Hammurabi: The Shepherd of the People

After King Hammurabi had consolidated his new kingdom, his attention turned from conquests to providing and guiding his people. He referred to himself as a shepherd selected by the god Enlil, and the people under his rule were scattered sheep.

He defended his people from attack by building city walls and fortresses to protect them from invading forces. He also built many canals and irrigation systems to provide water for the fields in the kingdom. He also provided for the gods. Most of this is known from inscriptions on temples, thrones, and letters that Hammurabi wrote to officials. The letters are most probably gave a more objective view of King Hammurabi’s character than the inscriptions on temples.

Another way that King Hammurabi was a good ruler was the fact that he maintained direct contact with his people. It is surprising to see that his subjects did write to him personally about some of their issues, and King Hammurabi would either deal with it himself, or delegate the responsibility to one of his officials. It is surprising that he had enough time to deal with this. One would expect that he would delegate this task to others. But this way, he could maintain a direct connection and correspondence with his subjects. Furthermore, it seems like some of the issues that people wrote to him about would be considered too petty for someone of his stature to deal with. For example, some people wrote to him about feuds over agricultural lands, like the situation of Ili-ippalsam, in which someone took the 19 hectare field that was assigned to him. Ili-ippalsam wrote directly to the king for help in dealing with this, and King Hammurabi did apparently deal with the situation himself.

Lastly, King Hammurabi wrote his famous law code. There is contention surrounding what the purpose of the code was (it wasn’t actually a legal code) but Hammurabi makes his intentions behind the creation of it clear; to make sure that justice prevailed in the end and to protect the weak from abuse by the powerful.