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An Eye for an Eye

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

A. S. Diamond
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Extract

Most persons, if asked what they considered to be the outstanding characteristic of the law of wrongs in ancient Mesopotamia, would probably reply: “The cruel, bloody sanctions, and in particular the ‘talionic’ and ‘sympathetic’ punishments.” This characteristic is too familiar to need examples. Of the 282 clauses of the Code of Hammurabi (C.H.), some 27 impose capital sentences for a wide variety of wrongs, including adultery and theft. Of the ‘talionic’ sanctions (those applying the principle of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”) one of the best examples is C.H.229, 230: “If a builder has built a house for a man and his work is not strong, and the house he has built collapses and kills the owner, that builder shall be put to death. If the son of the owner is killed, they shall kill the builder's son.” Clauses 196, 197 provide: “If a free man has injured the eye of a patrician, his own eye shall be injured. If he has broken the bone of a patrician, his bone shall be broken.” Of the ‘sympathetic’ sanctions, examples are more familiar in the Middle Assyrian Laws (M.A.L.), e.g. cutting off a man's lower lip for kissing a married woman (§ 9).

But in recent years earlier laws than these have become available from the same field, and they paint quite a different picture.

First, we may mention the laws now attributed to Lipit-Ishtar, King of Isin, though found sixty years ago—a Sumerian Code of an Akkadian King, dating from perhaps 164–175 years before the C.H. They contain over 100 laws of which very few are legible, and these are hardly relevant to the present purpose, save that one (§ 12) at least raises a doubt whether theft was capital in Isin as it was later in the C.H.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1957 , pp. 151 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1957

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References

page 151 note 1 Steele, F. R., “The Lipit-Ishtar Law Code,” in A.J.A. 51, 158fGoogle Scholar; 52, 425f.

page 151 note 2 Goetze, Albrecht, “The Laws of Eshnunna” in A.A.S.O.R., xxxi, 1956Google Scholar.

page 151 note 3 Though the King can pass such lesser sentence as he thinks fit.

page 151 note 4 Kramer, S. N., From the Tablets of Sumer (1956)Google Scholar.

page 152 note 1 There survive, also, the much earlier administrative (as distinct from legal) reforms of Urukagina of Lagash, but these are irrelevant to the present purpose; see Lambert, Maurice, “Les Réformes d'Urukagina,” in R.A., L, 169f.Google Scholar

page 152 note 2 Goetze, op. cit., 122.

page 152 note 3 Vol. 1, 1952.

page 152 note 4 op. cit., 408; see also p. 502.

page 152 note 5 Goetze, loc. cit.

page 152 note 6 See Driver, and Miles, , The Assyrian Laws, 1935)Google Scholar.

page 152 note 7 See C.H. 195–208, and, for the views of Driver and Miles on this point, Babylonian Laws, I, 502Google Scholar.

page 153 note 1 The M.A.L. consist mainly of a body of laws of 59 clauses relating to women.

page 153 note 2 Exod. xxi, 24.

page 153 note 3 Lev. xxiv, 19f.

page 153 note 4 “Si membrum rupit, ni cum eo pacit, talio esto.” (“if he has broken a limb, unless he makes his peace with him—i.e. by a payment—there shall be like for like”).

page 153 note 5 “If (a man) has broken by hand or stick a bone of a freeman, he shall pay 300 (asses); if of a slave, 150.”

page 155 note 1 Britton (ed. Nicholas, Oxford, 1865) i, 123–4, is in favour of strict retaliation, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; cf. Fleta (ed. 168;), 59.

page 155 note 2 For details and evidence of the whole process, see the present writer's Primitive Law, (2nd Ed. 1950) and Evolution of Law and Order (1951).