king and demonstrating his devotion to justice. The Laws of Hammurabi incorporates a collection of statutes and presents them as being promulgated by the king immediately after his accession to the throne, rather than decades later: his pious actions are portrayed as timeless and unassailable achievements, rather than in chronological format. Verbal maps depict Hammurabi’s domination over different regions.

The Afterlife of the Laws of Hammurabi

The tradition of law collections continued outside of Mesopotamia for more than a millennium after Hammurabi. The Laws of Hammurabi was the culmination of this tradition in Mesopotamia, but this tradition of statutes composed on a repertoire of traditional cases continued in the Hittite Laws and biblical law, even though the royal inscription format was no longer used. The Laws of Hammurabi and Mesopotamian law may have influenced ancient Greek and Roman law. The Laws of Hammurabi is also a witness to the start of another stream of tradition. As this chapter discusses, it became a classic text, and no other law collection was copied so often and for so long. The Laws of Hammurabi served as the subject of formal commentaries. The rise of classic texts and formal commentaries signaled a profound cultural shift. Scribes related to the Laws of Hammurabi in ways that diverged from prior attitudes: it was no longer an improvisation on traditional cases frozen momentarily in written form but became an object of study. The Laws of Hammurabi became the object of commentary, a genre that names itself as dependent on another text: one text is elevated above another, and that text’s obscurities and contradictions are affirmed and explained.

Royal Legitimization through the Establishment of Justice

In this chapter, we explore how establishing justice was a crucial aspect of a king’s legitimacy and authority in Mesopotamian culture. The king was involved in adjudicating cases as well as promulgating decrees of social reform and laws. The gods were seen as attentively governing the cosmos and establishing justice, and guaranteeing justice was seen as a duty enjoined upon a king by the gods. This is reflected in three textual genres: acts of equity commemorated in royal inscriptions and hymns, edicts of social reform, and law collections. The relationship between these three genres is complex and nuanced. Justice was viewed in Mesopotamian thought as a means of restoring equity in society.

Conclusion

This volume illuminates the Laws of Hammurabi in its own time and its legacy for later Mesopotamia and for cultures outside of Mesopotamia. The Laws of Hammurabi provides insight into human intellectual achievements and rationality in general and into the interplay between legal activity, jurisprudence, and political circumstances in Mesopotamia specifically. Although the scribe lived in a culture that did not have jurisprudential or philosophical writing about law, the statutes he composed manifest a significant instance of legal reasoning before the flowering of Roman law. The methods of composition he employed allow us to see early modes of legal thinking. Law as a theoretical problem was emerging in the Laws of Hammurabi. It attests to the richness and complexity of legal thinking before Roman law. It demonstrates the vitality of legal thinking, and its existence prompts a more complex story of legal development and imagination.

The Legal Authority of the Laws of Hammurabi

The legal authority of the Laws of Hammurabi has been assessed by examining whether it was legislation, royal decrees, or judicial decisions. Searching for evidence that the Laws of Hammurabi was applied in actual cases or derives from verdicts has yielded mesmerizing hints but no definitive evidence. However, the crucial question is whether this approach accurately illuminates the nature of the authority of the Laws of Hammurabi. There is no reason for law to be limited to the application of a set of rules, and debating whether the Laws of Hammurabi was legislation, royal decrees, or judicial verdicts is misplaced, as this chapter discusses. The nature of the authority of the Laws of Hammurabi was based on scribal activities in the legal realm. The conflicting rulings they learned during training and their legal experience helped them to think through competing examples of justice and to weigh the variables in a particular dispute or offense.

Scribes and Statutes

Scribes would demonstrate their legal talent and skills by revising and reworking a repertoire of standard cases. Scribes had the freedom and prerogative to compose statutes as they thought they should be: scribes determined which elements in a dispute were decisive and what solutions should be deemed just and equitable. This chapter shows how the scribe composing the Laws of Hammurabi improvised on a repertoire of typical cases in the same way that the scribes who composed earlier law collections had done, but he went beyond the scope and sophistication of the compositions that earlier scribes had written. Mesopotamian scribes were unwilling or perhaps unable to articulate principles, but the scribe composing the statutes in the Laws of Hammurabi projected an intrinsic sense of implicit concepts. The scribe composed statutes through a number of compositional techniques aimed toward greater conceptualization and systematization, producing a more comprehensive treatment of a legal situation.