MODULE: Institutional Corrections

Kahalagahang pampanitikan
–
nakapagpapalutang ang mga
manunulat ng
kanilang layunin na
mapahalagahan ng
indibidwal ang kanilang
karanasan. Sa
pamamagitan ng mabisang
paggamit ng
manunulat ng retorika ay
napapasok ng
panitikan ang kamalayan ng bawat
nilalang.

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Chapter
1
At the end of this chapter the student should be able
to:

Understand the history of punishment and

corrections
Recognize the objective of imprisonment

T£E CODE O/ £4MMU44&I

The Code of Hammurabi was one of the

earliest and most complete written legal codes
and was proclaimed by the Babylonian king
Hammurabi, who reigned from 1792 to 1750 B.C.
Hammurabi expanded the city-state of Babylon
along the Euphrates River to unite all of
southern Mesopotamia. The Hammurabi code of
laws, a collection of 282 rules, established
standards for commercial interactions and set
fines and punishments to meet the requirements
of justice. Hammurabi’s Code was carved onto a
massive, finger-shaped black stone stele
(pillar) that was looted by invaders and finally
rediscovered in 1901.

Hammurabi

Hammurabi was the sixth king in the Babylonian dynasty, which

ruled in central Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) from c. 1894 to 1595
B.C.

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His family was descended from the Amorites, a semi-nomadic tribe in
western Syria, and his name reflects a mix of cultures: Hammu, which
means “family” in Amorite, combined with rapi, meaning “great” in
Akkadian, the everyday language of Babylon.
In the 30th year of his reign, Hammurabi began to expand his
kingdom up and down the Tigris and Euphrates river valley,
overthrowing the
kingdoms of Assyria, Larsa, Eshunna
and Mari until all of Mesopotamia
was under his sway.
Hammurabi combined his military
and political advances with
irrigation projects and the
construction of fortifications
and temples celebrating Babylon’s
patron deity, Marduk. The Babylon
of Hammurabi’s era is now buried
below the area’s groundwater
table, and whatever archives he
kept are long dissolved, but clay
tablets discovered at other ancient sites
reveal glimpses of the king’s personality and statecraft.

One letter records his complaint of being forced to provide

dinner attire for ambassadors from Mari just because he’d done the
same for some other delegates: “Do you imagine you can control my
palace in the matter of formal wear?”

What Is the Code of Hammurabi?

The black stone stele containing the Code of Hammurabi was carved
from a single, four-ton slab of diorite, a durable but incredibly
difficult stone for carving.

At its top is a two-and-a-half-foot relief carving of a standing

Hammurabi receiving the law—symbolized by a measuring rod and tape—
from the seated Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. The rest of
the seven- foot-five-inch monument is covered with columns of chiseled
cuneiform script.
The text, compiled at the end of Hammurabi’s reign, is less a
proclamation of principles than a collection of legal precedents, set
between prose celebrating Hammurabi’s just and pious rule. Hammurabi’s
Code provides some of the earliest examples of the doctrine of “lex
talionis,” or the laws of retribution, sometimes better known as “an
eye for an eye.”
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Stele of Hammurabi Rediscovered

In 1901 Jacques de Morgan, a French mining engineer, led an

archaeological expedition to Persia to excavate the Elamite capital of
Susa, more than 250 miles from the center of Hammurabi’s kingdom.

There they uncovered the stele of Hammurabi—broken into three

pieces—that had been brought to Susa as spoils of war, likely by the
Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte in the mid-12th century B.C.

CODE OY HAMMURAbI

The Code of Hammurabi includes many harsh punishments, sometimes

demanding the removal of the guilty party’s tongue, hands, breasts, eye or
ear. But the code is also one of the earliest examples of an accused person
being considered innocent until proven guilty.
The 282 edicts are all written in if-then form. For example, if a man steals an
ox, then he must pay back 30 times its value. The edicts range from family law
to professional contracts and administrative law, often outlining different
standards of justice for the three classes of Babylonian society—the
propertied class, freedmen and slaves.
A doctor’s fee for curing a severe wound would be 10 silver shekels for a
gentleman, five shekels for a freedman and two shekels for a slave. Penalties
for malpractice followed the same scheme: a doctor who killed a rich patient
would have his hands cut off, while only financial restitution was required if
the victim was a slave.

