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Babylonians
The Amorites established cities on the
Tigris and the Euphrates rivers and made Babylon, a town to the
north, their capital. During the time of their sixth ruler, King
Hammurabi (1792-1750 B.C.), Babylonian rule encompassed a huge area
covering most of the Tigris-Euphrates river valley from Sumer and
the Persian Gulf in the south to Assyria in the north. To rule over
such a large area, Hammurabi devised an elaborate administrative
structure. His greatest achievement, however, was the issuance of a
law code designed "to cause justice to prevail in the country, to
destroy the wicked and the evil, that the strong may not oppress the
weak." The Code of Hammurabi, not the earliest to appear in the Near
East but certainly the most complete, dealt with land tenure, rent,
the position of women, marriage, divorce, inheritance, contracts,
control of public order, administration of justice, wages, and labor
conditions.
In Hammurabi's legal code, the
civilizing trend begun at Sumer had evolved to a new level of
complexity. The sophisticated legal principles contained in the code
reflect a highly advanced civilization in which social interaction
extended far beyond the confines of kinship. The large number of
laws pertaining to commerce reflect a diversified economic base and
an extensive trading network. In politics, Hammurabi's code is
evidence of a more pronounced separation between religious and
secular authority than had existed in ancient Sumer. In addition to
Hammurabi's legal code, the Babylonians made other important
contributions, notably to the science of astronomy, and they
increased the flexibility of cuneiform by developing the pictogram
script so that it stood for a syllable rather than an individual
word.
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