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124-564: Criminal investigation is an ancient science that may have roots as far back as c.  1700 BCE in the writings of the Code of Hammurabi . In the code, it is suggested that both the accuser and the accused had the right to present evidence they collected. In the modern era , criminals investigations are most often done by government police forces . Private investigators are also commonly hired to complete or assist in criminal investigations. An early recorded professional criminal investigator

248-483: A muškēnum than an awīlum : a muškēnum 's life may have been cheaper, but so were some of his fines. There was also inequality within these classes: laws 200 and 202, for example, show that one awīlum could be of higher rank than another. Martha Roth has shown that ideas of shame and honour motivated certain laws. The above principles are distant in spirit from modern systems of common and civil law , but some may be more familiar. One such principle

372-401: A completely unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology . It was successfully deciphered by 1857. The cuneiform script changed considerably over more than 2,000 years. The image below shows the development of the sign SAĜ "head" (Borger nr. 184, U+12295 𒊕 ). Stages: The cuneiform script was developed from pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium BC, stemming from

496-665: A consistent underlying legal system. As with the Code of Hammurabi, however, it is difficult to interpret the purpose and underlying legal systems of these earlier collections, prompting numerous scholars to question whether this should be attempted. Extant collections include: There are additionally thousands of documents from the practice of law, from before and during the Old Babylonian period. These documents include contracts, judicial rulings, letters on legal cases, and reform documents such as that of Urukagina , king of Lagash in

620-559: A given sign could have various meanings depending on context. The sign inventory was reduced from some 1,500 signs to some 600 signs, and writing became increasingly phonological . Determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time, labeled the Early Bronze Age II epoch by historians. The earliest known Sumerian king, whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets,

744-448: A goat come next. Wolfram von Soden , who decades earlier called this way of thinking Listenwissenschaft ("list science"), often denigrated it. However, more recent writers, such as Marc Van De Mieroop, Jean Bottéro, and Ann Guinan, have either avoided value judgments or expressed admiration. Lists were central to Mesopotamian science and logic, and their distinctive structural principles let entries be generated infinitely. Linking

868-468: A highly organised code similar to the Code of Justinian and the Napoleonic Code . There is also evidence that dīnātum , which in the Code of Hammurabi sometimes denote individual "laws", were enforced. One copy of the Code calls it a ṣimdat šarrim , "royal decree", which denotes a kind of enforced legislation. However, the arguments against this view are strong. Firstly, it would make

992-401: A hope that "any wronged man who has a lawsuit" ( awīlum ḫablum ša awātam iraššû ) may have the laws of the stele read aloud to him and know his rights (3240'–3256'). This would bring Hammurabi praise (3257'–3275') and divine favour (3276'–3295'). Hammurabi wishes for good fortune for any ruler who heeds his pronouncements and respects his stele (3296'–3359'). However, he invokes the wrath of

1116-517: A hypothetical conditional. The durative , sometimes called the "present" in Assyriology, may express intention in the laws. For ease of English reading, some translations give preterite and perfect verbs in the protasis a present sense. In the apodosis, the verbs are in the durative, though the sense varies between permissive—"it is permitted that x happen"—and instructive—" x must/will happen". In both protasis and apodosis, sequence of action

1240-582: A language structure typical of the non-Indo-European agglutinative Sumerian language . The first tablets using syllabic elements date to the Early Dynastic I–II periods c.  2800 BC , and they are agreed to be clearly in Sumerian. This is the time when some pictographic element started to be used for their phonetic value, permitting the recording of abstract ideas or personal names. Many pictographs began to lose their original function, and

1364-485: A major problem. Some of these criminologists propose an increased number of police officers. Others argue that investigations of the evidence are more expensive than police patrols and that not all crimes can be investigated, suggesting that profiling of criminal psychology should be replaced with randomized priorities of individual suspects within similar types of crime. The latter criminologists also argue that such randomization would not only fight hidden crimes by exposing

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1488-659: A phonetic complement. Yet even in those days, the Babylonian syllabary remained a mixture of logographic and phonemic writing. Elamite cuneiform was a simplified form of the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, used to write the Elamite language in the area that corresponds to modern Iran from the 3rd millennium BC to the 4th century BC. Elamite cuneiform at times competed with other local scripts, Proto-Elamite and Linear Elamite . The earliest known Elamite cuneiform text

1612-432: A pointed stylus, sometimes called "linear cuneiform". Many of the early dynastic inscriptions, particularly those made on stone, continued to use the linear style as late as circa 2000 BC. In the mid-3rd millennium BC, a new wedge-tipped stylus was introduced which was pushed into the clay, producing wedge-shaped cuneiform. This development made writing quicker and easier, especially when writing on soft clay. By adjusting

1736-733: A relief portrait of Hammurabi alongside those of other historic lawgivers. There are replicas of the stele in numerous institutions, including the headquarters of the United Nations in New York City and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin . Hammurabi (or Hammurapi), the sixth king of the Amorite First Dynasty of Babylon , ruled from 1792 to 1750 BC ( middle chronology ). He secured Babylonian dominance over

1860-483: A resemblance to Old Japanese , written in a Chinese-derived script, where some of these Sinograms were used as logograms and others as phonetic characters. This "mixed" method of writing continued through the end of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, although there were periods when "purism" was in fashion and there was a more marked tendency to spell out the words laboriously, in preference to using signs with

1984-450: A seated Shamash. Shamash wears the horned crown of divinity and has a solar attribute, flames, spouting from his shoulders. Contrastingly, Scheil, in his editio princeps , identified the seated figure as Hammurabi and the standing figure as Shamash. Scheil also held that the scene showed Shamash dictating to Hammurabi while Hammurabi held a scribe's stylus , gazing attentively at the god. Martha Roth lists other interpretations: "that

