The Code of Hammurabi[1]
If you were a scribe in Babylon, four or five thousand years ago, you would be a highly respected man. Maybe, you would be one of the happy that could read and write cuneiform letters. It could be your job to chronicle the heroic deeds of the king, recount the king’s victories and tally his possessions; including all the loot he took from his enemies. In the recent past, archaeologists have discovered numerous ancient texts that survived the wear and tear of millennia. They have been found on slightly damaged clay tablets. Such texts have even been found on walls of ruined temples and the tombs of kings, queens, high priests and grand viziers. By now, most of these texts have been decoded. Hence, we know for sure that most male slaves in Ancient Babylonia were prisoners of war, taken from Assyria, Egypt or Israel. All day long these unfortunate men were forced to work in temples and palaces or to build and repair irrigation projects. Now we know that one could sell and buy slaves on public markets in Babylon and neighbouring Sumerian cities like Uruk and Jemdet-Nasr. We also know what people were thinking of enslaved people, for instance that buying a slave girl for espouse was looked down upon. 4000 year ago a father told his son:
“Do not honour a slave girl in your house; she should not rule your bedroom like a wife; do not give yourself over to slave girls. The household which a slave girl rules, she disrupts.”[2]
This father’s view was shared by most of his contemporaries, though not all. In that age of polygamy, many men that could afford one or more extra wives would not be so picky if there was a new bunch of beautiful young virgins put on sale. In those days kings owned tens or even hundreds of wives and concubines. One of them was Hammurabi, the sixth Amorite king of the Babylonian Empire. His rule was very successful and lasted for 38 years. When he died in 1750 BCE, his enlarged empire encompassed the entire region that we now know as Mesopotamia, the vast area between two great rivers: The Euphrates and the Tigris.[3] Nowadays this region covers all the land from the East of Iraq to the West of Iran. The remains of the capital city, Babylon, can be visited about 85 kilometres south of Baghdad. In the days of Hammurabi, Babylon was the largest city on earth, counting about 200,000 inhabitants.[4]
When King Hammurabi started his reign, he inherited many conflicts from his predecessors. The main source of conflict was the control over water. Then, this was a matter of life and death. In Mesopotamia irrigation agriculture depended heavily on a sufficient and regular input from The Euphrates and the Tigris. During periods of prolonged drought conflicts with neighbouring kingdoms, sited downstream, were unavoidable.
In 1787 BCE, Hammurabi conquered Uruk, capital city of the Sumerian empire. It is seen as the birthplace of human civilization. Presently Uruk is named Warka. It is located about 300 kilometres south of Bagdad. King Hammurabi also beleaguered Isin, another important city, but Rim-Sin, the King of Larsa, refused to surrender. A year later, Rim-Sin and Hammurabi clashed again. Neither could claim victory. This led to a stalemate that lasted for 16 years. Hammurabi used this period to strengthen his fortifications and cities. He also improved the network of canals. In 1763 BCE, he organized a new military campaign against Rim-Sin. This time he won. He had blocked a main water course, creating a big artificial lake. When he ordered his men to open up this dam, this created such a big flood that it devastated many bridges, roads, houses and other buildings. Some historians support another hypothesis. They assume that he had been withholding water until his enemy was forced to surrender. Anyhow, Hammurabi defeated Rim-Sin. Historical data show that he ordered the repair of several canals and to build new ones so that thousands of dislocated people could return to the region.
Wars over access to water still occur. Turkey and Syria have been fighting a modern “water war.” Turkey controls more than 90 per cent of the water from The Euphrates, which springs from the Taurus Mountains. Between October 2019 and January 2024 Turkish president Erdogan ordered more than 100 air strikes, targeting oil fields, gas fields and power stations in north-east Syria. These bombings produced disastrous knock-on effects for Syria’s waterworks and agriculture. Trying to justify his brutal interventions, Erdogan said that he only targeted Kurds in Syria. In his view Kurds are a loathsome bunch of terrorists that endanger the unity and stability of Turkey. The air-strikes exacerbated the heavy problems of all people living in a drought-struck area, where people already were suffering from severe shortages of water due to raising temperatures, and the dumping of toxic waste in the rivers.[5]
Whenever enemies attacked Babylonia, King Hammurabi defeated them. Thus he built and expanded the First Babylonian Empire. He asserted that Marduk, the Supreme God of Babylon, had ordered him to govern his expanding kingdom maintaining strict rules and meting out harsh sentences. He wanted to be admired and remembered as a great and just king. He and his counsels took inspiration from Moses’ Ten Commandments and from other laws that were being practiced in and around Mesopotamia.[6] When his counsellors had built a new and tight legal system, Hammurabi had all 282 laws chiselled in a big rock that looked like a warning finger. On the nail we see images of Hammurabi and Shamash, the God of Justice.[7] This heavy stele is two meters high. Later, despite its size and colossal weight, it was stolen by the Elamites.[8] And then it got lost. Did the Elamites hide it to be never found again or to use this costly stele in future deals with Babylonian kings? Anyhow, the Elamites did not destroy it. In 1901, Swiss archaeologist Gustave Jéquier found it back in Khuzestan.
