"14 Hammurabi, Babylon"

A Mesopotamian king named Lippet Ishtar claimed in a public inscription that he was called to rule by the gods in order to establish justice in the land, to eliminate cries for justice, to eradicate enmity and armed violence, and to bring well-being to the lands of Sumer and Akkad. The land of Sumer was the southern part of Mesopotamia and the land of Akkad was at its center. He was referring to the extensive region that he ruled. The year was 1930 BCE. Lippet Ishtar added that in fulfilling the gods' wishes, I liberated the sons and daughters of the lands of Sumer and Akkad and I restored order. Lippet Ishtar doesn't mention any military victories. He just laid out what a terrific and peaceful king he was. Everything was about order, justice, and well-being. Only in the curses at the end of the inscription does he evoke an image of conquest. He curses any king who might, in the future, deface or remove his statue. About such a vandal, Lippet Ishtar wrote, may the god make his cities into heaps of ruins. May the foundations of his land not be stable. May it have no king. So there was this ideal in some times and places that a king would bring order and maintain peace. But most kings in the early Old Babylonian period from around 2000 to 1600 BCE also did a lot of fighting. Sometimes this was necessary. For example, if another state tried to take over their border territories, then the king whose lands were being raided had to fight to defend his territory. And there's no denying that some Mesopotamian and Syrian kings, maybe even most of them, relished going to war. But even Hammurabi of Babylon claimed that by fighting, he brought peace. Hammurabi was a king who had built an empire by conquering neighboring lands in the 18th century BCE. He described himself as a ruler who spreads light over the lands of Sumer and Akkad, king who makes the four regions obedient. To the ancient Mesopotamians, the four regions constituted the whole world. Although the Syrian and Mesopotamian kings of the early Old Babylonian era fought with one another, they also negotiated a lot. A neighbor could be conquered in warfare or befriended through diplomacy, as had been true for hundreds of years. And in their daily lives, men and women were much less likely to encounter violence than you might imagine. We tend to have an image of the ancient world as a violent place. But the documents written at the time show that people got along very well within their communities, and they valued civility and generosity. There are almost no references to violence at all within communities, even in the The reign of Hammurabi is an interesting time to look at the phenomena of war and diplomacy between states and personal relationships between common people, because so many documents from this era are available to us. Hammurabi used both approaches to his relationships with neighboring lands. He had messengers and diplomats constantly on the move around Mesopotamia, visiting other courts, delivering and receiving letters and gifts, making deals and negotiating treaties. But he also led large armies on military campaigns. And he seems to have had a gift for inspiring people. Hammurabi came to power in Babylon in the usual way, inheriting the throne from his father. At the time, the kingdom wasn't extensive. It was one of several medium-sized states in Mesopotamia and Syria. Like all Mesopotamian kings, he then proclaimed a new name for the year. It would now be called the Year Hammurabi Became King. Across Babylon, scribes writing contracts and administrative texts now had to use this new name to date their documents. A tablet might be dated to the month of Nisanu, the third day, the year Hammurabi became king. After that, every year of Hammurabi's long reign, all 43 of them had a different name. And each of the year names mentioned some great thing that he had achieved in the previous year. These year names help us to follow the events of his reign, and the events that he thought were important to commemorate. Hammurabi's second year was the one in which he established justice in the land. Now, Hammurabi has a reputation as a lawgiver, so you might think this was the year in which he issued his law code. But it wasn't. That didn't come until much later. The act of establishing justice that Hammurabi referred to was different. In Akkadian, the term is mesharum. It's a type of decree that released people from their debts. As you might imagine, this was a popular thing for kings to do. A lot of debts were owed to temples, and interest rates could be crushing as high as 33 percent a year. A farmer might have used up his seed grain in a bad year, and needed to borrow more from the temple in order to sow his fields. Now, he had to hope that his crops were very successful in order to pay back the loan and the interest. A mesharum decree let him start over again, with the debt no longer hanging over his head. For the next four years of Hammurabi's reign, his year names commemorated religious acts and building projects. He restored walls and made thrones for gods, that sort of thing. Then, between years 7 and 11, he became more militaristic, campaigning against neighbouring lands. After that, things got very quiet. For the next 18 years, he bragged in his year names that he commissioned statues, dug canals, rebuilt city walls, and had various objects made for the deities, often out of gold. He engaged in no fighting worthy of a year name. His messengers were busy corresponding and negotiating with neighbouring lands, and Babylonian merchants were busy with trade. Hammurabi was on the throne for 30 years before events brought a complete change to his reign and to his ambitions. Mesopotamian kings were almost never on the throne for that long. If he'd had a normal Mesopotamian lifespan, he would never have made it into all the history books about world civilizations. But there he was, in his 50s, or maybe older, and his kingdom was suddenly under attack by a much more powerful neighbour to the east, the army of the king of Elam, and by a whole mass of Elam's allies. Amazingly, Hammurabi was able to defeat this formidable