2108-421: A sequence. Van De Mieroop provides the following examples: If a physician performs major surgery with a bronze lancet upon an [ awīlum ] and thus heals the [ awīlum ], or opens an [ awīlum ]'s temple with a bronze lancet and thus heals the [ awīlum ]'s eye, he shall take ten shekels of silver (as his fee). If a physician performs major surgery with a bronze lancet upon an [ awīlum ] and thus causes

2232-548: A sharpened reed stylus or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic wedge shape of the strokes. Most Proto-Cuneiform records from this period were of an accounting nature. The proto-cuneiform sign list has grown, as new texts are discovered, and shrunk, as variant signs are combined. The current sign list is 705 elements long with 42 being numeric and four considered pre-proto-Elamite. Certain signs to indicate names of gods, countries, cities, vessels, birds, trees, etc., are known as determinatives and were

2356-576: A slightly different way. From the 6th century, the Akkadian language was marginalized by Aramaic , written in the Aramaic alphabet , but Akkadian cuneiform remained in use in the literary tradition well into the times of the Parthian Empire (250 BC–226 AD). The last known cuneiform inscription, an astronomical text, was written in 75 AD. The ability to read cuneiform may have persisted until

2480-620: A stylus. Writing is first recorded in Uruk , at the end of the 4th millennium BC, and soon after in various parts of the Near-East . An ancient Mesopotamian poem gives the first known story of the invention of writing : Because the messenger's mouth was heavy and he couldn't repeat [the message], the Lord of Kulaba patted some clay and put words on it, like a tablet. Until then, there had been no putting words on clay. The cuneiform writing system

2604-403: A tooth for a tooth when one man destroys another's. Punishments determined by lex talionis could be transferred to the sons of the wrongdoer. For example, law 229 states that the death of a homeowner in a house collapse necessitates the death of the house's builder. The following law 230 states that if the homeowner's son died, the builder's son must die also. Persons were not equal before

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2728-561: A variety of gods individually to turn their particular attributes against the defacer. For example: "may the [storm] god Adad   ... deprive him of the benefits of rain from heaven and flood from the springs" (3509'–3515': adad... zunnī ina šamê mīlam ina nagbim līṭeršu ); "may the god [of wisdom] Ea   ... deprive him of all understanding and wisdom, and may he lead him into confusion" (3440'–3451': ea... uznam u nēmeqam līṭeršu-ma ina mīšītim littarrūšu ). Gods and goddesses are invoked in this order: The Code of Hammurabi

2852-484: A very unusual code—Reuven Yaron called the designation "Code" a "persistent misnomer". Vital areas of society and commerce are omitted. For example, Marc Van De Mieroop observes that the Code "deals with cattle and agricultural fields, but it almost entirely ignores the work of shepherds, vital to Babylonia's economy". Then, against the legislation theory more generally, highly implausible circumstances are covered, such as threshing with goats, animals far too unruly for

2976-428: Is Enmebaragesi of Kish (fl. c.  2600 BC ). Surviving records became less fragmentary for following reigns and by the arrival of Sargon, it had become standard practice for each major city-state to date documents by year-names, commemorating the exploits of its king. Geoffrey Sampson stated that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script , and, probably, [were] invented under

3100-546: Is 281 lines long and extremely forceful. Some of the curses are very vivid: "may the god Sin   ... decree for him a life that is no better than death" (3486'–3508': sîn... balāṭam ša itti mūtim šitannu ana šīmtim lišīmšum ); "may he [the future defacer] conclude every day, month, and year of his reign with groaning and mourning" (3497'–3501': ūmī warḫī šanāt palēšu ina tānēḫim u dimmatim lišaqti ); may he experience "the spilling of his life force like water" (3435'–3436': tabāk napištišu kīma mê ). Hammurabi implores

3224-483: Is a Babylonian legal text composed during 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organized, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East . It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian , purportedly by Hammurabi , sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon . The primary copy of the text is inscribed on a basalt stele 2.25 m (7 ft 4 + 1 ⁄ 2  in) tall. The stele

3348-561: Is a treaty between Akkadians and the Elamites that dates back to 2200 BC. Some believe it might have been in use since 2500 BC. The tablets are poorly preserved, so only limited parts can be read, but it is understood that the text is a treaty between the Akkad king Nāramsîn and Elamite ruler Hita , as indicated by frequent references like "Nāramsîn's friend is my friend, Nāramsîn's enemy is my enemy". The most famous Elamite scriptures and

3472-597: Is an adaptation of the Old Assyrian cuneiform of c. 1800 BC to the Hittite language and was used from the 17th until approximately the 13th century BC. More or less the same system was used by the scribes of the Hittite Empire for two other Anatolian languages , namely Luwian (alongside the native Anatolian hieroglyphics ) and Palaic , as well as for the isolate Hattic language . When the cuneiform script

3596-484: Is broad, including, for example, criminal law , family law , property law , and commercial law . Modern scholars responded to the Code with admiration at its perceived fairness and respect for the rule of law , and at the complexity of Old Babylonian society. There was also much discussion of its influence on the Mosaic Law . Scholars quickly identified lex talionis —the "eye for an eye" principle—underlying

3720-429: Is called gunû or "gunification"; if signs are cross-hatched with additional Winkelhaken , they are called šešig ; if signs are modified by the removal of a wedge or wedges, they are called nutillu . "Typical" signs have about five to ten wedges, while complex ligatures can consist of twenty or more (although it is not always clear if a ligature should be considered a single sign or two collated, but distinct signs);

3844-448: Is conveyed by suffixing verbs with -ma , "and". -ma can also have the sense "but". The Code is relatively well-understood, but some items of its vocabulary are controversial. As mentioned, the terms awīlum and muškēnum have proved difficult to translate. They probably denote respectively a male member of a higher and lower social class. Wolfram von Soden, in his Akkadisches Handwörterbuch , proposed that muškēnum

