Check this out for a quick overview of the stele itself.
http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/ED/Hammurabi.html
After you look at that, try this link for a quick overview of a few of Hammurabi's laws.
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1WhxpDC6TcXKFQDF-8v-7bP24UAP0BfS51NbzH6WgPKE
Okay, now that you have done that, consider this:
Did you find the laws to be cruel, fair, or somewhere in between?
Make a comment in the comment box below and be sure that it makes sense and describes your opinion thoroughly.
Those of you who are visiting here are welcome to comment as well.
If you do not feel like commenting but would rather just eavesdrop, just look below for the stunningly literate and learned comments from the students of Mawaleh American School regarding Hammurabi's Code and its cruelty or fairness.
http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/ED/Hammurabi.html
After you look at that, try this link for a quick overview of a few of Hammurabi's laws.
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1WhxpDC6TcXKFQDF-8v-7bP24UAP0BfS51NbzH6WgPKE
Okay, now that you have done that, consider this:
Did you find the laws to be cruel, fair, or somewhere in between?
Make a comment in the comment box below and be sure that it makes sense and describes your opinion thoroughly.
Those of you who are visiting here are welcome to comment as well.
If you do not feel like commenting but would rather just eavesdrop, just look below for the stunningly literate and learned comments from the students of Mawaleh American School regarding Hammurabi's Code and its cruelty or fairness.
I think the laws in Hammurabi's Code are cruel, because people die for stupid reasons! People could be handless if they disobeyed some of these rules! Killing and cutting people isn't a good enough reason when someone has done something wrong. It's better just to yell at them, unless the person has killed someone,intentionally! The one about the women which belittles her husband and then is to be thrown in water, is fair, if she can swim, if not, poor her! Compared to today's rule, which would not even punish her for belittling her husband, it's cruel though.
ReplyDeleteJensen.
I think Hammurabi's rules were unfair and ungust. But I think he relied on peer pressure more than anything else to stop everybody from doing wrong. And who would cut off their son's hand anyway?Thise is way diffrent from our laws today in many ways.For exampul you are beten 40 times if you are caught drinking in oman or you have to pay a debt if you kill a human accidentally. For exampul you kill a dad accidentally in a car accident and he has a family ,you are in charg of that familys food, water and so on. So if they have no father who would pay for them to live? It is the responsibility of the person who kild him. This law os just. Hammurabi's is wrong. If they kill the guy who will pay to take care of the family?
ReplyDeleteI like this sense of responsibility that should be taken by one person if s/he kills another accidentally. To me, that is fair. However, what is the purpose of whipping a person 40 times if s/he is caught drinking? It seems that that would be a personal choice that would not effect others and, therefore, would that require punishment?
DeleteGAHG! I have written this a million times and I keep erasing it....
ReplyDeleteOk, one more time,
Would you cut off your child's hands if he slapped you? In Hammurabi's time you would. Yuck. That would be really messy. What do you do with a kids hands anyways? What kind of parent would do that? Today you don't burn a nun for drinking...at least in the United States. I don't know what the punishment is but it is probably not as severe as getting burned to death. These people were evil because of their laws compared to today. Today most crimes just result in going to jail or paying a fine. This probably results in more crime, though. Dumb.
Ainslee's opinion
ReplyDeleteSome of the rules were fair but others are not like if you got caught stealing then you were put to death. I think that if you did something wrong you should go to jail rather than face death or have your hands chopped off because it isn't very fair if you did a bad thing and were put to death. It would be better if you could go to jail and think about what you had done.
Aaron's Opinion
ReplyDeleteI believe that some of the laws are fair while others are not. Some of the laws seem fair and just and would keep crime and other problems to a minimum. I think Laws 5, 122 and 233 are fair as they make sure there is no foul play and that the person who commited the crime is punished. Some of Hammurabi's laws are still used today because they are fair. However several laws aren't fair such as Law 195: "If a son strikes his father, the son’s hands shall be cut off" because it does not consider why the son struck his father. The son could be preventing his father from commiting murder or some other act that could endanger the father's or other people's lives.
In other centuries and other places people had different ideas about what was fair and what was not fair and they often had extreme punishments. For example, in Britain in the 1770's there were 222 crimes in Britain that had the death penalty. So if you stole stuff worth more than 5 shillings, cut down a tree, stole an animal or stole from a rabbit warren you would be killed. By the 1800s people thought the death penalty was too bad a punishment but they still needed punishments to stop people from commiting crimes so they used transportation instead. In the 17th and 18th century 60,000 convicts were sent to the British colonies in North America. After the Revolutionary War they couldn't send convicts to America any more so the British government sent people to Australia instead for crimes like stealing a loaf of bread or a handkerchief. The journey could take years. So that was not fair either. Convicts were given extreme sentences and treated 10 times worse than how people in jail are treated now.
I like your point that punishments are cultural and that the perceived level of fairness or cruelty is cultural as well as a part of the time and traditions surrounding the punishments. I would argue that some of today's punishments in some countries are cruel by other contemporary cultures' standards, so there is no way to say that convicts of the past were treated 10 times worse than how people are treated in jails now. Do you think there will ever come a time when there will be universal agreement on humane standards of punishment?
DeleteYes, I agree with Jensen, Tians, and Zara’s comments above. I think the laws were cruel and unjust. Not only do they result in death but also they are mostly performed on the poor and uneducated which is not fair. For example, the one about the man in debt having to sell his wife and children to the company and having to work for three years for the master was just plain bossy. Also they don’t solve the original problem. The one about the boy having his hands cut off for smacking his father? If I were him and if I had a choice of being yelled at or getting my hands cut off (of course I wouldn’t have a choice), I would have chosen getting yelled at. What would you choose?
ReplyDelete