Kathleen, Queen of the Desert

Many Parisian museums are free on the first Sunday of each month, so today I walked right into the Louvre, big as you please. No ticket and not even a glance at the keepers of the gate. I also didn’t bring my pack, so I didn’t have to unzip the pockets, show my umbrella and water bottle, and check it at la vestiaire (the cloakroom). Except for the other tens of thousands of people there at 9 AM waiting to get in, I strolled through the largest museum in the world unimpeded.

Having done the Sully and Denon wings on previous visits, today I explored the ground floor of the Richelieu wing. I was there for 2-1/2 hours . . .  and I certainly didn’t see everything. But I was only really there to take another look at a new Louvre favorite: the Code of Hammurabi. This “code” is a set of laws that was carved in stone around 1760 BC for King Hammurabi, first king of the city-state of Babylonia. That’s him on the left below, with his hand to his mouth, receiving the laws from the sun god Shamash. 

 

The laws were written in Akkadian, the daily language of Babylon, and then carved in Old Babylonian cuneiform (wedge-style) script on a 7′ 4-1/2″ tall stela made of black basalt. In the Louvre, the stela looks like a huge black index finger in a “Now wait just a minute” gesture (see image below).

Stelas can be territorial or commemorative slabs. An obelisk is a kind of stela. A Celtic cross is a kind of stela. The Hammurabi code stela (one of several) was placed in a public place so that all could see it (although not everybody could read). This stela was stolen in 12th century BC by King Shutruk-Nahhunte of Elam and deposited in Susa (now Kjuzestan, Iran).

The stela was rediscovered in December 1901 by the French Délégation en Perse, under Jacques de Morgan, as they excavated in Susa. Mozaffar-ed-Din Shah had signed a treaty in 1900 granting France all antiquities discovered at Susa. The discoveries continued, crowned by the appearance of the Hammurabi stela; thus, the exhibition of an Iraqi antiquity in Paris.

The code of Hammurabi contained 284 laws with each offense receiving a specified punishment. The punishments are harsh by modern standards with many offenses resulting in death, disfigurement, or an “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” But Hammurabi put his laws into a systematic whole, an important step in the evolution of civilization. The code is also one of the earliest examples of presumption of innocence, suggesting that the accused and accuser can provide evidence; however, there is no provision for extenuating circumstances. An image of the back of the code stela is below.

Although his empire controlled all of Mesopotamia by the time of his death (image below), Hammurabi’s successors were unable to maintain his empire.

    

Here are four examples of Hammurabi’s laws:

228. If a builder build a house for some one and complete it, he shall give him a fee of two shekels in money for each sar of surface.

229. If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.

230. If it kill the son of the owner the son of that builder shall be put to death.

231. If it kill a slave of the owner, then he shall pay slave for slave to the owner of the house.

Because of Hammurabi’s reputation as an early lawgiver, you can find his depiction in several U.S. government buildings. Hammurabi is depicted in marble bas-relief in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. (see image below). You can also see his image on the south wall frieze of the U.S. Supreme Court  (and in some State Supreme Court buildings, such as Colorado’s) with 17 other lawgivers. Muhammed is also depicted.

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson recently said, “. . . most Americans wouldn’t know the Code of Hammurabi from a ham sandwich.” There’s an idea! The Louvre’s Cafe Richelieu could add ham sandwiches to their lunchtime offerings, so at least American visitors could become clear on the code-and-sandwich conundrum, having just seen one and currently eating the other. Or at the very least the cafe could offer a Jimmy Dobson sandwich to chew on.

For a full English translation of the Code of Hammurabi, see   http://eawc.evansville.edu/anthology/hammurabi.htm