Hammurabi's Babylon


              After the Sumerians and the Akkadians, another group of Semitic people from the deserts of Arabia arrived in Mesopotamia around 1900 BC and built the first Babylonian empire.
              The new arrivals built upon the prevailing culture in the area, which was Sumerian. Led by Hammurabi, the Babylonians made the first collection of laws in history, the famous ‘Code of Hammurabi.”
The "Code"on a clay tablet

              The code had a stern sense of justice, and the principle of “eye for an eye” was advocated here. Punishment for criminals was usually death. 
Hammurabi consolidated and united the Babylonians in building a mighty empire. He improved irrigation, and organized a well-trained army. Temples were repaired, and he promoted the chief Babylonian god Marduk over older Sumerian gods. The Babylonians also added to the knowledge of astronomy, advanced the knowledge of mathematics, and built the first great capital city, Babylon.
Marduk, the Babylonian sun god.

Hammurabi established a strong central government in ancient Babylonia, and with its written laws, was deemed fair to its citizens. The government was so effective that the Romans copied it centuries later, with the same form of central government.
Economy was controlled solely by the government, and there were no privately owned businesses. The king appointed priests, who were answerable to him, to control the economy. Hammurabi also built roads, which made it easier for citizens to travel and trade. In addition, the roads made it easier for the king’s soldiers to enforce the laws. While the Sumerians had city-states and were often at war with each other, the Babylonians had one central government, with cities united under one strong king. The Code of Hammurabi was the one unifying factor in ancient Babylonia.
Hammurabi (standing) depicted here receiving his royal insignia from Shamash

The code also provided for the protection of traders and buyers (especially the buyers). We can say that Hammurabi also enacted the first consumer protection laws; responsibility on both sides (buyer and seller) was required by law. If either of them was dissatisfied with the result, the government could be called in to settle the dispute.
Taxation was handled by the Grand Vizier, who was the most important of the official dignitaries. Taxes in ancient Babylon were not as high as taxes in Egypt under the Pharaohs. In Egypt, they used taxes to build enormous buildings like the Pyramids. Babylonian taxes were used mostly to support their own citizens, and to pay for government workers.
Three classes represented Babylonian society: the awilu, a free person of the upper class, the wardu, or slave, and the mushkenu, a free person of low estate, who was legally placed between the awilu and the wardu. Slaves were mostly prisoners of war, but a number were recruited from the citizenry as well.
The basic unit of the Babylonian society was the family. Women had important legal rights; she could own properties and engage in business. The husband could divorce his wife for any reason, especially if she had not borne him any children. Children were under the authority of their parents, and could inherit property. However, a man can sometimes sell his own children as slaves if things got a little tight at home. Generally, Babylonian children were well loved by their parents.
Much of the Babylonians’ technology was inherited from the Sumerians, particularly in irrigation and agriculture. Considerable engineering skills were needed to maintain the various canals, dikes, and reservoirs left behind by the Sumerians. They had to use maps, surveys, plans, and do calculations to govern agriculture effectively. They used the mathematical system devised by the Sumerians, which was based on the number 6, not 10. They used almanacs and a reliable calendar, all of which were first developed by the Sumerians.  

Babylonians were also skilled in metallurgy, in preparation of paints, dyes, cosmetics, and perfumes. There were also provisions in the Code about surgeons, suggesting that they also made progress in the field of medicine.
The Sumerian system of education was also adopted by the Babylonians, with schools serving as the empire’s cultural centers. Students had to learn cuneiform, and they had to do a lot of copying and memorizing textbooks and Sumero-Babylonian dictionaries, which were composed primarily of lists of words and phrases and names of trees, animals, birds, insects, countries, cities, villages, and minerals. Students then also had to learn mathematics and literature. Literature for the Babylonians meant the Mesopotamian myths, epics, hymn, proverbs, and essays.
            Cities in ancient Babylonia resemble today’s villages in Middle East. Many houses were built of mud bricks, and stood only one-storey high. No windows faced the street, and rooms were arranged around an inner courtyard. One of the rooms could be devoted to the gods.
            The Babylonian civilization lasted from the 18th century BC until the 6th century BC. The city and its culture remained intact despite being conquered by various kingdoms. It continued to be regarded as a center for learning and culture even by its conquerors.
            

