Chapter 2 3 Legacy of Mesopotamia I Hammurabis

Chapter 2. 3 Legacy of Mesopotamia

I. Hammurabi’s Code • What Kind of Justice system would we have if we didn’t have laws written down, or a judge ruled how he felt about something and not by those set laws? • These things cause us to have written code or organized list of laws to allow people to understand the laws and punishments

• Babylonians believed in these codes • Hammurabi ruled Babylonia from 17921750 b. c. where he wrote out the first laws which told people how to settle conflicts in all areas of life • These included trade, labor, property and family also had parts on adoption, medicine, animals, and hiring and firing

A. An eye for an eye • Hammurabi’s code was based on the idea of an “eye for an eye” which meant that a punishment for a crime will be similar to the crime itself (give examples • However not everyone was treated the same • The Harshness of punishment depended on the importance of the person or it was all about who you knew even at this time

• This idea also made it hard for doctors • If they performed an operation and that person died the doctor could very well lose a hand that was used to complete surgery

B. Laws for Everyone • We all know/have rules for our lives, and we all have broken rules in our lives • Rules have been made/broken since the beginning of time • Hammurabi’s code was harsh but did improve over the years and was first written code

II. The art of writing • How difficult would life be without the ability to read and write? • Writing became important for early civilizations • Keeping tract of events and lives(history) allowed early civilizations to learn from their ancestors • The first written documents were those of farm animals

• Scribes were those who trained in writing and were paid well since not everyone could do it • They kept track of sales, taxes, gifts given to gods, marriages, death, and soon the military hired scribes for service work

B. A Record in Clay • Most scribes wrote on clay which was easily found and packed from the soft shores of the main rivers in Mesopotamia? ? ? Which are ? ? ? • Tablets were shaped and stored in different sizes for different uses

C. How Writing was invented • Writing developed over time • Originally civilizations wrote using shapes, tokens, pictures, and symbols for specific objects • Soon scribes combined symbols to make groups of words or wedges and lines known as cuneiform