The Use Of The Code Of Hammurabi

Submitted By maryann1300
Words: 602
Pages: 3

In Mesopotamia around 1750 B.C. citizens followed a harsh law code called The Code of Hammurabi. This law code followed a punishment that was “an eye for an eye”. Such law codes made the punishment so harsh that the person who committed the crime would never think about committing it again. Some people though the Code of Hammurabi was harsh and did not agree with it because of the penalties of some crimes. The Code of Hammurabi is meant to keep the Babylonian society safe and it makes punishment fair by giving back what you did or worse. The Code of Hammurabi was trying to set specific rules and laws for Babylon society.
The purpose of The Code of Hammurabi is to punish the criminals according to their committed crime. An example of a code is # 229,” if a builder has built a house and not made his work strong and the house he built has fallen and so has caused the death of the owner of the house, the builder shall be put to death.” This code is very simple because it is seen as murder. By building a non-satisfactory house, where it falls down and killed the owners is considered murder because the builder did not make sure the house was built perfectly or without any problem. The Babylon society did not want any crime or anything bad to ever happen that is why The Code of Hammurabi is so harsh on its punishments.
The Code of Hammurabi was meant to keep the citizens safe and this is shown in #14,” if a man has stolen the son of a freeman, he shall be put to death.” The Babylonians did not want to worry about their kids playing out in the streets at night. They did not want to ever worry about their child being stolen. This code would save many lives in this day, and would have kept a lot of families together. A good point in their law code was that it wasn’t so harsh because they had to worry about their kids being stolen for other reasons.

The only way people will obey the laws is if you make the punishment equal or a little worse than the crime that was committed. This is shown in #21 of Hammurabi’s law code,” if a man has broken into a house, he shall be killed before the breach and walled in it.” The crime is