A historical – legal review of Hammurabi’s code

Hammurabi’s code shows the social relations of that time, although most of these relations were regulated by the Law of Contract. The Code covers a variety of legal matters: it regulates very complex property, family, obligatory and criminal-legal relations including the judiciary provisions. The Code expresses the class character of the society, because it primarily protects the interests of the ruling class and punishes the members of the ruling and subordinate classes differently for the same crimes. The Code was carved in a stone pillar and it was found by M. Morgan in 1901. This masterpiece of a human’s thought, almost four millennia old, was engraved in the stone of Babylon (Hammurabi) for the temple of Sippar (now the ruins of Abu Dhabi near Baghdad). An undamaged inscription of the Code is kept in the British Museum.