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A VISIT TO LOUVRE MUSEUM…. THE ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN STELE HAVING THE LAW CODE OF HAMMURABI ENGRAVED ON IT .
( This stele is on display in room no 227 of the Richelieu Wing ( ground floor ) of the Louvre Museum )
A stele is a vertical stone monument or marker inscribed with text or with relief carving. The stele with the code of Hammurabi engraved on it, which is nearly 4,000 years old and displayed in the Louvre Museum, looks like the shape of a huge index finger with a nail and imperfect symmetry.
The Stele is displayed in the Richelieu wing. At the top of this Stele is an image of Hammurabi with Shamash, the Babylonian sun god and god of justice. The sculpted scene at the top of the Stele represents the King with his hand raised in front of his mouth. This gesture is a traditional gesture of devotion, worshipping the sun god. The flames are bursting forth from the shoulders of the sun god, Shamash. The sun god is presenting the King with the symbols of kingship.
The “Law Code of Hammurabi” is a Stele that was erected by the King of Babylon in the 18th century B.C. It is a work of art, it is history, and it is literature. It is a law code from Antiquity that pre-dates Biblical laws. The code was found by French archaeologists in 1901 while excavating the ancient city of Susa, which is in modern-day Iran. Hammurabi is the best-known and most celebrated of all Mesopotamian Kings. He built temples, granaries and palaces, constructed a bridge across the Euphrates River that allowed the city to expand on both banks and dug a great irrigation canal that also protected land from floods.
Ancient Babylon was an influential city that served as a centre of Mesopotamian civilization for nearly two millennia, from roughly 2000 B.C. to 540 B.C. It was located near the Euphrates River, about 60 miles (100 km) south of Baghdad in what is now Iraq. Babylonians were polytheistic and worshipped a large pantheon of gods and goddesses. Some of the gods were state deities, like Marduk, the chief patron god of Babylon, who dwelled in a towering temple. Others were personal gods that families worshipped at humble home shrines. Babylon became a major military power under Amorite King Hammurabi, who ruled from 1792 to 1750 B.C. After Hammurabi conquered neighbouring city-states, he brought much of southern and central Mesopotamia under unified Babylonian rule, creating an empire called Babylonia.
The Law Code of Hammurabi, the earliest collection of written laws ( engraved) in the history of man refers to a set of 282 rules or laws enacted by the Babylonian King Hammurabi, who reigned 1792-1750 B.C. The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved law code of ancient Mesopotamia and has been found on many Stele and clay tablets from the period. The stele is a large block of basalt over two meters high. It was engraved in Babylon, in what is now Iraq, around 1760 BC, and was returned to the Iranian city about 3,000 years later as the spoils of war. Basalt is an extremely hard volcanic rock that's difficult to work, so the accuracy with which the legal code is engraved is even more staggering.
In addition to transforming Babylon into a rich and famous capital for the whole of Mesopotamia, Hammurabi was the first sovereign who decided to convert rules formerly passed on through the oral tradition into an actual code of laws. The code is inscribed in the Akkadian language, using the cuneiform script carved into the stele. The script can be found in the front and the back. The Law is set out in graded punishments. For example, the Law: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” depends on the social status, of slave versus free man. Hammurabi's Code is one of the most famous examples of the ancient precept of “lex talionis,” or the law of retribution, a form of retaliatory justice commonly associated with the saying “an eye for an eye.”
Much can be learned both about Mesopotamian life and ideals through these. We cannot be sure how well-enforced these laws were, but it is safe to say that a powerful king in ancient Mesopotamia thought these were the laws that would guide a just society. This code was not an entirely new set of laws, but a compilation and revision of earlier law codes of the Sumerians and Akkadians. Approximately one-half of the code deals with matters of contract law. A third of the code deals with families and relationships such as inheritance, divorce, and sexual behaviour. Other laws are related to military service or the penalties for a judge who issues incorrect decisions. I quote some laws ( Source: The Code of Hammurabi Translated by L. W. King@Lillian Goldman Law Library):-
Justice
(1) If a man bears false witness in a case, or does not establish the testimony that he has given, if that case is case involving life, that man shall be put to death.
(2) If a judge pronounces judgment, renders a decision, delivers a verdict duly signed and sealed, and afterwards alters his judgment, they shall call that judge to account for the alteration of the judgment which he has pronounced, and he shall pay twelve-fold the penalty in that judgment; and, in the assembly, they shall expel him from his judgment seat.
Property
(1)If a man has stolen goods from a temple, or house, he shall be put to death; and he that has received the stolen property from him shall be put to death.
(2)If a levy master, or warrant officer, who has been detailed on the king's service, has not gone, or has hired a substitute in his place, that levy master or warrant officer shall be put to death and the hired substitute shall take his place.
Irrigation
(1) If a man neglects to maintain his dike and does not strengthen it, and a break is made in his dike and the water carries away the farmland, the man in whose dike the break has been made shall replace the grain which has been damaged.
