What were the laws of Hammurabi?
The laws associated with Hammurabi are a surviving written legal collection from eighteenth-century BCE Babylonia.
Historical context and developments
Inscribed provisions address property, debt, family and penalties. Outcomes could vary according to social status. The text was not a complete modern code equally applied to everyone.
Consequences and interpreting sources
The inscription also presents royal ideals of justice; actual cases need not have followed it word for word. Historians compare the text with court records and other documents to understand legal practice.
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