Babylonians are known for many accomplishments like conquering the land

of the Sumerians and the Akkadians. But one of the most famous things that
they had was Hammurabi’s code. This code contains 282 laws, and they were
not soft laws that is for sure. Although these laws were always based on
justice, this justice was not the same for everyone. Life was not equally
valued as Babylonians were respected depending on their social status and
their gender. A married man could sleep with as many women as he pleased
without any consequence, but if a married woman slept with a man other than
her husband, she would be tortured till death. Moreover, slaves were
considered as objects. For example, if you kill someone else’s slave u can
replace him with another slave, but if u kill a man, who is not a slave, your
sentence would be death. People were divided between nobles whom most of
them were believed to be gods, freemen who were farmers shepherds or
traders, and slaves. And since most of those where about families we could
say we can say that families were particularly important back then and
Mesopotamia. Although males were the preferred gender women and
children had their rights too and children in a family had to respect the
parents because this is disrespecting them which was considered a grave sin
and as written before women should be loyal to their husbands. Women who
do not respect or who are not loyal to their husbands will have to take severe
consequences, one of those consequences being death. On the other hand, if a
man violates or does not treat his wife well, she can divorce him and go back
to her parents' house. Although these rules were harsh, there was one
exception for the “eye for an eye” law, and it is “If he sinks in the river his
accuser shall take possession of his house. but if they were proved that the
accused is not guilty and he escapes unhurt then you had brought the
accusation shall be put to death well he who leaped into the river shall take
possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.” This shows how
much Hammurabi believed the gods had power over people and events. We
can agree that even though there were standards and protections, life back
then was unfair as people were not treated the same way. But they are better
than today’s laws for one important cause: people were afraid of them.
Nowadays people would do crimes and spend a couple of months in jail or
even will not face charges. But if the consequence of the crime were death,
the crime rate would lower in an incredible but no so shocking way. That’
why they’re not like our laws and most of them aren’t even applicable
anymore since all genders and races mostly have the same rights.