Hammurabi’s laws deal with a wide range of issues, such as statutory wages for field-labourers and ox-drivers, the responsibilities of contractors and also various matters concerning matrimony, fatherhood, and sexual behaviour.[9] Punishment for physical violence was based on proportionality: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a leg for a leg, et cetera. Punishment for murder is death. Those who help slaves to escape are sentenced to death. Already Hammurabi’s code entails the highly valued principle that one is considered not to be guilty as long as the judge has not passed the verdict.
But it was also written in stone that slaves must be punished harsher than free people. This never feels right, but it became a standard principle where en whenever slavery emerges. Some of the proscribed punishments are horrendous. For example: if a surgeon inadvertently caused the death of a free patient, his hands would be chopped off. If the victim was a slave, the surgeon was only obliged to buy a new slave for the duped master.[10]
Slavery in Neo-Babylonia
Half a century ago, Soviet historian Muhammad A. Dandamaev decided to focus on archaeological documents about slavery in the Neo-Babylonian period. Chances were close to zero that studying this topic would bring him in conflict with the almighty Communist Party. It sufficed to sprinkle his painstaking study with some references to Marx or Lenin. Dandamaev collected, transcribed and interpreted more than ten thousand documents. Thus he produced a monograph chockfull of facts about Babylonian slavery.[11] He learned that chattel slavery played an important role in the running of households, workshops, temples and royal palaces. Rich families owned twenty five slaves or more. Family heads with moderate means only held three or four slaves. Rather surprisingly he found that even slaves owned slaves.[12] Slave Zin-Uballit owned three slaves. Dandamaev found seventeen contracts attesting that Zin-Uballit took loans, using his slave women as security. Not all Babylonians could afford four or five slaves. The poorer ones only owned one or two slaves, or hired them for a short time, when extra help was needed. In the first millennium BCE the estimated share of the enslaved population of Babylon ranged between 30 and 50 per cent.[13]
A Babylonian male slave could freely dispose of his earnings or possessions, as long as he did not cause his master any harm by doing so. Slaves not only engaged in trade. They also ran taverns and workshops. They hired, bought and sold slaves; they bought, sold, pawned and mortgaged property, including fields and houses. Numerous documents reveal that economic transactions and work contracts between slaves, or between slaves and free persons, masters included, were treated as economic deals between free persons. Everybody had to fulfil his contracts. Fines must be paid for not fulfilling them or for damaging goods from third parties, whether the third party was a master, a slave or an enslaved master.[14]
Ancient documents reveal that quite a number of slaves ran away from private households or temples. That is understandable, as most humans hate to be enslaved, in particular those people that had been free before. It takes guts to run away from your master, yet it did happen quite often. Hence, sellers had to guarantee that the slaves they put on sale would not run away in the next three months or 100 days. If a slave did escape within this period, the seller had to return him/her to the buyer or replace him/her with another slave. Records show that Bariki-ili ran away more than once. His master got sick of it and put him on sale for a low price. He was bought by Ahi–nuri, who passed him on to his daughter Gaga. But Bariki-ili ran away again. Therefore, Gaga and her husband put him on sale too; again for a very low price. They guaranteed to replace him or to take him back if he would escape before the end of the year. Documents reveal that this transaction was cancelled. Bariki-ili was returned to Gaga, put on trial and confessed that he had run away twice. Sooner or later successful runaways had to find a way to survive. Their best option was joining a new master, preferably one who resided far away from your old master. Dandamaev mentions a record saying that King Nabu-apla-idin, filed a suit against Nabu-lillene who had taken one of his slaves. To hide the slave’s identity Nabu-lillene gave him a new name, which translates as: “O God Nabu! Stop his feet!” [15] The Judge ruled that the slave had to be returned.