(2) If he is not able to replace the grain, they shall sell him and his goods and the farmers whose grain the water has carried away shall divide the proceeds from the sale.
Trade
(1)If a merchant gives to an agent grain, wool, oil, or goods of any kind with which to trade, the agent shall write down the value and return the money to the merchant. The agent shall take a sealed receipt for the money which he gives to the merchant.
(2) If a wine seller does not take grain for the price of a drink but takes money by the large weight, or if she makes the measure of drink smaller than the measure of grain, they shall call that wine seller to account and throw her into the water.
(3) If bad characters gather in the house of a wine seller and she does not arrest them and bring them to the palace, that wine seller shall be put to death.
(4) If a man is in debt and sells his wife, son, or daughter, or binds them over to service, for three years they shall work in the house of their purchaser or the master; in the fourth year, they shall be given their freedom.
Family
(1)If the wife of a man is caught lying with another man, they shall bind them and throw them into the water. If the husband of the woman wishes to spare his wife, then the king shall spare his servant.
(2) If a man has ravished another's betrothed wife, who is a virgin, while still living in her father's house, and has been caught in the act, that man shall be put to death; the woman shall go free.
(3) If a man wishes to divorce his wife who has not borne him children, he shall give her money to the amount of her marriage price and he shall make good to her the dowry which she brought from her father's house and then he may divorce her.
(4) If a man has presented a field, garden, house, or goods to his wife, and has granted her a deed of gift, her children, after her husband's death, shall not dispute her right; the mother shall leave it after her death to that one of her children whom she loves best. She shall not leave it to an outsider.
(5) If a man has betrothed a maiden to his son and his son has known her, and afterwards, the man has lain in her bosom, and been caught, that man shall be strangled and she shall be cast into the water.
(6) If a man's wife bears him children and his maidservant bears him children, and the father during his lifetime says to the children which the maidservant bore him, "My children," and reckons them with the children of his wife after the father dies the children of the wife and the children of the maidservant shall divide the goods of the father's estates equally. The son of the wife shall have the right of choice about the division.
Personal Injury
(1)If a son strikes his father, they shall cut off his hand.
(2)If a man destroys the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye.
(3) If he breaks another man's bone, they shall break his bone.
(4) If a man knocks out a tooth of a man of his rank, they shall knock out his tooth.
(5) If he knocks out a tooth of a plebeian, he shall pay one-third mina of silver.
(6) If a man has struck a free woman with a child, and has caused her to miscarry, he shall pay ten shekels for her miscarriage. If that woman dies, his daughter shall be killed. If by a blow he has caused a plebian's daughter to have a miscarriage, he shall pay five shekels of silver. If that woman has died, he shall pay one-half mina of silver. If he struck a freeman's female slave and caused her to have a miscarriage, he shall pay two shekels of silver. If that female slave has died, he shall pay one-third mina of silver.
Physicians and Malpractice
(1) If a physician operates on a man for a severe wound with a bronze lancet and saves the man's life, or if he opens an abscess in the eye of a man with a bronze lancet and saves that man's eye, he shall receive ten shekels of silver. If he is a plebeian, he shall receive five shekels. If he is a slave, the owner shall pay two shekels.
(2) If a physician operates on a man for a severe wound with a bronze lancet and causes the man's death, or destroys the man's eye, they shall cut off his hand. If a physician operates on a slave for a severe wound and causes his death, he shall restore a slave of equal value.
Building and Wage Regulations
(1) If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction sound, and the house which he has built collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, the builder shall be put to death.
(2) If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction sound, and the wall cracks, that builder shall strengthen that wall at his own expense.
(3) If a man has hired an ox or an ass, and a lion has killed it in the open field, the loss falls on the owner.
(4) If a man has hired an ox and has caused its death, by carelessness, or blows, he shall restore ox for ox, to the owner of the ox.
(5) If a man hires a field labourer, he shall pay him eight gur of grain per year.
(6)If a man hires a herdsman, he shall pay him six gur of grain per year.
(7) If a slave has said to his master, "You are not my master," he shall be brought to account as his slave, and his master shall cut off his ear.
( The Head of Hammurabi in Louvre museum )
The Richelieu wing seems to be the least crowded of the three wings of the Louvre, perhaps because it doesn't include any of the "big name" works of art that are found in the Denon or Sully wings. Nonetheless, it has many treasures to explore. Collections featured in this section of the museum include sculptures, decorative arts, Mesopotamian antiquities, and European paintings, It is also home to many famous French, German and Dutch paintings and treasures from the Renaissance. Hammurabi’s code has also been partly engraved in one more stone lying in the Louvre Museum’s Richelieu Wing. There is also a head carved in diorite called Hammurabi from Mesopotamia recovered from Susa. It is lying in the Louvre Museum, Paris. For anyone interested in the history of law and human civilization itself, the ancient artwork found in the Richelieu wing of the Louvre is a can’t-miss experience.
( Avtar Mota )
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