The preamble to the code says that "then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers so that the strong should not harm the weak." (translation by L.W. In Hammurabi's view, the gods sent him to rule, with some level of compassion, over his empire. The Code of Hammurabi (now in the Louvre Museum in Paris) is well known for its "eye for an eye" style of lawmaking, but it also set out the nature of the relationship among Hammurabi, the gods and the people he ruled. (Image credit: PRISMA ARCHIVO via Alamy Stock Photo) Hammurabi (standing), king of Babylon, depicted as receiving his royal insignia from Shamash, god of justice. Hammurabi himself discussed the nature of his divinity in his famous law code. She wrote that parents gave their children names that meant "Hammurabi is my help" or "Hammurabi is my god." Leick noted that Hammurabi was so well respected that he became regarded as a deity. While archaeological remains in Babylon dating to this period are scarce, textual remains reveal more information. "The remains of Hammurabi's own city at Babylon are, unfortunately, almost inaccessible as the water table has risen too high to allow them to be explored," archaeology researcher Harriet Crawford wrote in a paper published in the book " The Babylonian World" (Routledge, 2007). Further campaigns against Assyria and Mari further expanded Hammurabi's empire.Īrchaeologists know little about what Babylon itself looked like during Hammurabi's reign. "This victory signalled the annexation of all the old urban centers, such as Ur, Uruk, Isin and Larsa," Leick wrote. Following this, he conducted a series of campaigns against Larsa and defeated its ruler, Rim-Sin, who had ruled the large kingdom for nearly 60 years. When the king of Ashur died around 1776 B.C., Hammurabi took advantage of the resulting power vacuum and expanded Babylon's territory by conquering Ashur. "At home he concentrated on improving the economic basis of his kingdom by building canals and strengthening fortifications," Leick wrote. Babylon was located between two large cities known as Larsa and Ashur, and Hammurabi had to be cautious. Hammurabi had to be patient before he could expand, Leick noted. (Image credit: Niday Picture Library via Alamy Stock Photo) The empire of HammurabiĪ map of the Babylon Empire. He had a major impact on the city's fortunes and transformed this once-small kingdom into a great empire. Babylon remained this way until, six kings later, a man named Hammurabi (1792 B.C. He turned Babylon into a petty kingdom made up of the city and a small amount of nearby territory. He was an Amorite, a member of a Semitic-speaking people from the area around modern-day Syria. after the Ur-based empire had collapsed, Babylon was conquered by a man named Samu-abum (also spelled Sumu-abum). Prisoners captured in wars were sometimes forced to help build the canal network in the region, Dalley noted. "Once established, however, such a system could reap the benefit of rich alluvial soils and support extremely productive agriculture on the levees of canals," Seymour wrote.īabylon's position on the Euphrates River, along with the canal systems that Babylon's rulers later constructed in the region, encouraged trade and travel, Stephanie Dalley, a retired teacher of Assyriology at the University of Oxford, wrote in her book " The City of Babylon: A History c. He noted that an irrigation system that distributed water from the Euphrates was required to grow crops. Ancient records suggest that more than 4,000 years ago, at a time when the city of Ur (in what is now southern Iraq) was the center of an empire, Babylon was a provincial administration center and was part of Ur's empire, wrote historian Gwendolyn Leick in her book " The Babylonians: An Introduction" (Routledge, 2002).īabylon was built in an area that's "subject to very high temperatures and lies well beyond the reach of rain-fed agriculture," Seymour, a research associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, wrote in his book "Babylon: Legend, History and the Ancient City" (I.B. Archaeologically, little is known about the early history of Babylon.
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