Temple slavery
Babylonian temples were busy places. They employed several bakers, brewers, butchers and cooks to feed all people connected to the temple and to prepare special food for the High Priests and the Gods. On the temple estate farmers, fishermen and orchard keepers supplied grain, milk, and fruit. There were many slaves for mundane chores such as grinding grain, fetching water, washing clothes, and herding life-stock. But there also were well-trained artisans like weavers and talented jewellers. Barbers and washers ensured that priests were well-shaven, cleansed and pure before entering the Holiest of the Holiest.[16] On temple sites there was room for secular entertainment too. And, last but not least, there were singers, dancers, and temple prostitutes to please male visitors and residents.
Enslaved temple servants could be called workers or the “dedicated” or the “bestowed” ones. The practice of presenting POW’s to temples ended in 530 BCE when King Cyrus turned Babylonia into a colony of Persia. Since then, most captured soldiers were employed as construction workers.[17] Orphans and children of the poor were a rich source of temple slavery. People who could not pay their debts to the temple, had to hand over one, two or more of their slaves, or even one or more of their children. In times of famine, parents gave young children to the temple to save them from starvation. The deal was that the temple helped feeding the families while these children remained with their parents until they were able to work for the temple. Also the offspring of temple slaves helped replenish the work force. Their children belonged to the temple too.[18]
Several unearthed tablets mention that enslaved men or women had “become clear” or “free” to serve a temple. The symbol for the God of the temple was branded on their right hand or wrist. In most cases this was Ištar, Šamaš, Marduk or Nabu. Probably many temple slaves had been donated earlier by free persons that had signed a contract for delivering one or more slaves later; say, after ten years or after the master died. These donors hoped that the temple God would make or keep them or their loved ones healthy. Similar donation practices existed in Ancient Assyria and India too.[19] So, live-now-and-pay-later deals are no modern invention but have been practiced long before modern capitalism. Not all donators or their heirs were inclined to fulfil their obligations. Even after many years, temple administrators had to take legal action to obtain the servants that had been promised by contract.[20]
King Nebuchadnezzar the Great ruled over Babylonia from 606-562 BCE. His military campaigns in the Levant not only helped to expand his empire, they also offered him the possibility to capture, enslave and transport tens of thousands of men and women. He needed them for the built of a large number of temples, city walls, palaces and canals. Legendary are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, built for Queen Amyitis, who dearly missed the green hills of her homeland. She was a daughter of Cyaxares, King of the Medes. Archaeological findings show that these Hanging Gardens might have been built in Nineveh, ordered by another king.[21]
Nebuchadnezzar planned and ordered other great construction works in Babylon, to make it the biggest city of the world. Nebuchadnezzar was a great army general. He defeated many countries and city-states. In 597 BCE, he conquered Judea. King Jeconiah was deported to Babylonia together with thousands of his people.[22] Jeconiah was held prison for 37 years. All the time he was treated with great respect. Ancient tablets show that he and his sons lived in a nice house and always received enough food.[23]
Conquering Judea was one thing; conquering Jerusalem was quite another matter. Nebuchadnezzar besieged the city for more than a year. In July 587 BCE, after many people had died of starvation, his army invaded the tottering city. His officers and soldiers desecrated the Temple of King Solomon and levelled it to the ground. They also destroyed the Royal Palace. Judea was made a province of Babylonia, and another wave of humiliated Jews got deported to Babylon. There they were being humiliated even more. The men were stripped naked, bound and marched through the muddy banks of the river. The most handsome young men were murdered on the spot to prevent that Babylonian women might crave for their affection. A hopeless revolt of thousands of deported priests ended in a massacre. The surviving Jews and their descendents were held in captivity for half a century.[24] The city’s administration made good use of them. The better-educated and well-trained Hebrews designed, engineered and built irrigation systems, palaces and temples.[25]
Nebuchadrezzar means: “O God Nabu, preserve my first born son.” Enslaved Jews changed the r in an n, changing the meaning of the last part in “… preserve my jackass.”[26]This new spelling stuck. Nebuchadnezzar II was a short man with very big ambitious. He pretended to be God, saying: “I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like The Most High.”[27] As a child he dreamt of conquering the whole world, which he almost did. Once he dreamt that he was behaving like an animal, eating grass like an ass. Thinking about this dream made him crazy. He was removed from the throne and sent into exile. His son Amel-Marduk functioned as regent-King. When Nebuchadnezzar came to his senses, he returned from exile and put his son in prison. After Nebuchadnezzar had died, top-advisors asked Amel-Marduk to take his rightful place. Nebuchadnezzar had always been an extremely cruel tyrant. The frightened Amel-Marduk did not dare to succeed him until he was completely sure that his father was irrevocably dead. He had his father’s corpse taken from the grave and stabbed many times. Subsequently, the mutilated corpse was dragged through the streets, then chopped in small pieces and fed to the vultures. It has been recorded that the people of many nations burst out in jubilation after learning that Nebuchadnezzar had died.[28]
