Pandikow: The Punishment In Babylonian Society

Pandikow !1
1. The punishments in Babylonian at that time were very strict and hard. If you’d break one of the laws, there would always be a consequence. One common punishment was being put to death. This was often the consequence for hurting or killing somebody else. If you broke these laws, there was only one strict consequence for your previous actions. This punishment was used for many laws, and the reason for this might’ve been that the Babylonian society should not have any “bad” people in it, and if there were people like that, they should not exist anymore. Law 229 shows that even regular people doing mistakes can receive this punishment. Like it says in the law, if a builder does not construct the house properly and the house falls
One law that shows how the society was in Babylonian at that time is law 202, that says if you hurt somebody in a higher rank, you will receive sixty blows with an ox-whip in public. This gives us the information that there existed different ranks in the Babylonian society. The people in a higher rank were worth more and seemed more important than the people in the ranks beneath them. This could also have to do with money, because people in higher ranks were probably rich and had more power because of their money. The people who had slaves were often rich, and this because they could afford it and they needed the help. Slaves were most likely ranked the lowest and women were probably not ranked very high either because they did not have a lot of power, especially not as much as men
Hammurabi was at that time the king of Babylonian and had all the power. I think he wrote the laws to show that he decided on what was going to be legal and what not. He had the right to decide who should live and who should die. Even though the laws probably were made so that Hammurabi could show how much power he had, I think that he also wanted Babylonian to be a safe place for the people living there. If you broke the law, there would be a strict consequence. This tells us that he wanted to get rid of the “evil” people so that Babylonian could be a safe and good society. The laws were written down and graved into a stone, then placed in public so that all the inhabitants could see it and find out what the laws were. The laws also helped the society to become stronger and better because people knew what would happen if they acted wrong and that scared them so they would follow the