Hammurabi's Laws: Killing Off Potential Threats?

In order to establish himself as a just king, Hammurabi created his list of 275 to 300 law provisions during the last years of his reign of Babylon. His laws are known as the “best organized of the law collections from Mesopotamia” and no doubt influenced the manner in which successive kings ruled their lands (71). The fact that there have been so many duplications of these laws found all over Mesopotamia suggests that Hammurabi’s style of rule was quite popular (74). Indisputably, creating these laws is a great achievement in the time of early civilization, but there are of course, flaws to them. His strict ruling of who gets punished and his uncreative form of death as a punishment makes me view Hammurabi not so much as a just king, but one who was obsessed with weeding out dissenters and ridding them from his kingdom.

Although it is true that criminals need to be punished, Hammurabi forces both the defendant and the prosecutor to walk a fine line; if either is proven to be false, one of them will die. In fact, the first law speaks about the issue of homicide: “if a man accuses another man and charges him with homicide but cannot bring proof against him, his accuser shall be killed” (81). Just because the accuser made a mistake, he is punished with the death penalty! Several other crimes, including robbery, kidnapping, slave stealing/rescuing, and etc., all are punishable by death. Death may be a reasonable punishment for murder, but surely, “jail time” or a snip of the fingers would be more appropriate for a crime such as theft.

It makes me wonder, therefore, whether Hammurabi’s choice of penalty was not really for the sake of his people (why should an accuser be killed?), but for himself. Perhaps if he were to dispel of any and all persons who caused trouble (one way or the other), this would prevent any potential rebel from rising up and challenging his authority. This idea backs up the fact that there was no notable internal conflict within Babylon, while others like Mari, had to deal with rebellions rising in the north of their country. Perhaps Hammurabi thought if he were to make public these laws, they would justify his rule (for the people), and would grant him authority to kill off anyone who disrupted the peace of his rule.