Babylonian Law
Over the years there have been many civilizations; some which have had great success and wonderful breakthroughs and others that could barely survive. Some of these civilizations unruly or chaotic so to speak while other formed laws and created order. Order was the key to these societies survival and one civilization set the tone for the rest. That civilization was that of Babylon; they formed that order with an abundance of laws. Now after reading “Babylonian law: How an early state regulated it’s subjects” from J.M. Powis Smith I will compare Babylon to modern day America.
Based on my reading of the article “Babylonian Law” I have found that this society was quite intolerant of most crimes. For example Law 1 of The Code says “If a man accuses a man, and charges him with murder, but cannot convict him, the accuser shall be put to death.” It is clear to me that this society has very strong values and will not just look the other way if an incident occurs. To me it is also apparent that the Babylonian society believed very heavily in getting even. In law 196 The Code states “If a man destroys the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye.” The belief in getting even is also apparent in law 197 The Code states “If he breaks a man’s bone, they shall break his bone.” Although I feel that the Babylonian society has very high values to me some of their laws were a little extreme.
I can see a few similarities in the Babylonian laws and those of modern day. Although I find these laws similar most of the time it is only because of the fact that it is acknowledged as a law. I say this because of the penalties of the crimes. For example in law 218 “If a physician makes a deep incision upon a man with his bronze lancet and causes the man’s death, or operates on the eye socket of a man with his lancet and destroys the man’s eye, they shall cut off his hand. Like I stated before I feel as though most of the Babylonian laws contain extreme penalties. However one similarity that I don’t think hasn’t changed much is law 235. This law states “If a shipbuilder constructs has a boat for a man, and he does not make the boat trustworthy, and in that same year that boat is sent on a voyage and suffers damage, the boatman shall rebuild that boat, and, at his own expense, shall make it strong, or shall give a strong boat to the owner.” This law is the same as a warranty that companies give consumers in modern times. I think the reason for the similarities of certain laws of the code to American law is because those that didn’t change, or had very little done to them are timeless and universal. Like law 55 which is “If a man opens his canal for irrigation and neglects it and it damages someone else’s property he has to compensate for the damages.” To me that law has not changed too much it just might apply to different situations like a car accident. The differences in American and Babylonian law came about because I think somewhere along the line people realized that in some way the law was unjust. For example 129 that basically says “If a woman is unfaithful she will be killed” now I don’t approve of that action there is still no reason to kill her.
I believe that other civilizations found it desirable to create formal written laws as opposed to more informal arrangements of other societies to make progress. I think they saw how this method was working and they wanted the same outcome for their own societies. They were all trying to become more advanced and go further than any other civilization. By forming these laws to live by they brought about order, and with this order came success like never before. Through this success these societies were finally able to organize and form into defined political states.
Babylon set the tone for so many civilizations because they all wanted the same success plus more that Babylon was able to obtain. There are many similarities as well as differences between Babylon and modern day America. The differences come from the technological advances and just the new understandings of the world that we have. However the similarities have survived because they were in accurate their own category. Honestly I don’t think that America or the rest of the world would be the same country that it is without Babylon and its breakthroughs.