MODULE:

Institutional Corrections

Chapter 1

At the end of this chapter the student should be able to:

• Understand the history of punishment and

corrections
• Recognize the objective of imprisonment

THE CODE OF HAMMURABI

The Code of Hammurabi was one of the

earliest and most complete written legal codes
and was proclaimed by the Babylonian king
Hammurabi, who reigned from 1792 to 1750 B.C.
Hammurabi expanded the city-state of Babylon
along the Euphrates River to unite all of southern
Mesopotamia. The Hammurabi code of laws, a
collection of 282 rules, established standards
for commercial interactions and set fines and
punishments to meet the requirements of justice.
Hammurabi’s Code was carved onto a massive,
finger-shaped black stone stele (pillar) that was
looted by invaders and finally rediscovered in
1901.

Hammurabi

Hammurabi was the sixth king in the Babylonian dynasty, which ruled
in central Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) from c. 1894 to 1595 B.C.

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His family was descended from the Amorites, a semi-nomadic tribe in
western Syria, and his name reflects a mix of cultures: Hammu, which
means “family” in Amorite, combined with rapi, meaning “great” in
Akkadian, the everyday language of Babylon.
In the 30th year of his reign, Hammurabi began to expand his kingdom
up and down the Tigris and Euphrates river valley, overthrowing the
kingdoms of Assyria, Larsa, Eshunna
and Mari until all of Mesopotamia
was under his sway.
Hammurabi combined his military
and political advances with
irrigation projects and the
construction of fortifications
and temples celebrating Babylon’s
patron deity, Marduk. The Babylon
of Hammurabi’s era is now buried
below the area’s groundwater
table, and whatever archives he
kept are long dissolved, but clay
tablets discovered at other ancient sites
reveal glimpses of the king’s personality and statecraft.

One letter records his complaint of being forced to provide dinner

attire for ambassadors from Mari just because he’d done the same for
some other delegates: “Do you imagine you can control my palace in the
matter of formal wear?”

What Is the Code of Hammurabi?

The black stone stele containing the Code of Hammurabi was carved
from a single, four-ton slab of diorite, a durable but incredibly
difficult stone for carving.

At its top is a two-and-a-half-foot relief carving of a standing

Hammurabi receiving the law—symbolized by a measuring rod and tape—from
the seated Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. The rest of the seven-
foot-five-inch monument is covered with columns of chiseled cuneiform
script.
The text, compiled at the end of Hammurabi’s reign, is less a
proclamation of principles than a collection of legal precedents, set
between prose celebrating Hammurabi’s just and pious rule. Hammurabi’s
Code provides some of the earliest examples of the doctrine of “lex
talionis,” or the laws of retribution, sometimes better known as “an eye
for an eye.”

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Stele of Hammurabi Rediscovered

In 1901 Jacques de Morgan, a French mining engineer, led an

archaeological expedition to Persia to excavate the Elamite capital of
Susa, more than 250 miles from the center of Hammurabi’s kingdom.

There they uncovered the stele of Hammurabi—broken into three

pieces—that had been brought to Susa as spoils of war, likely by the
Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte in the mid-12th century B.C.

Code of hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi includes many harsh punishments, sometimes

demanding the removal of the guilty party’s tongue, hands, breasts, eye or ear.
But the code is also one of the earliest examples of an accused person being
considered innocent until proven guilty.
The 282 edicts are all written in if-then form. For example, if a man steals an
ox, then he must pay back 30 times its value. The edicts range from family law
to professional contracts and administrative law, often outlining different
standards of justice for the three classes of Babylonian society—the propertied
class, freedmen and slaves.
A doctor’s fee for curing a severe wound would be 10 silver shekels for a
gentleman, five shekels for a freedman and two shekels for a slave. Penalties
for malpractice followed the same scheme: a doctor who killed a rich patient
would have his hands cut off, while only financial restitution was required if
the victim was a slave.

THE CODE OF UR-NAMMU

The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest surviving

law code. This text was written on clay tablets in
the Sumerian language and is reckoned to have been
produced towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC.
The Code of Ur-Nammu may be divided into two parts,
the first is the prologue and the second is the
laws themselves. Apart from being the oldest
surviving law code, the Code of Ur-Nammu is also
important as it gives us a glimpse of the way
justice was conceived in ancient Sumerian society.
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A Law Code Divided in Pieces

Earlier law codes, such as the Code of Urukagina, are known to

exist. Nevertheless, the Code of Ur-Nammu is different in the sense that
the text itself has survived to a large extent. The actual contents of
the Code of Urukagina, by comparison, is now lost, and is only known
through references made by other texts that have been discovered.

As for the Code of Ur-Nammu, the first copy of

this legal text was discovered in two fragments at
Nippur, an ancient Sumerian city situated in modern
day Iraq. Unfortunately, due to the poor state of
preservation, only the prologue and five of the laws
were discernible. They were translated into English
in 1952 by the renowned Assyriologist, Samuel Kramer.
Subsequently, other fragments of the code were
unearthed. The ones found in Ur, for example, were
translated in 1965, and resulted in the
reconstruction of about 40 laws. Fragments were also
discovered in another Sumerian city, Sippar, though
with some slight variants.

Creator of the Code of Ur-Nammu

The Code of Ur-Nammu has been attributed

to Ur-Nammu, as the laws are credited directly
to him in the prologue. Others, however, have
argued that the law code was written by Shulgi,
the son and successor of Ur-Nammu. In any case,
Ur-Nammu was a king of the Sumerian city state
of Ur. Scholars are not entirely in agreement
as to when this king reigned, though it may
have been during the last century of the 3rd
millennium BC. Nevertheless, the reign of Ur-
Nammu is generally regarded to have been a
peaceful and prosperous one, with some
considering it to be part of the ‘Sumerian
Renaissance’.

The Code of Ur-Nammu begins with a prologue, which is a standard

feature of Mesopotamian law codes. Here, the deities for Ur-Nammu’s

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kingship, Nanna and Utu, are invoked, after which the king is said to
have established equity in the land. This included the banishment of
malediction, violence, and strife, as well as the protection of society’s
weakest individuals. After the prologue, the text deals with the laws
themselves.

“If (Insert Crime), Then (Insert Punishment)”

The laws in the Code of Ur-Nammu follow a set pattern, i.e. If

(insert crime), then (insert punishment). This formula would be followed
by almost all law codes that came after the Code of Ur-Nammu. In the law
code, different categories of crime, as well as their resulting
punishments, may be distinguished. For example, there are a number of
capital offences, such as murder, robbery, and rape. The punishment for
such crimes was death. For example, “If a man commits murder, that man
must be killed.”, and “If a man violates the right of another and
deflowers the virgin wife of a young man, they shall kill that male.”

Those who committed offences that were less serious in nature, on

the other hand, would have been punished by imprisonment and / or fines.
For instance, “If a man commits a kidnapping, he is to be imprisoned and
pay 15 shekels of silver.”, and “If a man knocks out a tooth of another
man, he shall pay two shekels of silver”.

There are also laws that ensure that if the innocence of an accused
person is proven, his / her accuser would be punished instead. For
example, “If a man is accused of sorcery he must undergo ordeal by water;
if he is proven innocent, his accuser must pay 3 shekels”, and “If a man
accused the wife of a man of adultery, and the river ordeal proved her
innocent, then the man who had accused her must pay one-third of a mina
of silver.”

References:

• https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/hammurabi
• https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-
writings/code-ur-nammu-when-ancient-sumerians-laid-down-
law-everyone-obeyed-009333

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