Hammurabi Code Dbq Essay

Hammurabi’s Code was a code of laws produced in Mesopotamia under Hammurabi’s rule circa 1754 BCE. During this time period there was a lot of violence and slave labor. By implementing these laws he hoped to achieve peace and establish order in his kingdom. Hammurabi’s Code established an unfair law code because it further encouraged inequality among social classes, authorized unwarranted punishments for accused criminals, and it supported patriarchal laws favoring men over women.
The law code was biased because it advocated inequality between social classes. Document A tells us that the stone stele was almost eight feet tall. This creates a greater imbalance between the people who can understand and apply these laws and those who cannot. Many of his citizens could not read or write in the first place, and this additional height causes those who can read to need tools to reach the top of the stele to fully understand the text. The height of the document, in addition to the fact that it is written in the first place, ensures that not all of the population can comprehend these laws. Laws 196 and 199 discuss the procedures to be followed if a man has had his eye knocked out. If the man who lost his eye
Laws 209 and 213 are examples of the prejudiced laws against women. Contrasting to Laws 196 and 199, which discuss the loss of an eye of a free man versus that of a slave, where you must pay half value of an eye if it is a slave's eye, you pay ⅕ of the value of a woman’s lost fruit of the womb if she is a slave. We are not given all the laws in Hammurabi’s code, but since the payment if for the loss of the fruit of the womb and not the striking of the woman herself, it is safe to assume that there is no fine for striking a woman if no further damage is done. This encourages a society in which it is normal and widely accepted to hurt women while it is gravely chastened to hurt a man (Law