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3968-428: Is either a soldier or [an auxiliary] who is taken captive in a royal fortress, and his son is able to perform the service obligation, the field and orchard shall be given to him, and he shall perform his father's service obligation. If his son is young and is unable to perform his father's service obligation, one third of the field and orchard shall be given to his mother, and his mother shall raise him. Here, following

4092-527: Is perhaps justified by Hammurabi's interest in his subjects' affairs. His affinities with many different gods are stressed throughout. He is portrayed as dutiful in restoring and maintaining temples and peerless on the battlefield. The list of his accomplishments has helped establish that the text was written late in Hammurabi's reign. After the list, Hammurabi explains that he fulfilled Marduk's request to establish "truth and justice" ( kittam u mīšaram ) for

4216-451: Is short: "I am Hammurabi, the shepherd, selected by the god Enlil" ( ḫammurabi rē'ûm nibīt enlil anāku ). Then Hammurabi continues for over 200 lines in a single nominal sentence with the anāku delayed to the very end (291). Hammurabi repeatedly calls himself na'dum , "pious" (lines 61, 149, 241, and 272). The metaphor of Hammurabi as his people's shepherd also recurs. It was a common metaphor for ancient Near Eastern kings, but

4340-452: Is that the Code is not a true code but an abstract treatise on how judgments should be formulated. This led Fritz Rudolf Kraus, in an early formulation of the theory, to call it jurisprudence ( Rechtssprüche ). Kraus proposed that it was a work of Mesopotamian scholarship in the same category as omen collections like šumma ālu and ana ittišu . Others have provided their own versions of this theory. A. Leo Oppenheim remarked that

4464-472: Is the presumption of innocence ; the first two laws of the stele prescribe punishments, determined by lex talionis , for unsubstantiated accusations. Written evidence was valued highly, especially in matters of contract . One crime was given only one punishment. The laws also recognized the importance of the intentions of a defendant. Lastly, the Code's establishment on public stelae was supposedly intended to increase access to justice. Whether or not this

4588-457: Is the longest and best-organised legal text from the ancient Near East, as well as the best-preserved. The classification below (columns 1–3) is Driver & Miles', with several amendments, and Roth's translation is used. Laws represented by letters are those reconstructed primarily from documents other than the Louvre stele. The purpose and legal authority of the Code have been disputed since

4712-495: The Code of Ur-Nammu , when Hammurabi produced his own Code. This suggests that earlier collections may have not only resembled the Code but influenced it. Raymond Westbrook maintained that there was a fairly consistent tradition of "ancient Near Eastern law" which included the Code of Hammurabi, and that this was largely customary law . Nonetheless, there are differences: for example, Stephen Bertman has suggested that where earlier collections are concerned with compensating victims,

4836-458: The Iron Age (c. 10th to 6th centuries BC), Assyrian cuneiform was further simplified. The characters remained the same as those of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiforms, but the graphic design of each character relied more heavily on wedges and square angles, making them significantly more abstract: Babylonian cuneiform was simplified along similar lines during that period, albeit to a lesser extent and in

4960-613: The Louvre , in Room 227 of the Richelieu wing. At the top is an image of Hammurabi with Shamash , the Babylonian sun god and god of justice. Below the image are about 4,130 lines of cuneiform text: One fifth contain a prologue and epilogue, while the remaining four fifths contain what are generally called the laws. Near the bottom, seven columns of the laws, each with more than eighty lines, were polished and erased in antiquity. The stele

5084-626: The Mesopotamian plain through military prowess, diplomacy, and treachery. When Hammurabi inherited his father Sin-Muballit 's throne, Babylon held little local sway; the local hegemon was Rim-Sin of Larsa . Hammurabi waited until Rim-Sin grew old, then conquered his territory in one swift campaign, leaving his organisation intact. Later, Hammurabi betrayed allies in Eshnunna , Elam , and Mari to gain their territories. Hammurabi had an aggressive foreign policy, but his letters suggest he

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5208-724: The Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin , the Louvre , the Istanbul Archaeology Museums , the National Museum of Iraq , the Yale Babylonian Collection (approx. 40,000), and Penn Museum . Most of these have "lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published", as there are only a few hundred qualified cuneiformists in the world. The decipherment of cuneiform began with

5332-531: The Winkelhaken impressed vertically by the tip of the stylus. The signs exemplary of these basic wedges are: Except for the Winkelhaken , which has no tail, the length of the wedges' tails could vary as required for sign composition. Signs tilted by about 45 degrees are called tenû in Akkadian, thus DIŠ is a vertical wedge and DIŠ tenû a diagonal one. If a sign is modified with additional wedges, this

5456-401: The 23rd century BC ( short chronology ). The Akkadian language being East Semitic , its structure was completely different from Sumerian. The Akkadians found a practical solution in writing their language phonetically, using the corresponding Sumerian phonetic signs. Still, many of the Sumerian characters were retained for their logographic value as well: for example the character for "sheep"

5580-509: The 3rd millennium Sumerian script. Ugaritic was written using the Ugaritic alphabet , a standard Semitic style alphabet (an abjad ) written using the cuneiform method. Between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 –100,000 have been read or published. The British Museum holds the largest collection (approx. 130,000 tablets), followed by

5704-480: The Akkadian period, at the time of the Uruk ruler Lugalzagesi (r. c. 2294–2270 BC). The vertical style remained for monumental purposes on stone stelas until the middle of the 2nd millennium. Written Sumerian was used as a scribal language until the first century AD. The spoken language died out between about 2100 and 1700 BC. The archaic cuneiform script was adopted by the Akkadian Empire from