Most of the deported and enslaved Jews belonged to the higher social classes. Since Babylon needed many good administrators, craftsmen, smiths, and traders, they were given a special status and left free, to some extent at least. This helped them to adjust and integrate. Some were selected and trained for top-positions within the Royal court.[29] The Book of Esther tells the story of two descendants: Esther and her uncle Mordecai.[30] Mordecai’s great-grandfather, was one of the many who had been taken to Babylon. Mordecai had taken care of Hadassah, and renamed her as Esther, referring to Ishtar, the Babylonian Goddess of fertility.[31] Esther, and several other good-looking Jewish girls, was selected for the harem of Ahasuerus, also known as King Xerxes I of Persia. In the harem, Esther was groomed to become his sex-slave. To make her even more attractive, she was given a special diet. Each day she was massaged with oils of myrrh and balsam. One night, Ahasuerus came to the harem and chose her to satisfy his sexual needs. He liked her very much and decided to marry her and make her queen.[32] Usually Persian kings only married inside a small circle of seven noble families, but nobody could stop the mighty Ahasuerus, also known as Xerxes I, to marry any beautiful woman he fell in love with, even if she was a foreign harem-girl.[33]
Each day, Mordecai went to the gates of the palace to see Esther, the new queen. When he learned of a plot to assassinate the King, he immediately informed Esther and told her to warn the King. Was this plot concocted because Ahasuerus had married a foreigner, and not someone from the local elite? Anyhow, the warning saved the King, and a scribe made a note of this his event in the Annals of the Kingdom. One day, Mordecai got into deep trouble after refusing to bow for Haman, a high counsellor of the king. Haman hated Jew. Somehow he got the king’s permission to kill all Jews in Babylonia. To choose the right day for starting this genocide, he used a mysterious method, which involves casting dices (Purim). The outcome was the thirteenth day of the month of Adar. When Mordecai learns of this devilish plan, he begs Esther to tell the King that she is Jewish too. She hesitates. No-one, not even the queen, is allowed to approach the King without being summoned. A few days later she finds the king in an excellent mood. Still grateful about the warning that prevented his assassination, he tells Esther that she may ask him everything she wishes “up to half of his Kingdom.” First, she invites the King to a banquet she has prepared for him. During this banquet she tells him that she will make another banquet to-morrow, at which counsellor Haman is invited too. At that occasion she will announce her special request. That same night the King has trouble to fall asleep. He asks to be read from the Kings Annals. Listening to this stuff usually helps him to fall asleep. It is then that he learns that Mordecai never had been honoured for saving his life. The next morning, he orders Haman to take Mordecai through the streets, mounted on the Royal Horse, wearing Royal Robes. To his dismay, Haman is ordered to walk beside the horse, and tell everybody, loud and clearly, that this parade is showing how the king honours people who have done him an exceptionally good service. That evening, during the second banquet, Esther tells the king that someone has planned to kill her and all her people. When the king asks who that might be, she points to Haman, saying that he plans to kill all Jews, including her, for se also is a Jew. The angered king orders to hang Haman. Ironically, Haman is hanged on the very gallows that he had erected for Mordecai. Since then, the thirteenth of Adar is a Jewish day of holy celebration, the feast of Purim.
In Hamadan, Iran, there is a shrine venerated to Mordecai and Ester. [34] Some historians, prominent Rabbis and Christian theologians have forwarded serious doubts about this story, because it does not contain references to God. Some think that the Esther scroll simply is a novella or historical romance. Nonetheless, this story, false or true, has become a very important part of the Hebrew Bible. For the Jewish Diaspora, the Book of Esther always remains very important. It inspires them to believe that Jews can integrate and fare well outside Israel.
Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, defeated the Median Empire and all neighbouring states in the Near East. He conquered Babylonia in 538 BCE and gave all Jews, permission to return to their homeland.[35] They had been forced to live, work and slave in and around Babylonia for almost half a century. About 50,000 Jews, including 3,000 priests and 7,000 slaves, went back to their home country, carrying the precious articles Nebuchadnezzar had stolen from the Temple of Jerusalem. From then on, King Cyrus of Persia is revered as a great benefactor of the Jewish people.[36] Not all Jewish descendants decided to “return” to Palestine. Most of them were born and raised in Babylonia. They had no vivid memories of Jerusalem or Judea. Hence, many of them preferred to stay in their land of birth. Besides, quite a few had married a Babylonian partner, another reason for staying in Persia.[37]
[1] This is chapter 2 of my book project “From Ancient and colonial Slavery to Abolition” This project is a translation, updating and expansion of “Afschaffing van de slavernij.” This Dutch book was published in 2013 by Garant; Antwerp /Amsterdam. (Draft 29-3-2026: 3683 words)
[2] Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton, Paul Halsall, Fordham University, July 1998. Retrieved: 6 April 2023
[3] Hammurabi: www.worldhistory.org/hammurabi/. Retrieved : 25-12-2024
[4] Babylon means gate to God.
