The Laws of Hammurabi

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The Laws of Hammurabi are important to the future civilizations that came after the Mesopotamia. They helped to be one of the first set of laws in time, and set a framework for future civilizations on laws and the way they work. Hammurabi was a King in Babylon in after they settled in Babylon, and when he became King he said he wanted to do three things. The three things were first wanted to secure Babylon and make it safe, the second was to unify Mesopotamia, and the third was to win for the Babylon’s a place in Mesopotamia civilization. Hammurabi concord the first and second, third proved to be a little bit of a challenge, but he managed to have the Babylonian people contribute in their own way to Mesopotamian civilization. One of his greatest accomplishments was the proclamation of the law codes that were used offers us today a wealth of information on what life was like during Mesopotamian times. All though these laws give us a look into the Mesopotamian life, they were not the first; in fact the earliest goes back to about 2100 B.C. Hammurabi proclaimed that he issued these laws on divine authority “to establish law and justice in the language of the land, thereby promoting the welfare of the people.” Some of those laws included laws about marriage, laws about land owning, laws about adoption, laws about murder and the death penalty, as well as suspicion, and anything to do with owning slaves, exiling people. Any contract was also included under the Laws of Hammurabi. As well as many others were included in the code and affected everyday life for the Mesopotamians. Such laws like: “1. if anyone ensnare another, putting a ban upon him, but he cannot prove it, then he that ensnared him shall be put to death” or “8. If anyone steals cattle or sheep, or an ass, or a pig or a goat, if it belongs to a god or to the court, the thief shall pay thirtyfold therefore;

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