Marshall High School Mr. Cline Western Civilization I: Ancient Foundations Unit Two CA * The Babylonians
• By the mid-20th century BC, Sumerian Civilization had already been through a lot:
• It had been co opted by the Akkadians
• It had been conquered by the Guti.
• It had thrown off its invaders, and started a new Sumerian Empire with Ur as its capitol
• Then, in 1950 BC, a new group of people entered the scene, the Elamites, a fierce people living to the southeast of Mesopotamia.
• The Elamites, like the Guti before them, seem to have been more interested in pillaging than empire building.
• It would take another thousand years before the Elamites would mount their own bid for control of the empire.
• Nevertheless, the Elamites destroyed the power structure that held the Sumerian empire together.
• After a thousand years, the Sumero-Akkadian empire was dead at last. * The Babylonians
• Yet the idea of a united Mesopotamian empire lived on as new peoples tried their hand at imperialism.
• With the break down of the empire at the hands of the Elamites, a new people, the Amorites, came to conquer much of southern Mesopotamia, including an important religious center called Babylon.
• Like the Sumerians before them, the Amorites began by creating minor kingdoms or city states, which vied with one another for power.
• The earliest of these were two cities, Isin and Larsa.
• For about 200 years, these two were rivals and struggled with each other for supremacy.
• Then around 1830, the city of Babylon took advantage of the distraction of these two power players and established itself as an independent kingdom.
• Yet Babylon was small compared to the older kingdoms around it.
* The Babylonians
• Surrounded by enemies, Babylon extended its power slowly. It would take the better part of a century before a Babylonian leader was brazen enough to attempt to recreate the grand Mesopotamian empire. That leader's name was Hammurabi.
• Hammurabi inherited a central, but rather unimportant kingdom of Mesopotamia.
• He led a well disciplined fighting force to the conquest of his Amorite rivals, Isin and Larsa, as well as the already ancient cities of Ur and Uruk.
• By the time he was done, Babylon would be the seat of an empire stretching for thousands of miles.
• But Hammurabi was not sated with mere conquest.
• He wanted to build an empire to last.
• Like Ur Nammu, he established a centralized bureaucracy with taxes. * The Babylonians
• He rebuilt old imperial roads and cleared out the canals, allowing trade to form once again.
• Like all Babylonian kings, Hammurabi was a member of the priestly caste and was likely considered an avatar of the city's patron deity, Marduk.
• During his reign, Hammurabi established Babylon as the holiest of Mesopotamian cities, where all future emperors would need to be crowned.
• Yet perhaps Hammurabi's greatest accomplishment was his Code of Laws.
• It was likely inspired by the code of Ur Nammu, the law of the last great Mesopotamian empire.
• While the Babylonians seem to have perfected Sumerian designs for civilization, they show little signs of invention in this period.
• This copying of Sumerian accomplishments would typify all the empires that attempted to gain control of Mesopotamia. * The Babylonians
• Indeed, the relics of Babylonian culture could not be easily discerned from those of the Sumerians for hundreds of years.
• They built their palaces, temples and Ziggurats all along Sumerian lines, adorning them with frescoes, glazed tiles and stone steles.
• Like the Sumerians, the Babylonians built with mud brick.
• Some believe this is because they suffered from a lack of stone. Yet it is interesting to note that the later Assyrians, who had plenty of stone at their disposal, continued to build with mud brick after their rise to power.
• This suggests that the choice of mud brick might have been a cultural appeal to an old source of legitimacy as much as it was a material necessity.
• To appear legitimate, every culture to come would try to replicate the achievements of the Sumerians.
• The 200 years following the fall of Ur saw the rise of two great cultures that would dominate Mesopotamia for the next millennia, the Babylonians and the Assyrians * The Babylonians
• The Babylonians began as a small city state in the shadow of Agade. However, in 1894 B.C. an Amorite dynasty gained control of Babylon, and in 1813 of Assyria.
• The first Amorite King of Babylon was Shamshi Adad, and under him Babylon and Assyria conquered most of northern Mesopotamia.
• However, the achievement did not live beyond Shamshi Adad as the kingdom was split between his two sons, which are recorded as being lazy and overconfident, and so they lost the new empire.
