HAMMURABI
Hammurabi was a king of the first dynasty of Babylon. He was King from around 1792 to 1750 B.C.
Hammurabi was born in 1810 BCE. Hammurabi grew up in and was born in Mesopotamia –city state of Babylon. The name of his school was the ‘Tablet House’. In his school he learnt about Babylonian gods and history of the great leaders of Mesopotamia. Unfortunately Hammurabi’s father became very sick and died. Hammurabi was crowned city-state king. Hammurabi became a very good king and kept his city safe. Hammurabi improved the city by creating peace, he built new temples for the gods, he also strengthened the city walls. After 7 yrs of peace disaster struck ! Elamites had conquered the kingdom of Eshunna and Babylon was next in their path. However Hammurabi did a good job battling the Elamites and crushed them! While king Hammurabi created some rules that we found very strange! We thought that some of them were very violent, sexist and different to how we would treat people today. As there had been no real laws before Hammurabi the people who lived in Ancient Babylon were 'lawless'. When Hammurabi became King he made punishments that were very strict to try and encourage people to be kind to each other and live better lives. Here are examples of some of his code:
-If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.
-If any man should strike a man of higher rank, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-whip.
-If a builder builds a house for someone and that house collapses killing them, then the builder shall be put to death.
-If a son shall hurt his father his hands shall be chopped off.
-If a woman does not take care of her husband she shall be thrown in the water.
Pretty gruesome yeah?! We talked about why the laws were stricter than the laws of today.
