The Code of Hammurabi King of Babylon. About 2250 B.C. Autographed Text Transliteration... [Hardcover]

Robert Francis Harper (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1584770031 | ISBN-13: 978-1584770039 | Publication Date: April 29, 2010

Complete English translation of the code with a running parallel transliteration of the original ideograms. All corrections and erasures are included. This edition also includes facsimiles of all of the original cuniaform tablets, a thorough glossary and index of subjects, lists of proper names and tables of weights and currencies.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 420 pages
• Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. (April 29, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584770031
• ISBN-13: 978-1584770039
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,236,338 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ancient Laws of Babylon, November 1, 2000

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Teri Ward (Deland, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Code of Hammurabi King of Babylon. About 2250 B.C. Autographed Text Transliteration... (Hardcover)

This book-- the first edition of which was printed in 1904-- provides the student of Mesopotamian antiquity with an astounding examination of the famous Code of Hammurabi, a king of Babylon who provided his subjects with what was probably the most comprehensive set of laws in existence at the time in which they were written. It is interesting to note that the laws themselves are said by Hammurabi to have been rendered unto him directly by Marduk, an ancient Sumerian sun-god.

The book is amazing in many ways, not the least of which being the fact that the actual codes themselves were found, engraved on a large block of black diorite, in 1901 CE and yet were fully transliterated by a diverse group of scholars and in print as early as 1904 CE. This feat of having rendered a complete transliteration of the codes-- along with several extremely difficult passages that appeared in the epilogue-- is a truly impressive scholastic effort, the incredible work of several eminent Assyriologists of the early 20th Century CE.

A great deal of information concerning the social structure of Babylon may be gleaned by reading through these codes, revealed both directly and also by inference. We are able to see quite well what their system of social prioritization was like, and by being so acquainted with their mores, proscriptions and so forth, a very clear picture of the Babylonians as a collective group emerges.

This book would be most valuable to those who are interested in the history of ancient Semitic people, but also to those who are interested in the history of torts and criminal codes in general. As it is, the Codes of Hammurabi can be seen to have influenced subsequent legal codiciles, allegedly to include even the Ten Commandments as transferred by Moses. As these latter codes were to become a cornerstone of the subsequent ethical apperception of Europe-- thus having a further impact on the rest of the world, even unto this very day-- one might say that by reading the Codes of Hammurabi we are able to see how the laws of most Western people evolved over the past four millenia.

While this book does not present us with a very difficult read, it might not be entirely interesting to the casual perusal of the average person. Even so, it is possible that virtually anyone who picked up this book and read some of it would learn a great deal about a famous society that became extinct around 1100 BCE, that is, the society of the ancient city-state known as Babylon. Perhaps by so knowing, we may also be facing an examination of ourselves.