• With the decline of the dominant Assyria after Shamshi Adad, a new Amorite King was able to take control of Babylon, and this was the legendary Hammurabi (1792-1750 B.C.)
• In 1761 B.C., Hammurabi conquered all of old Sumeria, then most of northern Mesopotamia. His most famous victory was over the City of Eshnunna, where he won by redirecting the city’s water supply.
• Hammurabi was most famous for his law code, one of the most complete, though not the earliest one, to survive from the ancient world. * The Babylonians
• It is most marked by the severity of its punishments, such as:
• If a woman bring about the death of her husband for the sake of another man, they shall impale her, or;
• If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye
• The law code was divided into 282 sections dealing with family, property, and commercial law, with slavery, professional fees, prices, and wages included.
• The law code presents an idealized picture of Babylonian society with the King at the head and three classes below him, the awilum or property owning freemen, the mushkennum or non property owning dependents of the state, and the wardenum, or slaves.
• It was a fluid society as a slave could accumulate enough wealth to become a freeman, and a freeman could find himself enslaved for non payment of debts * The Babylonians
• Women and children were considered to be the property of their husbands, while the king’s relationship with his people was considered to be one of master to slaves.
• The law was not available to everyone, as it was carved into a large stone stele and placed in the temple of Marduk, so that Hammurabi could demonstrate to the god what a wise and just king he was, and thereby gain his favor.
• Following Hammurabi’s death, the Babylonian Empire had a period of decline where the threat of military invasion by the Hittites in the north, and the eventual sacking of Babylon by them, led to the overthrow of the Amorite Dynasty, and Babylon becoming an obscure city again.
• The Need for Laws
• This is Jim. This is Jim's neighbor, Tom. Jim has a cow. Tom steals Jim's cow. Jim retrieves his cow, and steals Tom's pig to boot. That'll teach Tom to steal from Jim! * The Babylonians
• The Need for Laws
• Unfortunately, all Tom learns from this exchange is that Jim must die. Tom kills Jim and takes back his pig and the cow.
• Enraged, Jim's family descends on Tom's farm, steals all the livestock, and burns Tom's barn to the ground, with Tom inside.
• Tom's family retaliates in kind, and we've got ourselves a good old- fashioned feud, one to last for generations.
• Over the years, dozens of people will die, all over a stupid cow. Left to their own devices, these two families will tear each other apart, to no one's benefit.
• The Importance of Judges
• Enter the judge. A judge can be anyone: a priest, an elected official, a jury of peers, a king or royal appointee, a little old man on a hill.
• The only real requirement for a judge is that his decisions must be respected. * The Babylonians
• The Importance of Judges
• That is, a judge must be obeyed; otherwise he's just a spectator with an opinion.
• How judges enforce their will varies.
• The priest uses fear of the gods to sway people.
• The jury of peers depends on its impartiality to bind people to its verdicts.
• The king can use soldiers to enforce his will.
• Yet whatever the system, it allows Tom and Jim to resolve their conflict over the cow without bloodshed.
• Tom steals Jim's cow; Jim goes to the judge. The judge threatens Tom with eternal damnation until he relents, or holds a trial to decide whom the cow belongs to, or simply sends soldiers to return Jim's cow to him. * The Babylonians
• The Importance of Judges
• However it goes, at the end of the day, Jim has his cow back without creating a longstanding vendetta with his neighbor. Thus you can see the important role of judges in society.
• There is reason to believe that the role of judge may very well be the first position of authority, and that this authority evolved into chiefdoms, priesthoods, monarchies, and all the other forms of government.
• At the heart of all authority is the power to make decisions for the people beneath you.
• Should we invade? Where shall we build? And yes, even, 'whose cow is this? '
• The Use of Hierarchies in Law
• Yet judging things is time consuming. Kings have better things to do than decide which farmer gets a cow, and emperors really can't be bothered with that sort of thing. * The Babylonians
• The Use of Hierarchies in Law
• To ease this burden, leaders can and do take advantage of hierarchies. They delegate their authority to subordinates, and leave it to them to determine guilt.
