The Afterlife of the Laws of Hammurabi

Abstract

The tradition of law collections continued outside of Mesopotamia for more than a millennium after Hammurabi. The Laws of Hammurabi was the culmination of this tradition in Mesopotamia, but this tradition of statutes composed on a repertoire of traditional cases continued in the Hittite Laws and biblical law, even though the royal inscription format was no longer used. The Laws of Hammurabi and Mesopotamian law may have influenced ancient Greek and Roman law. The Laws of Hammurabi is also a witness to the start of another stream of tradition. As this chapter discusses, it became a classic text, and no other law collection was copied so often and for so long. The Laws of Hammurabi served as the subject of formal commentaries. The rise of classic texts and formal commentaries signaled a profound cultural shift. Scribes related to the Laws of Hammurabi in ways that diverged from prior attitudes: it was no longer an improvisation on traditional cases frozen momentarily in written form but became an object of study. The Laws of Hammurabi became the object of commentary, a genre that names itself as dependent on another text: one text is elevated above another, and that text’s obscurities and contradictions are affirmed and explained.