5828-461: The Babylonian sky god and king of the gods , granted rulership over humanity to Marduk . Marduk chose the centre of his earthly power to be Babylon, which in the real world worshipped him as its tutelary god . Marduk established the office of kingship within Babylon. Finally, Anum, along with the Babylonian wind god Enlil , chose Hammurabi to be Babylon's king. Hammurabi was to rule "to prevent

5952-688: The Code evinced. Several singled out perceived secularism : Owen Jenkins, for example, but even Charles Souvay for the Catholic Encyclopedia , who opined that unlike the Mosaic Law the Code was "founded upon the dictates of reason". The question of the Code's influence on the Mosaic Law received much early attention. Scholars also identified Hammurabi with the Biblical figure Amraphel , but this proposal has since been abandoned. The relief appears to show Hammurabi standing before

6076-468: The Code is concerned with physically punishing offenders. Additionally, the above conclusions of similarity and influence apply only to the law collections themselves. The actual legal practices from the context of each code are mysterious. Cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo - syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East . The script

6200-401: The Code of Hammurabi and similar Mesopotamian law collections "represent an interesting formulation of social criticism and should not be taken as normative directions". This interpretation bypasses the problem of low congruence between the Code and actual legal judgments. Secondly, the Code does bear striking similarities to other works of Mesopotamian scholarship. Key points of similarity are

6324-473: The Code of Lipit-Ishtar in 1947, the Laws of Eshnunna in 1948, and the Code of Ur-Nammu in 1952. Early commentators dated Hammurabi and the stele to the 23rd century BC. However, this is an earlier estimate than even the " ultra-long chronology " would support. The Code was compiled near the end of Hammurabi's reign. This was deduced partly from the list of his achievements in the prologue. Scheil enthused about

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6448-418: The Code or any other law collection, despite the great scale of the corpus. Two references to prescriptions on "a stele" ( narû ) come closest. In contrast, numerous judgments cite royal mīšarum -decrees. Raymond Westbrook held that this strengthened the argument from silence that ancient Near Eastern legal "codes" had legal import. Furthermore, many Old Babylonian judgments run entirely counter to

6572-434: The Code suggests about Old Babylonian society and its legal system. For example, whether it demonstrates that there were no professional advocates, or that there were professional judges. Scholars who approach the Code as a self-contained document renounce such claims. One principle widely accepted to underlie the Code is lex talionis , or "eye for an eye". Laws 196 and 200 respectively prescribe an eye for an eye and

6696-411: The Code to the scribal tradition within which "list science" emerged also explains why trainee scribes copied and studied it for over a millennium. The Code appears in a late Babylonian (7th–6th century BC) list of literary and scholarly texts. No other law collection became so entrenched in the curriculum. Rather than a code of laws, then, it may be a scholarly treatise. Much has been written on what

6820-793: The Code was published by Father Jean-Vincent Scheil in 1902, in the fourth volume of the Reports of the Delegation to Persia ( Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse ). After a brief introduction with details of the excavation, Scheil gave a transliteration and a free translation into French, as well as a selection of images. Editions in other languages soon followed: in German by Hugo Winckler in 1902, in English by C. H. W. Johns in 1903, and in Italian by Pietro Bonfante, also in 1903. The Code

6944-403: The Code's prescriptions. A second theory is that the Code is a sort of law report, and as such contains records of past cases and judgments, albeit phrased abstractly. This would provide one explanation for the casuistic format of the "laws"; indeed, Jean Bottéro believed he had found a record of a case that inspired one. However, such finds are inconclusive and very rare, despite the scale of

7068-562: The Mesopotamian legal corpus. Furthermore, legal judgments were frequently recorded in Mesopotamia, and they recount the facts of the case without generalising them. These judgments were concerned almost exclusively with points of fact, prompting Martha Roth to comment: "I know of only one case out of thousands extant that might be said to revolve around a point of law". A third theory, which has gained traction within Assyriology,

7192-548: The Old Persian text. Because Elamite is unlike its neighboring Semitic languages , the script's decipherment was delayed until the 1840s. Elamite cuneiform appears to have used far fewer signs than its Akkadian prototype and initially relied primarily on syllabograms, but logograms became more common in later texts. Many signs soon acquired highly distinctive local shape variants that are often difficult to recognise as related to their Akkadian prototypes. Hittite cuneiform

7316-471: The Sumerian signs of the terms in question, added as a guide for the reader. Proper names continued to be usually written in purely "logographic" fashion. The first inscribed tablets were purely pictographic, which makes it technically difficult to know in which language they were written. Different languages have been proposed, though usually Sumerian is assumed. Later tablets dating after c.  2900 BC start to use syllabic elements, which clearly show

7440-523: The Sumerians was not intuitive to Semitic speakers. From the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (20th century BC), the script evolved to accommodate the various dialects of Akkadian: Old Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian. At this stage, the former pictograms were reduced to a high level of abstraction, and were composed of only five basic wedge shapes: horizontal, vertical, two diagonals and

7564-579: The [ awīlum ]'s death, or opens an [ awīlum ]'s temple with a bronze lancet and thus blinds the [ awīlum ]'s eye, they shall cut off his hand. Laws 215 and 218 illustrate the principle of opposition: one variable of the first law, the outcome of the operations, is altered to create the second. If there is either a soldier or [an auxiliary] who is taken captive while serving in a royal fortress [...] if he should [...] return and get back to his city, they shall return to him his field and orchard and he himself shall perform his service obligation. If there

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7688-509: The aristocracy"; others have left it untranslated. Certain legal terms have also proved difficult to translate. For example, dīnum and dīttum can denote the law in general as well as individual laws, verdicts, divine pronouncements and other phenomena. mīšarum can likewise denote the law in general as well as a kind of royal decree. The Code of Hammurabi bears strong similarities to earlier Mesopotamian law collections. Many purport to have been written by rulers, and this tradition

