Facts about Code of Hammurabi
- 09
Hammurabi's Code granted women limited property rights, allowing them to own businesses and manage estates independently, though their legal status remained subordinate to male relatives in most matters.
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Hammurabi's Code allowed a man to sell his wife into slavery for three years if she had incurred debts or disgraced his household through infidelity.
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Diorite stone pillars inscribed with Hammurabi's Code survived millennia because Babylonian scribes duplicated the laws on clay tablets throughout the empire for public display and record-keeping.
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Hammurabi's Code distinguished between intentional and accidental harm, prescribing different punishments such as death for deliberate murder versus financial compensation for unintentional killing.
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Hammurabi's Code permitted a creditor to enslave a debtor's family members for up to three years to pay off outstanding loans in ancient Babylon.
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Hammurabi's Code required that if a builder's house collapsed and killed the owner, the builder would be executed, establishing early accountability for professional negligence.
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Eye-for-an-eye retribution in Hammurabi's Code applied literally to physical harm, requiring a man who caused another man's loss of sight to lose his own eye as compensation.
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Hammurabi's Code prescribed the death penalty for 195 of its 282 laws, making execution the most common punishment across ancient Babylonian society.
- 01
The 282 laws in Hammurabi's Code, inscribed around 1754 BCE, established different penalties based on social class, with harsher punishments for harming nobles than commoners.