• Yet it is telling that in so many cultures throughout time, sentencing has been reserved for people at the top of the hierarchy, especially in matters of capital punishment.
• Command over life and death has always been the prerogative of kings, and they are loath to give such an incredible power to anyone else.
• The Creation of Laws
• But how is a king with thousands of subjects, let alone an emperor with millions, supposed to make his will known in every case? Must he pass sentence on every trial?
• Enter laws. Laws allow a king to pass sentence without being there. * The Babylonians
• The Creation of Laws
• Instead of, 'you stole a cow, you lose a hand... or your life, depending on how I'm feeling today.' Now it's, 'anyone who steals a cow loses a hand.' In this way, laws also make the justice system more just, since everyone faces the same consequences for the same actions.
• The Code of Ur-Nammu
• The earliest surviving code of law is the code of Ur-Nammu, written by the king of Ur near the end of the Sumerian empire, around 2100 BC.
• It contained 57 laws, of which 26 remain. These range from the reasonable: 'if a man commits a kidnapping, he is to be imprisoned and pay 15 shekels of silver.' To the draconic: 'if a man commits a robbery, he will be killed.' To the downright silly: 'if a man's slave- woman, comparing herself to her mistress, speaks insolently to her, her mouth shall be scoured with 1 quart of salt.' * The Babylonians
• The Code of Hammurabi
• 300 years later, around 1790 BC, a Babylonian king named Hammurabi would compose a much more famous, and much more nuanced, code of laws.
• Inscribed on a stone stele, the code of Hammurabi contains 282 laws. And we see here much more than mere consequences for actions.
• We find laws for commerce: 'if any one give another silver, gold, or anything else to keep, he shall show everything to some witness, draw up a contract, and then hand it over for safe keeping.'
• Pricing Laws: 'if he hire an ass for threshing, the hire is twenty ka of corn.'
• Laws for liability: 'if an animal be killed in the stable by God (an accident), or if a lion kill it, the herdsman shall declare his innocence before God, and the owner bears the accident in the stable.' * The Babylonians
• The Code of Hammurabi
• Laws of inheritance: 'if a father give a present to his daughter... and then die, then she is to receive a portion as a child from the paternal estate, and enjoy its so long as she lives. (Once she dies) Her estate belongs to her brothers.'
• Even laws of emancipation: 'if a State slave or the slave of a freed man marry the daughter of a free man, and children are born, the master of the slave shall have no right to enslave the children of the free.'
• The Evolution of Laws
• Laws also allow a king to establish just practices.
• This is very important, as unjust practices don't resolve problems. They just transfer anger from the participants to the authority figure. * The Babylonians
• The Evolution of Laws
• Unjust authority can be maintained, but it's a rather expensive process, protecting your judges with hordes of soldiers, and therefore best avoided.
• Even Ur-Nammu realized this 4000 years ago when he wrote, 'if a man appeared as a witness, and was shown to be a perjurer, he must pay fifteen shekels of silver.'
• Hammurabi goes a step further: 'if the owner (of the stolen goods) does not bring witnesses to identify the lost article, he is an evil-doer, he has transgressed, and shall be put to death.'
• Much later, the Law of Moses (Deutoronomy 19:15) would state, 'one witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime or offense he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' * The Babylonians
• The End Result and Purpose of a Justice System
• So we've seen the good a justice system can do for a society. It settles disputes, and thereby prevents unnecessary bloodshed.
• Laws streamline this process, and give judgments a modicum of fairness by assigning set penalties for crimes and by establishing standards for proof.
• Still, the question remains: why would a king go through all this trouble?
• Well, at its most fundamental level people killing each other leads to instability.
• Instability hampers trade, and trade is the lifeblood of any empire. * The Babylonians
• The End Result and Purpose of a Justice System
• When a king looks at Jim and Tom's situation, he doesn't see two men on the verge of a tragic murderous feud that will claim innocent lives for generations. No. What a king sees is two otherwise productive farms too busy sabotaging one another to produce anything, and messing up trade in the neighborhood to boot.
• Yet perhaps the most compelling reason that kings make laws is more political than economic.
• Kings establish justice systems because as long as the people look to their king for justice, they will do what their king tells them to do. * The Babylonians