7812-414: The beginning, similar-sounding words such as "life" [til] and "arrow" [ti] were written with the same symbol (𒋾). As a result, many signs gradually changed from being logograms to also functioning as syllabograms , so that for example, the sign for the word "arrow" would become the sign for the sound "ti". Syllabograms were used in Sumerian writing especially to express grammatical elements, and their use

7936-474: The case detailed in the protasis ("if" clause ) and the remedy given in the apodosis ("then" clause). The protasis begins šumma , "if", except when it adds to circumstances already specified in a previous law (e.g. laws 36, 38, and 40). The preterite is used for simple past verbs in the protasis, or possibly for a simple conditional. The perfect often appears at the end of the protasis after one or more preterites to convey sequence of action, or possibly

8060-431: The compound IGI.A (𒅆𒀀) – "eye" + "water" – has the reading imhur , meaning "foam"). Several symbols had too many meanings to permit clarity. Therefore, symbols were put together to indicate both the sound and the meaning of a symbol. For instance, the word 'raven' (UGA) had the same logogram (𒉀) as the word 'soap' (NAGA), the name of a city (EREŠ), and the patron goddess of Eresh (NISABA). To disambiguate and identify

8184-469: The crimes or give the tracking or individual matching to the evidence lower priority. According to the hypotheses, even a minimal or nonexistent difference in the likelihood of committing crimes can be hidden behind a difference of a factor by many multiples in the likelihood of being convicted due to self-fulfilling prophecies in the statistics. These criminologists feel that criminals who are not getting caught, due to being profiled as unlikely offenders, are

8308-447: The cuneiform logo-syllabary proper. The latest known cuneiform tablet dates to 75 AD. Cuneiform was rediscovered in modern times in the early 17th century with the publication of the trilingual Achaemenid royal inscriptions at Persepolis ; these were first deciphered in the early 19th century. The modern study of cuneiform belongs to the ambiguously named field of Assyriology , as the earliest excavations of cuneiform libraries – in

8432-432: The currently unsuspected criminals to the risk of being punished, but also that the abolition of profiling by forensic psychology and forensic psychiatry would be a monetary saving that could be used for investigation of technical evidence, tracking of criminals who are hiding, and other investigation work that can reduce the need to ignore complaints for budget reasons. Code of Hammurabi The Code of Hammurabi

8556-514: The decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform in 1836. The first cuneiform inscriptions published in modern times were copied from the Achaemenid royal inscriptions in the ruins of Persepolis , with the first complete and accurate copy being published in 1778 by Carsten Niebuhr . Niebuhr's publication was used by Grotefend in 1802 to make the first breakthrough – the realization that Niebuhr had published three different languages side by side and

8680-457: The demographic composition of particular crimes during higher priority of their investigation, such as the increase of the percentage of women convicted for joining and fighting for terrorist organizations from a very low percentage (similar to those of murder and rape) to almost as many women as men (women in the 40–50 percent range in some jurisdictions) as the priority of investigating terror crimes increased, certain criminologists are expressing

8804-405: The development of Assyriological science since the days of Rawlinson and Layard ". Charles Francis Horne commended the "wise law-giver" and his "celebrated code". James Henry Breasted noted the Code's "justice to the widow, the orphan, and the poor", but remarked that it "also allows many of the old and naïve ideas of justice to stand". Commentators praised the advanced society they believed

8928-549: The development of Egyptian hieroglyphs, with the suggestion the former influenced the latter. But given the lack of direct evidence for the transfer of writing, "no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt". Others have held that "the evidence for such direct influence remains flimsy" and that "a very credible argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt..." Early cuneiform inscriptions were made by using

9052-446: The early Achaemenid rulers from the 6th century BC down to the 4th century BC. Because of its simplicity and logical structure, the Old Persian cuneiform script was the first to be deciphered by modern scholars, starting with the accomplishments of Georg Friedrich Grotefend in 1802. Various ancient bilingual or trilingual inscriptions then permitted to decipher the other, much more complicated and more ancient scripts, as far back as to

9176-458: The gods on any man who disobeys or erases his pronouncements (3360'–3641', the end of the text). The epilogue contains much legal imagery, and the phrase "to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak" (3202'–3203': dannum enšam ana lā ḫabālim ) is reused from the prologue. However, the king's main concern appears to be ensuring that his achievements are not forgotten and his name not sullied. The list of curses heaped upon any future defacer

9300-413: The influence of the latter", and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia". There are many instances of Egypt-Mesopotamia relations at the time of the invention of writing, and standard reconstructions of the development of writing generally place the development of the Sumerian proto-cuneiform script before

9424-483: The king is offering the laws to the god; that the king is accepting or offering the emblems of sovereignty of the rod and ring; or—most probably—that these emblems are the measuring tools of the rod-measure and rope-measure used in temple-building". Hammurabi may even be imitating Shamash. It is certain, though, that the draughtsman showed Hammurabi's close links to the divine realm, using composition and iconography. The prologue and epilogue together occupy one-fifth of

9548-562: The law ; not just age and profession but also class and gender dictated the punishment or remedy they received. Three main kinds of person, awīlum , muškēnum , and wardum (male)/ amtum (female), are mentioned throughout the Code. A wardum / amtum was a male/female slave. As for awīlum and muškēnum , though contentious, it seems likely that the difference was one of social class, with awīlum meaning something like "gentleman" and muškēnum something like "commoner". The penalties were not necessarily stricter for

9672-407: The ligature KAxGUR 7 consists of 31 strokes. Most later adaptations of Sumerian cuneiform preserved at least some aspects of the Sumerian script. Written Akkadian included phonetic symbols from the Sumerian syllabary , together with logograms that were read as whole words. Many signs in the script were polyvalent, having both a syllabic and logographic meaning. The complexity of the system bears