[5] Turkish strikes in Syria cut water for one million people. 19 November 2024. www.bbc.co.uk
[6] Johannes Renger: Hammurabi, king of Babylonia. Brittanica.com. Retrieved: 17 April 2023
[7] A stele with an almost complete version of the code is present in the Louvre, Paris.
[8] Elam was located in the west and southwest of present day Iran.
[9] Claude Hermann Walter Johns, Babylonian Law — Code of Hammurabi. Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910-1911.
[10] Historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=360#ixzz1diXPv59j Quoted from Ira Rutkow; Surgery 1993, page 7
[11] Dandamaev, Muhammad A. Slavery in Babylonia: From Nabopolassar to Alexander the Great (626-331 BC). Edited by Marvin A. Powell and David B. Weisberg; Revised Edition. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press 2009 (First published 1984): p1-p5.
[12] Muhammad A. Dandamaev: o.c.: p 372-389
[13] Dandamaev: o. c.: p 216-218.
[14] Idem: p. 385-388
[15] Nabu is the Mesopotamian God of Wisdom and Literacy and the patron of scribes. In the biblical books of Isaiah and Jeremiah he is called Nebo.
[16] Peter Leithart: Priests of Babylon. 13 January 2015. theopolisinstitute.com
[17] Dandamaev: o. c. p. 469-472
[18] Idem: p. 472-489
[19] Francis Joannes: The economic role of women in neo-Babylonian temples. 8 October 2013. Www: refema.hypotheses.org. Retrieved: 12 April 2023
[20] Idem
[21] At least in Nineveh a bas relief has been found which depicts a beautiful garden receiving water via an aqua duct. Hanging Gardens of Babylon: Wikipedia. Retrieved: 21 November 2023
[22] Scholars have presented different estimates, up to 30,000. Also The Bible presents different numbers. The Book of Jeremiah mentions a very precise 3023 (Jeremiah: 52:28); The Book of Kings mentions 10,000 persons, plus 7,000 craftsmen and 1,000 smiths (Kings: 24:14; 24:16). Siege of Jerusalem (597 BCE): Wikipedia.org. Retrieved: 2 May 2023
[23] Rachael Grellet: A Tablet, a King, and his Rations. September 20, 2018: armstronginstitute.org/117. Retrieved: May 2, 2023
[24] Babylonian captivity: Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica: April 14, 2023. www.britannica.com/place/Babylonia
[25] 2 Kings 24-14
[26] How King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BC. thehistoryville.com. Retrieved: 13 April 2023
[27] The Bible Books of Kings: Isaiah 14:14
[28] How King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BC.
[29] David Mandel: Nebuchadnezzar. The King of Babylon was plagued with unusual dreams. Nebuchadnezzar | My Jewish Learning. Accessed 3 May 2023
[30] Book of Ester: 2: 5-6. The Biblical name Ahasuerus is equivalent to Xerxes, meaning King of Kings. Xerxes I ruled between 486 and 465 BCE, a time frame that fits the adult life time of third and fourth generation descendants of Jews captured by Nebuchadnezzar.
[31] The Babylonians forced the deported Jews and their descendants to accept a Babylonian name. Some scholars assume that Mordecai means “follower of Marduk” – the top-god of the Babylonians.
[32] Book of Esther: 2:6-16
[33] Book of Esther: Britannica.com. Retrieved: 3 May 2023.
[34] Mausoleum of Esther and Mordecai; www.archnet.org Retrieved: 25 April 2023
[35] Ezra 1:1-4
[36] The Babylonian Exile: www.britannica.com/topic/biblical-literature/The-Babylonian-Exile-and-the-restoration. Retrieved: 18 April 2023
[37] Outlawing intermarriage with a non-Jewish partner came much later. This discriminatory law was imposed by Ezra and Nehemia. They had migrated back from Babylonia much later. These orthodox Torah-scholars were shocked to see that interethnic marriages had become quite normal in Jerusalem. They believed that the God of Israel viewed inter-ethnic marriages as an abomination that desecrated the holiness of the Jewish nation. They referred to Deuteronomy 23:1-4