foe. The name he gave to the year took up lines and lines of writing. Fortunately, scribes had a shorter version that they could use. But the full name of the year listed all the peoples and places he'd been forced to contend with, and that he'd defeated. It went like this. The year, Hammurabi, the king, the mighty, the beloved of Marduk, drove away with supreme power of the great gods, the army of Elam, who had gathered from the border of Marhashi, Subartu, Gutium, Tubliash, and Malgium, who had come up in multitudes, and having defeated them in one campaign, he secured the foundations of Sumer and Akkad. Did you notice in there how it was only with the power of the great gods that this victory was possible? I'm sure Hammurabi believed that. His victory was evidence that the gods were on his side. This might have given him confidence to go on the offensive against an old rival, Larsa, a kingdom just to the south of Babylon. Hammurabi's subsequent victory in Larsa gave him even more momentum. He started going on annual campaigns to overthrow one former ally after another, including Zimrilim of Mari. In just nine years, he built an empire that extended from the Persian Gulf north to Mari, encompassing pretty much all of what is now Iraq and part of eastern Syria. It was the biggest empire since the time of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BCE. Hammurabi lived several more years after conquering his empire. Ultimately, he ruled for 43 years, having taken Babylon from its status as one of several kingdoms to an empire that had conquered many of them. In spite of his military conquests, he still cast himself in the mold of earlier kings like He portrayed himself as a pious shepherd of his people who brought peace and justice, not as an oppressor who tore down their walls. Towards the end of his reign, he proclaimed the laws for which he's so famous. He had them carved on several stone steles and set them up in a number of places across his empire. They give us insights into daily life in Hammurabi's time. So do a lot of other documents from this era. Many of these documents were found in private houses. We're lucky that people had taken to sending letters to one another and keeping contracts about their private business transactions, so we can get a much more vivid and three-dimensional view of how most people lived than was true of the eras before Hammurabi's time. Although different social classes existed in ancient Mesopotamia, it can be hard to figure out the class of a particular individual. The classes mentioned in the texts are Awilum, Mushkenum, and Wardum, with the Awilum being the highest and the Wardum the lowest. Wardum is usually translated as slave, but Mesopotamian slavery was different from slavery in other lands. Unlike in Rome, the slaves were not put to work on large agricultural estates. They could be bought and sold and were often enslaved as prisoners of war. Slaves had a distinctive hairstyle. If a barber shaved off a slave's hair, that slave could pass for a free person. So, as you might guess, there was a severe penalty if the barber did this. The difference between a higher-ranking Awilum and a lower-ranking Mushkenum is harder to figure out. Mushkenum is often translated as commoner, but that makes it sound as though Awilums were rich. Sometimes they weren't. The difference might be that an Awilum owned property, even a small house or field, while a Mushkenum was a renter, a tenant farmer, or a hired laborer. In any event, the class system wasn't very rigid. There were no rules against intermarriage, for example. And the laws suggest that society and the courts might have been generous to the poorer people. A physician was expected to charge patients on a sliding scale, charging less to a Mushkenum than to an Awilum. A fine owed by a Mushkenum was often less than a fine owed by an Awilum. He could afford less, after all. One thing that shines through all the private documents is the importance of families. Throughout the lives of Mesopotamians, their families were their first priorities. Within a family, children grew up with routines. In farming families, which constituted the vast majority, boys worked alongside their parents from an early age, sowing seeds, weeding, harvesting, and tending domestic animals. Year after year, the seasons and the river determined the agricultural calendar. Each day, girls helped their mothers grind flour, bake bread, spin wool, weave cloth, and take care of their siblings. These children learned early on what was and what was not permitted within the household, and by extension, in society. Some life stages that seem inevitable to us had no place in their culture. We see no evidence of rebellious teenagers in ancient Mesopotamia, for example. In a world that emphasized the importance of family and respect for hierarchy, it probably didn't occur to a teenager to defy his or her parents. By the time a girl reached adolescence, arrangements would have begun for her marriage. Boys grew up knowing that they would eventually become the heads of households of their own. They emulated the men in their families and began learning a trade or profession, usually the same one as their father, as soon as they could. A young couple hoped for plenty of children. Many babies and children died of illness, but those who survived were crucial to the economy of a family. Couples who were unable to have biological children were quick to adopt. And in the adoption contracts that were drawn up, the parents swore that their adopted son had the same rights that a biological son would have had, the same rights that biological children would have if they came along. When and if parents reached old age, their grown children were expected to support them. Even after death, children were important. They continued to provide gifts and prayers at the parents' tomb. According to one story, the more children you had, the better off you were in the afterlife. Families were close, but not all relatives lived in the same house. In a couple's immediate household were their children, unmarried sisters, and perhaps the husband's parents, if they were