9796-513: The list format and the order of the items, which Ann Guinan describes as a complex "serial logic". Marc Van De Mieroop explains that, in common with other works of Mesopotamian scholarship such as omen lists, king lists, and god lists, the entries of the Code of Hammurabi are arranged according to two principles. These are "opposition"—whereby a variable in one entry is altered to make another entry—and "pointillism"—whereby new conditions are added to an entry, or paradigmatic series pursued, to generate

9920-443: The meaning and the other the pronunciation (e.g. 𒅗 ka 'mouth' was combined with the sign 𒉣 nun 'prince' to express the word 𒅻 nundum , meaning 'lip', formally KA×NUN; cf. Chinese phono-semantic compounds ). Another way of expressing words that had no sign of their own was by so-called 'Diri compounds' – sign sequences that have, in combination, a reading different from the sum of the individual constituent signs (for example,

10044-567: The mid-19th century – were in the area of ancient Assyria . An estimated half a million tablets are held in museums across the world, but comparatively few of these are published . The largest collections belong to the British Museum ( approx. 130,000 tablets), the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin , the Louvre , the Istanbul Archaeology Museums , the National Museum of Iraq , the Yale Babylonian Collection ( approx. 40,000 tablets), and Penn Museum . Writing began after pottery

10168-439: The mid-20th century. Theories fall into three main categories: that it is legislation , whether a code of law or a body of statutes ; that it is a sort of law report , containing records of past cases and judgments; and that it is an abstract work of jurisprudence . The jurisprudence theory has gained much support within Assyriology. The term "code" presupposes that the document was intended to be enforced as legislation. It

10292-461: The mid-3rd millennium BC, whose reforms combatted corruption. Mesopotamia has the most comprehensive surviving legal corpus from before the Digest of Justinian , even compared to those from ancient Greece and Rome . The first copy of the text found, and still the most complete, is on a 2.25 m (7 ft 4 + 1 ⁄ 2  in) stele . The stele is now displayed on the ground floor of

10416-468: The near eastern token system used for accounting. The meaning and usage of these tokens is still a matter of debate. These tokens were in use from the 9th millennium BC and remained in occasional use even late in the 2nd millennium BC. Early tokens with pictographic shapes of animals, associated with numbers, were discovered in Tell Brak , and date to the mid-4th millennium BC. It has been suggested that

10540-429: The notion that there may be more crimes that would change their demographics if they got higher priority. These criminologists theorize that in the case of limited budgets, criminal investigators rely on profiled and statistical likelihood of particular groups of people being convicted for the type of crimes that are being investigated, and ignore complaints that are filed about people who they consider less likely to commit

10664-477: The ones that ultimately led to its decipherment are the ones found in the trilingual Behistun inscriptions , commissioned by the Achaemenid kings. The inscriptions, similar to that of the Rosetta Stone 's, were written in three different writing systems. The first was Old Persian , which was deciphered in 1802 by Georg Friedrich Grotefend . The second, Babylonian cuneiform, was deciphered shortly after

10788-467: The people (292–302), although the prologue never directly references the laws. The prologue ends "at that time:" (303: inūmišu ) and the laws begin. Unlike the prologue, the 500-line epilogue is explicitly related to the laws. The epilogue begins (3144'–3151'): "these are the just decisions which Hammurabi   ... has established" ( dīnāt mīšarim ša ḫammurabi... ukinnu-ma ). He exalts his laws and his magnanimity (3152'–3239'). He then expresses

10912-608: The prescriptions themselves bear "an astonishing absence   ... of all theological or even ceremonial law". The laws are written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian. Their style is regular and repetitive, and today they are a standard set text for introductory Akkadian classes. However, as A. Leo Oppenheim summarises, the cuneiform signs themselves are "vertically arranged   ... within boxes placed in bands side by side from right to left", an arrangement already antiquated by Hammurabi's time. The laws are expressed in casuistic format: they are conditional sentences with

11036-467: The principle of pointillism, circumstances are added to the first entry to create more entries. Pointillism also lets list entries be generated by following paradigmatic series common to multiple branches of scholarship. It can thus explain the implausible entries. For example, in the case of the goat used for threshing (law 270), the previous laws concern other animals that were used for threshing. The established series of domesticated beasts dictated that

11160-449: The relative position of the stylus to the tablet, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. For numbers, a round-tipped stylus was initially used, until the wedge-tipped stylus was generalized. The direction of writing was from top-to-bottom and right-to-left. Cuneiform clay tablets could be fired in kilns to bake them hard, and so provide a permanent record, or they could be left moist and recycled if permanence

11284-412: The relief are about 4,130 lines of cuneiform text: one fifth contains a prologue and epilogue in poetic style, while the remaining four fifths contain what are generally called the laws. In the prologue, Hammurabi claims to have been granted his rule by the gods "to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak". The laws are casuistic , expressed as "if   ... then" conditional sentences . Their scope

11408-645: The relief portion of the stele, especially the beards of Hammurabi and Shamash, was reworked at the same time. Roth suggests the stele was taken as plunder from Sippar, where Hammurabi lived towards the end of his reign. Fragments of a second and possibly third stele recording the Code were found along with the Louvre stele at Susa. Over fifty manuscripts containing the laws are known. They were found not only in Susa but also in Babylon, Nineveh , Assur , Borsippa , Nippur , Sippar , Ur, Larsa, and more. Copies were created during Hammurabi's reign, and also after it, since

11532-458: The stele's fragments were found on the tell of the Susa acropolis ( l'Acropole de Suse ), between December 1901 and January 1902. The few, large fragments made assembly easy. Scheil hypothesised that the stele had been taken to Susa by the Elamite king Shutruk-Nakhunte and that he had commissioned the erasure of several columns of laws to write his legend there. It has been proposed that

