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Mesopotamia
Prior in tempore, potior in iure
"What's past is prologue"
Shakespeare
Mario Eduardo Bernal Vázquez
C.P. 10768919
Geography
Name
Ancient Greek
- meso
- potamos
(The land) in the middle of the rivers
Name
- Euphrates
- Tigris
Region, not a city
Map
History
Lower Paleolithic period - Achaemenid Empire (6th century BC) - Caliphate (7th century AD)
One of the four riverine civilizations where writing was invented:
- Nile - Egypt
- Indus - India
- Yellow River - China
History
Earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution
- wheel
- cereal crops
- language
- mathematics
- astronomy
Important cities
- Uruk
- Nippur
- Nineveh
- Assur
- Babylon
- Eridu
Important leaders
- Ur-Nammu (king of Ur)
- Sargon of Akkad (Akkadian Empire)
- Hammurabi (Old Babylonian state)
- Ashur-uballit II
- Tiglath-Pileser I (Assyrian Empire)
- Gilgamesh (oldest literary work)
Gods
Anu - Sky God
Aruru - fertility goddess
Shamash / Utu - Sun God
Siduri - fermentation goddess
Enlil - God of wind
Ishtar - goddess of love
Ea / Enki - deity of crafts
Adad - God of the Storm
Sin - Moon God
Gods
Gilgamesh
3000 BC
Written in cuneiform on twelve shelves of clay
King of the first Uruk's dynasty
Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh
For at the creation of mankind
The gods allotted Death to men.
They retained life in their own hands.
Gilgamesh, let your belly be full,
Make you merry by day and by night.
Make everyday a day of feasting and of rejoicing
Dance and play, by day, by night,
Let your clothes be sparkling and fresh
Wash your hair
Bathe your body
Attend to the babe who holds you by the hand
Take your wife and let her rejoice in you.
For this is the lot of mankind to enjoy
But immortal life is not for men.
Plea (V. 149-158)
(Humbaba to Gilgamesh)
Gilgamesh, a dead man cannot ... ,
... alive for his lord. . . . . .
Spare my life, 0 Gilgamesh, ...... ,
let me dwell here for you in [the Forest of Cedar!]
Trees as many as you command ...... ,
I will guard you myrtle, ..... .
timber to be the pride of [your] palace!
(Enkidu to Gilgamesh)
Do not listen, my [friend,] to Humbaba's words,
[ignore] his supplications
Plea (V. 174-189)
(Humbaba to Enkidu)
You are experienced in the ways of my forest, the ways ... ,
also you know all the arts of speech.
I should have picked you up and hanged you from a sapling at the way into the forest,
I should have fed your flesh to the locust bird, ravening eagle and vulture.
'Now, Enkidu, [my] release lies with you:
tell Gilgamesh to spare me my life
(Enkidu to Gilgamesh)
My friend, Humbaba who guards the Forest of [Cedar:]
finish him, slay him, do away with his power!
Humbaba who guards the Forest [of Cedar:]
finish him, slay him, do away with his power,
before Enlil the foremost hears what we do!
The [great] gods will take against us in anger,
Enlil in Nippur, Shamash in [Larsa] ... ,
Establish forever [a fame] that endures,
how Gilgamesh [slew ferocious] Humbaba!
Hammurabi
Babylon - hegemony
1810 BC - 1750 BC
- Sin-Muballit
- Hammurabi (Ammu-Rapi)
- Samsu-Iluna
Akkadian - Summerian language
Hammurabi
Code of Hammurabi
Found in 1901
Translated in 1904 by the monk Jean-Vincent Scheil
Naru "stone"
Given to Hammurabi by Shamash
282 legal precepts
Contains a Prologue and Epilogue
Not exactly legal articles, more like judicial precedents
Hammurabi wears common clothes.
Political reason rather than legal
Musée du Louvre
Central Text - Lex Talionis
Central Text - Lex Talionis
195. If a son strikes his father, his hands shall be hewn off.
196. If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out. [An eye for an eye]
197. If he breaks another man's bone, his bone shall be broken.
198. If he put out the eye of a freed man, or break the bone of a freed man, he shall pay one gold mina.
199. If he put out the eye of a man's slave, or break the bone of a man's slave, he shall pay one-half of its value.
200. If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out. [A tooth for a tooth]
201. If he knocks out the teeth of a freed man, he shall pay one-third of a gold mina.
Central Text - Marriage
Central Text - Marriage
129. If a man's wife be surprised with another man, both shall be tied and thrown into the water, but the husband may pardon his wife and the king his slaves.
130. If a man violates the wife of another man, who has never known a man, and still lives in her father's house, and sleeps with her and be surprised, this man shall be put to death, but the wife is blameless.
131. If a man bring a charge against one's wife, but she is not surprised with another man, she must take an oath and then may return to her house.
132. If the "finger is pointed" at a man's wife about another man, but she is not caught sleeping with the other man, she shall jump into the river for her husband.
133. If a man is taken prisoner in war, and there is a sustenance in his house, but his wife leave house and court, and go to another house: because this wife did not keep her court, and went to another house, she shall be judicially condemned and thrown into the water.
134. If anyone be captured in war and there is not sustenance in his house, if then his wife go to another house this woman shall be held blameless.
135. If a man be taken prisoner in war and there be no sustenance in his house and his wife go to another house and bear children; and if later her husband return and come to his home: then this wife shall return to her husband, but the children follow their father.
Central Text - Professional practice
Central Text - Professional practice
219. If a physician make a large incision in the slave of a freed man, and kill him, he shall replace the slave with another slave.
220. If he had opened a tumor with the operating knife, and put out his eye, he shall pay half his value.
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 someone, 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 kills the son of the owner the son of that builder shall be put to death.
231. If it kills a slave of the owner, then he shall pay slave for slave to the owner of the house.
232. If it ruins goods, he shall make compensation for all that has been ruined, and inasmuch as he did not construct properly this house which he built and it fell, he shall re-erect the house from his own means.
Similar codes of law
- Ur-Nammu's code
- Laws of Eshnunna
- Code of Lipit-Ishtar
- Hittite code of laws
Similar codes of law
The Code of Ur-Nammu
The Code of Ur-Nammu
Oldest known law code. c. 2100–2050 BC.
1. If a man commits a murder, that man must be killed.
2. If a man commits a robbery, he will be killed.
3. If a man commits a kidnapping, he is to be imprisoned and pay 15 shekels of silver.
6. If a man violates the right of another and deflowers the virgin wife of a young man, they shall kill that male.
7. If the wife of a man followed after another man and he slept with her, they shall slay that woman, but that male shall be set free.
13. If a man is accused of sorcery he must undergo ordeal by water; if he is proven innocent, his accuser must pay 3 shekels.