still alive. Plenty of other relatives were usually close by. A man's brothers, with whom he shared a common inheritance, might spend their days working in adjoining fields, and often they lived in adjoining houses. Unlike in some other ancient cultures, women didn't lose touch with their parents and siblings after they married. Even if they moved away from their hometown, women still were expected to send letters and gifts. If a woman and her husband were having a hard time financially, they could expect their siblings to help them out. The families provided a safety net. In some archives, found in Mesopotamian houses from the Old Babylonian period, we find that neighborhoods could be occupied by the same few families, generation after generation. Presumably, these families were often joined together by marriage. But women are rarely mentioned, so it's difficult to know. Still, the family archives are fascinating. Most likely, a family archive was originally kept in a pot or a basket in a storage room, and it could include various documents to be saved for the future. These could be personal letters, name lists, or school exercises. But mostly, they were made up of contracts. Maybe a will or a marriage contract. Some contracts from when servants were hired or slaves were bought. A canceled loan contract. The contract for the purchase of the house, or other contracts for the purchase or lease of fields or orchards. All of these were legally binding, and drawing them up required witnesses who were listed at the end of the document. Usually, each person was identified by his profession or by the name of his father. Some of the witnesses and the parties to a contract also often sealed the tablet or its clay envelope, rolling their cylinder seals on the edge. These witness lists are full of brothers and neighbors of the main parties to the contracts. Sometimes, sons are listed, too. They might have been quite young, but that was good, just in case it was years before someone questioned the legality of the transaction. If that happened, the role of those witnesses who were named on the contract was crucial. The testimony of the witnesses counted the most, even more than the written contract itself. A man trusted his brothers, sons, and neighbors to pay close attention to the contract and to be willing to support him if the matter were contested. It's rare, though, to find a man's father named as a witness. That's probably because few people lived to old age. Life, for most adults, was cut short by forces beyond the control of the Mesopotamians. Disease, infection, accident, childbirth, or disaster. Life expectancy was short, even if you survived childhood illnesses. But people could live to old age, even to 90 or 100 years old, in remarkable cases. A man who had the good fortune to live that long was respected and retained his position as head of the household until his death, even after his sons had married and in some cases had brought their wives to live in the family home. The power of the father was limited, though, because of law and custom. He couldn't, for example, decide to disown one of his sons simply because he was annoyed with the boy or because he felt like it. Two of Hammurabi's laws make sure that the son was treated fairly. The first reads as follows. If a man should decide to disinherit his son and declares to the judges, I will disinherit my son, the judges shall investigate his case, and if the son is not guilty of a grave offense deserving of the penalty of disinheritance, the father may not disinherit the son. A son, therefore, had an absolute right to a share of his father's property if he behaved himself well. The next law goes further, even excusing the son for a first offense. If he should be guilty of a grave offense deserving of the penalty of disinheritance by his father, they shall pardon him for his first one. If he should commit a grave offense a second time, the father may disinherit his son. In our contemporary society, parents can disinherit their children without having to get the approval of a court. But things were different in Mesopotamia. This might have been because someone's inheritance from their parents was a major source of their income for life. It would be cruel to deny this to an heir for no reason. Men and women alike owned property, and a woman's property remained her own even after she got married. When either parent died, their wealth was divided up as equally as possible among their children, with the oldest son getting an extra share. Adopted children received the same proportion as biological children. Surprisingly, so did the children of concubines, if their father had acknowledged them as his own. If a daughter married before her parents died, she received her inheritance early, as a dowry. For all children, their inheritance was often in the form of fields, a house, farm animals, or furniture. Owning such things made it possible for a young man to marry and support a household. That might have been impossible while his father was still alive. So you can imagine that the division of an estate could get messy and emotional. Sometimes scribes were hired to negotiate among the grown children to make sure the inheritance division was fair. Still, people also often went to court to contest what they'd been awarded. Old Babylonian documents show that the Mesopotamian world was patriarchal through and through. Men were the leaders of almost all institutions, including private households. Women didn't get to choose their husbands, at least not their first husbands. Women were expected to run their households and obey their husbands. But compared with many other ancient cultures, they had surprising freedoms. Not only could women own property and pass it on to their children, they didn't have to wear a veil or to stay in the house. They had active lives outside the home. They could give evidence in court and serve as witnesses, especially if the case involved other women. They could own businesses and work for the palace or the temple as independent employees, quite separate from the men of their families. Women were listed in administrative texts