Comments

Post a Comment

So, what do you think? Post it here:

Popular posts from this blog

The Square Cube Law and How It Killed Giants

Image
We are so used to the idea of giants that we take it for granted that they exist, or must have existed at one point in our history.  You know, those very large and very tall human-like creatures, carrying a humongous club, and being very nasty. Like this: And if you are a typical, god-fearing Catholic Pinoy, you would swear that not only are they true, you even saw one beside that big-ass, scary-looking tree not far from your home, one night when you were going home after an evening of binge-drinking with your buddies. And the bastard’s smoking a cigar as long and as big as your leg! Or you know someone who saw one of those cigar-smoking monsters. This creature is called a kapre —a cigar-smoking giant wearing a loincloth. Or maybe a tikbalang —a half-man, half-horse creature about as tall as a kapre. Unlike a centaur, however, a tikbalang is a giant with the torso and arms of a man, and the head and legs of a horse.  Scary creatures, these—and, if I may add
Read more

Vincent

Image
Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings are valued today at hundreds of millions of dollars. One of the world’s greatest painters, he is also one of the most influential figures in Post-Impressionism art. Ironic, because nobody wanted his paintings when he was alive.  He was a “weirdo” and nobody really understood him. Except for the few friends he had with other struggling, unsuccessful painters, one of whom he quarreled with, a quarrel that resulted in Van Gogh cutting off his ear with  a razor.  He also suffered from delusions and had psychotic breaks. He seldom ate and drank heavily. He was one of those tortured souls who had so much to give but was largely ignored. His genius and artistry nobody really got while he was alive. He was an idealist, a sensitive soul who had too much empathy. Imagine somebody like that living today.  At age 37, Vincent Van Gogh - struggling with depression, mental illness, and thinking that he was a failure - killed himself.  You know, maybe Don McLean
Read more

Typhoons and Earthquakes in the Philippines

Image
The Philippines has more than its fair share of disasters, and not because the country is particularly cursed or anything, but because the entire archipelago—purportedly composed of 7,100 islands—lies on a region in the Pacific Ocean called the “Ring of Fire” (actually, the area is shaped more like a horseshoe, although to be fair, “The Horseshoe of Fire” doesn’t have the same impact as the “Ring of Fire”). About 40,000 kilometers long, the “ring” runs from the southern tip of South America, up along the coast of North America, across the Bering Strait, down through Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia (the Ring of Fire’s western edge extends into the Indian Ocean), and to New Zealand.  The “Fire” part of the Ring of Fire is because a string of 452 volcanoes dot this line, like a malevolent game of connect-the-dots. The regions along this line experience volcanic eruptions and periodic earthquakes—majority of them small, hardly-felt tremors, and the few devastating ones that kil
Read more

The Queen of Heaven

Image
Inanna, “The Queen of Heaven,” is a goddess of Sumerian origin: goddess of warfare, fertility, and sexual love. The Akkadians called her Ishtar , a name from which Easter was derived. Yes, the Christian holiday. Inanna is the most popular and important female deity in ancient Mesopotamia. She is also known as a healer, life giver, composer of songs, and possessing a wide range of emotions—passionate, ambitious, jealous, grieving, joyful, timid, and generous. In later cultures, she went by different names: Astarte, Isis, Aphrodite—she was the Goddess. She is the original femme fatale , the embodiment of the woman every man dreams about; the female that devours men, the female that attracts/scares men; the virgin harlot. Every man knows at least one. The goddess makes an appearance in Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods.”  Throughout Sumer’s existence, her powers and deeds were glorified and extolled in myth, epic, and hymn. No one dared oppose her, neither god nor man. She was
Read more