So-called "contracts" exist in the thousands, including a great variety of deeds, conveyances, bonds, receipts, accounts, and most important of all, actual legal decisions given by the judges in the law courts.
Historical inscriptions, royal charters and rescripts, dispatches, private letters and the general literature afford welcome supplementary information.
The Maxims of Ptahhotep and Sharia Law,[1] also include certifications for professionals like doctors, lawyers and skilled craftsmen which prescribe penalties for malpractice very similar to the code of Hammurabi.
Fragments of it recovered from Assur-bani-pal's library at Nineveh and later Babylonian copies show that it was studied, divided into chapters, entitled Ninu ilu sirum from its incipit (opening words), and recopied for fifteen hundred years or more.
Much Babylonian legal precedent remained in force, even through the Persian, Greek and Parthian conquests, which had little effect on private life in Babylonia; and it survived to influence Romans.
A metropolis demanded tribute and military support from its subject cities but left their local cults and customs unaffected.
It was, however, reserved for the genius of Hammurabi to make Babylon his metropolis and weld together his vast empire by a uniform system of law.
The universal habit of writing, and perpetual recourse to written contract, further modified primitive custom and ancient precedent.
The avilum was originally a patrician, a man from an elite family, possessed of full civil rights, whose birth, marriage and death were registered.
He had aristocratic privileges and responsibilities, and the right to exact retaliation for corporal injuries, but was liable to a heavier punishment for crimes and misdemeanours, higher fees and fines.
A slave bore an identification mark, removable only by a surgical operation, that later consisted of his owner's name tattooed or branded on the arm.
The god and his vice regent, the king, had long ceased to disturb tenancy and were content with fixed dues in naturalia, stock, money or service.
One of the earliest monuments records the purchase by a king of a large estate for his son, paying a fair market price and adding a handsome honorarium to the many owners, in costly garments, plate, and precious articles of furniture.
It received income from its estates, from tithes and other fixed dues, as well as from the sacrifices (a customary share) and other offerings of the faithful—vast amounts of all sorts of naturalia, besides money and permanent gifts.
The Code recognizes many ways of disposing of property: sale, lease, barter, gift, dedication, deposit, loan, or pledge, all of which were matters of contract.
The landlord found land, labour, oxen for ploughing and working the watering machines, carting, threshing or other implements, grain seed, rations for the workmen and fodder for the cattle.
If the irrigator neglected to repair his dike or left his runnel open and caused a flood, he had to make good the damage done to his neighbours' crops or be sold with his family to pay the cost.
In commerce, payment in kind was still common, though contracts usually stipulated cash, naming the currency expected—that of Babylon, Larsa, Assyria, Carchemish, etc.
The Code also regulated the liquor traffic—fixing a fair price for beer and forbidding the connivance of the tavern keeper (a female) at disorderly conduct or treasonable assembly, under pain of death.
Interest was rarely charged on advances by the temple or wealthy landowners for pressing needs, but this may have been part of the metayer system.
This bride-price was usually then handed over by her father to the bride upon her marriage, and so returned into the bridegroom's possession, along with her dowry, which was her portion of the family's inheritance as a daughter.
A man might make his wife a settlement by deed of gift, which gave her a life interest in part of his property, and he might reserve to her the right to bequeath it to a favorite child; but she could in no case leave it to her family.
The wife might bring an action against her husband for cruelty and neglect and, if she proved her case, obtain a judicial separation, taking her dowry with her.
If a wife became a chronic invalid, the husband was bound to maintain her in the home they had made together, unless she preferred to take her dowry and return to her father's house; but he was free to remarry.
A father could disinherit a son in early times without restriction, but the Code insisted upon judicial consent, and that only for repeated unfilial conduct.
A sort of symbolic retaliation was the punishment for the offender, seen in cutting off the hand that struck a father or stole a trust; in cutting off the breast of a wet nurse who switched the child entrusted to her for another; in the loss of the tongue that denied father or mother (in Elamite contracts, the same penalty was inflicted for perjury); in the loss of the eye that pried into forbidden secrets.
The death penalty was freely rendered for theft and other crimes in this section of the Code: for theft involving entering a palace or temple treasury, for illegal purchase from a minor or slave, for selling stolen goods or receiving the same, for common theft in the open (in lieu of multiple-fold restoration) or receiving the same, for false claim to goods, for kidnapping, for assisting or harbouring fugitive slaves, for detaining or appropriating the same, for brigandage, for fraudulent sale of drink, for not reporting criminal conspiracy in one's tavern, for delegation of personal service and refusing to pay the delegate or not sending the delegate, for misappropriating the levy, for harming or robbing one of the king's captains, for causing the death of a house owner through bad construction.
The form of death penalty was specified for the following cases: gibbeting: for burglary (on the spot where crime was committed), later also for encroaching on the king's highway, for getting a slave-brand obliterated, for procuring a husband's death; burning: for incest with own mother, for a vestal entering or opening a tavern, for looting a house on fire (thrown into the fire); drowning: for adultery, rape of a betrothed maiden, bigamy, bad conduct as a wife, seduction of a daughter-in-law.
On the other hand, carelessness and neglect were severely punished, as in the case of the unskillful physician, if it led to loss of life or limb, his hands were cut off; a slave had to be replaced, the loss of his eye paid for by half his value; a veterinary surgeon who caused the death of an ox or donkey paid quarter value; a builder whose careless workmanship caused death died or paid for it by the death of his child, replaced slave or goods and in any case, had to rebuild the house or make good any damages due to defective building and repair the defect as well.
The plaintiff could swear to his loss by brigands, the price paid for a slave purchased abroad, or the sum due to him; but great stress was laid on the production of written evidence.