as beer makers, textile weavers, animal keepers, cooks, and wool spinners, among other professions. And they received salaries in their own names. This compensation came in the form of rations of wool, oil, and flour. Priestesses and queens were some of the most powerful people in the land, male or female, and they administered extensive estates and workshops. Women could also dedicate themselves to the service of the gods by taking on a number of religious roles. One group of women, called the naditus, lived in a female cloister in a They could never marry and were considered, in a way, to be married to the god they served. But they could still adopt daughters and inherit land from their parents, and many of them became expert businesswomen and accumulated considerable wealth. There was never any question of whether women were capable or smart. If they were in positions of power, they were assumed to be competent. But how could a woman hold a position of power if she was always pregnant and taking care of babies? Only if a woman was unmarried, like the naditu women, or a member of the elite with servants to take care of her babies, did she stand any chance of playing a public role in society. On the other hand, a woman could get a divorce under some circumstances, in which case she had a right to her original dowry. And if a woman's first husband died, she could marry again, and she could choose her second husband. Even in arranged marriages, the ideal was that love would develop between the husband and wife. And proverbs, lullabies, and letters attest to the love that parents had for their children. A Mesopotamian proverb probably rang true for many men. It says, One who does not support a wife, who does not support a son, is a dishonest person who does not support himself. The same idea was confirmed even by the kings. They were dedicated to supporting traditional roles and hierarchies. Lipat Ishtar, the king of Isin, wrote in the prologue to his laws, I made the father support his children, I made the child support his father, I made the father stand by his children, I made the child stand by his father. Families were so crucial to everyone's life that they provided a model that the Mesopotamians used to envision how the whole world was organized. The gods formed families, with the deity Enlil at the top, as the father of the other gods. The Akkadian word for father is abu, and Mesopotamians used this term to refer to many other authority figures. An expert in any field was known as abu by his subordinates. The sheikh, someone who oversaw the activities of a town in much the same way that a father might supervise his wife and children, was a bigger abu. Even the king, the most distant and powerful leader, styled himself as their father and as abu of his whole country. When a king conquered a neighboring city, he might allow the conquered ruler to retain his throne, but he had to swear allegiance to his conqueror. The vassal then addressed his overlord as father, and the overlord in turn addressed the vassal as son. Projecting family relationships onto larger and larger arenas, the whole kingdom was brought into a family structure. Expectations of behavior within the family, such as obedience to your parents, extended to all superiors. Fatherhood came to stand in for any hierarchical relationship. The man in the higher position was the father, the lower man was his son. The Akkadian word for brother, ahu, had another meaning as well, arm or side. That makes sense because the Mesopotamians saw a brother as someone who would reliably be at your side. A father inspired awe and respect, but a brother was an equal, a reliable partner, and a true friend, or at least you hoped that he was. Here, too, the term expanded beyond biological connections to be used about many relationships of friendship and equality. An ahu could be a colleague, a fellow member of a tribe, or a business partner. Kings referred to their allies as brothers. It wasn't just a formality. They really seemed to have wanted and treasured brotherly ties. If the allied families intermarried, which they usually did, they referred to the fact that they were now of the same house. If you could go back in time and walk the streets of an ancient Mesopotamian city, I think you'd be struck by the friendliness and civility of the place. Families lived right next to one another, their houses sharing common walls. Courtyards at the center of each home provided a refuge from the noise and crowds of the city streets. But no doubt children ran from one house to another, and women chatted while winnowing grain on the rooftops. After the workday was done, men sat at tables, or on the ground, playing a popular board game. The game was so popular, it's even been found in tombs, presumably to fill the long hours of being dead. Families must have eaten together and then slept on the roofs of their houses, enjoying the cool night air and staring up at the infinite stars overhead. They might not have had control over disease, or natural disasters, or crop failures, or a host of other scary things. But the Mesopotamians put a premium on self-control. And, it seems, they shared widespread trust in one another. In fact, a recent study of ancient skeletons shows that there was much less cranial trauma in Mesopotamia during ancient times than in other lands that surrounded it. The researchers concluded that Mesopotamians were less likely to get into disputes with one another that resulted in head injuries. Of course, people didn't follow the societal rules all the time. If they had, it wouldn't have been necessary for the kings to emphasize these rules. But it does seem the Mesopotamians believed that one way in which the naturally chaotic universe could be rendered livable was to behave towards one's family members and neighbors in a way that was respectful and civil, and to support one's relatives. The king, at the very top of the Mesopotamian family, had the same goal for all his people. A big part of his legitimacy was the power he claimed he had to create order out of the naturally chaotic universe, and to provide justice and peace for his subjects.