11656-460: The stele's importance and perceived fairness, calling it "a moral and political masterpiece". C. H. W. Johns called it "one of the most important monuments in the history of the human race". He remarked that "there are many humanitarian clauses and much protection is given the weak and the helpless", and even lauded a "wonderful modernity of spirit". John Dyneley Prince called the Code's rediscovery "the most important event which has taken place in

11780-540: The strong from oppressing the weak" (37–39: dannum enšam ana lā ḫabālim ). He was to rise like Shamash over the Mesopotamians (the ṣalmāt qaqqadim , literally the "black-headed people") and illuminate the land (40–44). Hammurabi then lists his achievements and virtues (50–291). These are expressed in noun form, in the Akkadian first person singular nominal sentence construction "[noun]   ... anāku " ("I am [noun]"). The first nominal sentence (50–53)

11904-415: The syllable [ɡu] had fourteen different symbols. The inventory of signs was expanded by the combination of existing signs into compound signs. They could either derive their meaning from a combination of the meanings of both original signs (e.g. 𒅗 ka 'mouth' and 𒀀 a 'water' were combined to form the sign for 𒅘 nag̃ 'drink', formally KA×A; cf. Chinese compound ideographs ), or one sign could suggest

12028-465: The task (law 270). The laws are also strictly casuistic ("if   ... then"); unlike in the Mosaic Law, there are no apodictic laws (general commands). These would more obviously suggest prescriptive legislation. The strongest argument against the legislation theory, however, is that most judges appear to have paid the Code no attention. This line of criticism originated with Benno Landsberger in 1950. No Mesopotamian legal document explicitly references

12152-400: The text became a part of the scribal curriculum. Copies have been found dating from one thousand years after the stele's creation, and a catalogue from the library of Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (685–631 BC) lists a copy of the "judgments of Hammurabi". The additional copies fill in most of the stele's original text, including much of the erased section. The editio princeps of

12276-444: The text. Out of around 4,130 lines, the prologue occupies 300 lines and the epilogue occupies 500. They are in ring composition around the laws, though there is no visual break distinguishing them from the laws. Both are written in poetic style, and, as William W. Davies wrote, "contain much   ... which sounds very like braggadocio". The 300-line prologue begins with an etiology of Hammurabi's royal authority (1–49). Anum ,

12400-476: The third century AD. The complexity of cuneiforms prompted the development of a number of simplified versions of the script. Old Persian cuneiform was developed with an independent and unrelated set of simple cuneiform characters, by Darius the Great in the 5th century BC. Most scholars consider this writing system to be an independent invention because it has no obvious connections with other writing systems at

12524-432: The time, such as Elamite , Akkadian, Hurrian , and Hittite cuneiforms. It formed a semi-alphabetic syllabary, using far fewer wedge strokes than Assyrian used, together with a handful of logograms for frequently occurring words like "god" ( 𐏎 ), "king" ( 𐏋 ) or "country" ( 𐏌 ). This almost purely alphabetical form of the cuneiform script (36 phonetic characters and 8 logograms), was specially designed and used by

12648-669: The token shapes were the original basis for some of the Sumerian pictographs. Mesopotamia's "proto-literate" period spans roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries BC. The first unequivocal written documents start with the Uruk IV period, from circa 3,300 BC, followed by tablets found in Uruk III, Jemdet Nasr , Early Dynastic I Ur and Susa (in Proto-Elamite ) dating to the period until circa 2,900 BC. Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with

12772-465: The two collections. Debate among Assyriologists has since centred around several aspects of the Code: its purpose, its underlying principles, its language, and its relation to earlier and later law collections. Despite the uncertainty surrounding these issues, Hammurabi is regarded outside Assyriology as an important figure in the history of law and the document as a true legal code. The U.S. Capitol has

12896-601: The two languages are related, their writing systems seem to have been developed separately. For Hurrian, there were even different systems in different polities (in Mitanni , in Mari , in the Hittite Empire). The Hurrian orthographies were generally characterised by more extensive use of syllabograms and more limited use of logograms than Akkadian. Urartian, in comparison, retained a more significant role for logograms. In

13020-565: The word more precisely, two phonetic complements were added – Ú (𒌑) for the syllable [u] in front of the symbol and GA (𒂵) for the syllable [ga] behind. Finally, the symbol for 'bird', MUŠEN (𒄷) was added to ensure proper interpretation. As a result, the whole word could be spelt 𒌑𒉀𒂵𒄷, i.e. Ú.NAGA.GA (among the many variant spellings that the word could have). For unknown reasons, cuneiform pictographs, until then written vertically, were rotated 90° counterclockwise, in effect putting them on their side. This change first occurred slightly before

13144-511: Was adapted to write a number of languages in addition to Sumerian. Akkadian texts are attested from the 24th century BC onward and make up the bulk of the cuneiform record. Akkadian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittite language in the early second millennium BC . The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora are Eblaite , Elamite , Hurrian , Luwian , and Urartian . The Old Persian and Ugaritic alphabets feature cuneiform-style signs; however, they are unrelated to

13268-561: Was adapted to writing Hittite, a layer of Akkadian logographic spellings, also known as Akkadograms, was added to the script, in addition to the Sumerian logograms, or Sumerograms, which were already inherent in the Akkadian writing system and which Hittite also kept. Thus the pronunciations of many Hittite words which were conventionally written by logograms are now unknown. The Hurrian language (attested 2300–1000 BC) and Urartian language (attested 9th–6th century BC) were also written in adapted versions of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform. Although

13392-410: Was concerned with the welfare of his many subjects and was interested in law and justice. He commissioned extensive construction works, and in his letters, he frequently presents himself as his people's shepherd. Justice is also a theme of the prologue to the Code, and "the word translated 'justice' [ ešērum ]... is one whose root runs through both prologue and epilogue". Although Hammurabi's Code

