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– The art of the Con
Ur-Nammu’s Code -- 2060
B. C.
Ur-Nammu’s Code was the earliest written legal code
and it created a legal system which included judges, testimony under oath along
with damages. Originally Ur-Nammu was a governor to good king Utukhegal. Some
say the Utukhegal stepped on an orange-peel and broke his neck, others said
he was done in by Ur-Nammu. Everyone seems to concur. Upon Utukhegal’s
demise Ur-Nammu was crowned king of Ur. As such, he was the founder of the third dynasty, which lasted a century.
Ur-Nammu wanted to leave something that the people would remember him by and
he created the great Ziggurat which was 60 feet high and 200 feet wide, a prodigious
monolith for those times. However, no one in the kingdom seemed to know what
a Ziggurat was and Ur-Nammu rethought the entire proposition.
However, during his reign, Ur-Nammu[1] had created the oldest code of formal law known. It was created with a prologue
and seven laws and naturally, the prologue describes Ur-Nammu as a divinely
appointed king who is powerful and great and has established justice throughout
the land. This code is of great importance to the study of biblical law, which
it predates by about five centuries. Little remains of his work because the
clay tablets upon which his code was written when they were found were badly
damaged. In spite of this, court document were later discovered which added
to our understanding of his laws, one of which seems to harken back to
Salem:
“If any one bring an accusation against a man,
the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river
his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that
the accused is not guilty, and he unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation
shall be put death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession
of the house that had belonged to his accuser.”
Among other interesting aspects of Ur-Nammu’s code is the fact
that while it appears at the number of laws went all the way up to 114, there
was no 13th because of the fact that even then, that number was considered
unlucky. However, the laws during this period were tough and almost everything
was punishable by the death sentence. While, uniquely, women were allowed to
hold and inherit property, in many other respects they were treated harshly:
“If
a “sister of a god” (nun) open a tavern, or enter a tavern to drink, then shall
this woman be burned to death.”
Ur-Nammu died in 2095, long before the laws were even written
that were later attributed to him. It seems that Ur-Nammu had become a tad too
aggressive in leading his troops into battle against the fierce Gutians. Ur-Nammu,
never the one to look back would have seen that he was so far in front of his
troops that he had lost contact with them when the end came.
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