THE CODE OF UR-NAMMU

The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest surviving

law code. This text was written on clay tablets in
the Sumerian language and is reckoned to have been
produced towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC.
The Code of Ur-Nammu may be divided into two
parts, the first is the prologue and the second is
the laws themselves. Apart from being the oldest
surviving law code, the Code of Ur-Nammu is also
important as it gives us a glimpse of the way
justice was conceived in ancient Sumerian society.

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A Law Code Divided in Pieces

Earlier law codes, such as the Code of Urukagina, are known to

exist. Nevertheless, the Code of Ur-Nammu is different in the sense
that the text itself has survived to a large extent. The actual
contents of the Code of Urukagina, by comparison, is now lost, and is
only known through references made by other texts that have been
discovered.

As for the Code of Ur-Nammu, the first copy of

this legal text was discovered in two fragments at
Nippur, an ancient Sumerian city situated in modern
day Iraq. Unfortunately, due to the poor state of
preservation, only the prologue and five of the laws
were discernible. They were translated into English
in 1952 by the renowned Assyriologist, Samuel Kramer.
Subsequently, other fragments of the code were
unearthed. The ones found in Ur, for example, were
translated in 1965, and resulted in the
reconstruction of about 40 laws. Fragments were also
discovered in another Sumerian city, Sippar, though
with some slight variants.

Creator of the Code of Ur-Nammu

The Code of Ur-Nammu has been

attributed to Ur-Nammu, as the laws are
credited directly to him in the prologue.
Others, however, have argued that the law
code was written by Shulgi, the son and
successor of Ur-Nammu. In any case, Ur-Nammu
was a king of the Sumerian city state of Ur.
Scholars are not entirely in agreement as to
when this king reigned, though it may have
been during the last century of the 3rd
millennium BC. Nevertheless, the reign of Ur-
Nammu is generally regarded to have been a
peaceful and prosperous one, with some
considering it to be part of the ‘Sumerian
Renaissance’.

The Code of Ur-Nammu begins with a prologue, which is a standard

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feature of Mesopotamian law codes. Here, the deities for Ur-Nammu’s

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kingship, Nanna and Utu, are invoked, after which the king is said to
have established equity in the land. This included the banishment of
malediction, violence, and strife, as well as the protection of
society’s weakest individuals. After the prologue, the text deals with
the laws themselves.

“If (Insert Crime), Then (Insert Punishment)”

The laws in the Code of Ur-Nammu follow a set pattern, i.e. If

(insert crime), then (insert punishment). This formula would be
followed by almost all law codes that came after the Code of Ur-Nammu.
In the law code, different categories of crime, as well as their
resulting punishments, may be distinguished. For example, there are a
number of capital offences, such as murder, robbery, and rape. The
punishment for such crimes was death. For example, “If a man commits
murder, that man must be killed.”, and “If a man violates the right of
another and deflowers the virgin wife of a young man, they shall kill
that male.”

Those who committed offences that were less serious in nature, on

the other hand, would have been punished by imprisonment and / or
fines. For instance, “If a man commits a kidnapping, he is to be
imprisoned and pay 15 shekels of silver.”, and “If a man knocks out a
tooth of another man, he shall pay two shekels of silver”.

There are also laws that ensure that if the innocence of an

accused person is proven, his / her accuser would be punished instead.
For example, “If a man is accused of sorcery he must undergo ordeal by
water; if he is proven innocent, his accuser must pay 3 shekels”, and
“If a man accused the wife of a man of adultery, and the river ordeal
proved her innocent, then the man who had accused her must pay one-
third of a mina of silver.”

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References:

https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/hammurabi

https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-
writings/code-ur-nammu-when-ancient-sumerians-laid-down-
law-everyone-obeyed-009333

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