13516-510: Was derived from šukênum , "to bow down/supplicate". As a word for a man of low social standing, it has endured, possibly from a Sumerian root, into Arabic ( miskīn ), Italian ( meschino ), Spanish ( mezquino ), and French ( mesquin ). However, some earlier translators, also seeking to explain the muškēnum 's special treatment, translated it as "leper" and even "noble". Some translators have supplied stilted readings for awīlum , such as "seignior", "elite man", and "member of

13640-525: Was found at the site of the ancient Elamite city of Susa . Susa is in modern-day Khuzestan Province , Iran (Persia at the time of excavation). The stele was excavated by the French Archaeological Mission under the direction of Jacques de Morgan . Father Jean-Vincent Scheil published the initial report in the fourth volume of the Reports of the Delegation to Persia ( Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse ). According to Scheil,

13764-410: Was found in three large fragments and reconstructed. It is 225 cm (7 ft 4 + 1 ⁄ 2  in) high, with a circumference is 165 cm (5 ft 5 in) at the summit and 190 cm (6 ft 3 in) at the base. Hammurabi's image is 65 cm (2 ft 1 + 1 ⁄ 2  in) high and 60 cm (1 ft 11 + 1 ⁄ 2  in) wide. The Louvre stele

13888-406: Was further developed and modified in the writing of the Akkadian language to express its sounds. Often, words that had a similar meaning but very different sounds were written with the same symbol. For instance the Sumerian words 'tooth' [zu], 'mouth' [ka] and 'voice' [gu] were all written with the original pictogram for mouth (𒅗). Words that sounded alike would have different signs; for instance,

14012-540: Was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era . Cuneiform scripts are marked by and named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions ( Latin : cuneus ) which form their signs . Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system and was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq ). Over the course of its history, cuneiform

14136-452: Was in use for more than three millennia, through several stages of development, from the 31st century BC down to the second century AD. The latest firmly dateable tablet, from Uruk, dates to 79/80 AD. Ultimately, it was completely replaced by alphabetic writing , in the general sense, in the course of the Roman era , and there are no cuneiform systems in current use. It had to be deciphered as

14260-483: Was invented, during the Neolithic , when clay tokens were used to record specific amounts of livestock or commodities. In recent years a contrarian view has arisen on the tokens being the precursor of writing. These tokens were initially impressed on the surface of round clay envelopes ( clay bullae ) and then stored in them. The tokens were then progressively replaced by flat tablets, on which signs were recorded with

14384-451: Was not needed. Most surviving cuneiform tablets were of the latter kind, accidentally preserved when fires destroyed the tablets' storage place and effectively baked them, unintentionally ensuring their longevity. The script was widely used on commemorative stelae and carved reliefs to record the achievements of the ruler in whose honor the monument had been erected. The spoken language included many homophones and near-homophones, and in

14508-513: Was probably widespread. Earlier law collections express their god-given legitimacy similarly. Like the Code of Hammurabi, they feature prologues and epilogues: the Code of Ur-Nammu has a prologue, the Code of Lipit-Ishtar a prologue and an epilogue, and the Laws of Eshnunna an epilogue. Also, like the Code of Hammurabi, they uphold the "one crime, one punishment" principle. The cases covered and language used are, overall, strikingly similar. Scribes were still copying earlier law collections, such as

14632-467: Was rediscovered in 1901 at the site of Susa in present-day Iran, where it had been taken as plunder six hundred years after its creation. The text itself was copied and studied by Mesopotamian scribes for over a millennium. The stele now resides in the Louvre Museum . The top of the stele features an image in relief of Hammurabi with Shamash , the Babylonian sun god and god of justice. Below

14756-406: Was retained, but was now pronounced immerum , rather than the Sumerian udu . Such retained individual signs or, sometimes, entire sign combinations with logographic value are known as Sumerograms , a type of heterogram . The East Semitic languages employed equivalents for many signs that were distorted or abbreviated to represent new values because the syllabic nature of the script as refined by

14880-457: Was the English constable . Around 1250 CE, it was recorded that the constable was to "...   record...matters of fact, not matters of judgment and law." In determining the course of investigation, many law enforcement organizations use three "indicators of suspicion" describing potential suspects, jointly known as MMO: They will also establish the relationships between the victim and any potential offenders. After observing recent changes in

15004-428: Was the first Mesopotamian law collection to be discovered, it was not the first written; several earlier collections survive. These collections were written in Sumerian and Akkadian . They also purport to have been written by rulers. There were almost certainly more such collections, as statements of other rulers suggest the custom was widespread. The similarities between these law collections make it tempting to assume

15128-467: Was thought to be the earliest Mesopotamian law collection when it was rediscovered in 1902—for example, C. H. W. Johns' 1903 book was titled The Oldest Code of Laws in the World . The English writer H. G. Wells included Hammurabi in the first volume of The Outline of History , and to Wells too the Code was "the earliest known code of law". However, three earlier collections were rediscovered afterwards:

15252-497: Was true, suggesting that a wronged man have the stele read aloud to him (lines 3240'–3254') is a concrete measure in this direction, given the inaccessibility of scribal education in the Old Babylonian period. The prologue asserts that Hammurabi was chosen by the gods. Raymond Westbrook observed that in ancient Near Eastern law, "the king was the primary source of legislation". However, they could delegate their god-given legal authority to judges. However, as Owen B. Jenkins observed,

15376-481: Was used by Scheil in his editio princeps , and widely adopted afterwards. C. H. W. Johns, one of the most prolific early commentators on the document, proclaimed that "the Code well deserves its name". Recent Assyriologists have used the term without comment, as well as scholars outside Assyriology. However, only if the text was intended as enforced legislation can it truly be called a code of law and its provisions laws. The document, on first inspection, resembles

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