After Hammurabi`s death, his legal system became a classic in the ancient world, and scholars found examples of it on tablets that were not copied until the 5th century BC, more than a millennium after Hammurabi`s death. In the 30th year of his reign, Hammurabi began to expand his kingdom along the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, overthrowing the kingdoms of Assyria, Larsa, Eshunna and Mari until all of Mesopotamia was under his rule. Wolfram von Soden, who decades earlier called this way of thinking enumerating science,[119] often denigrated it. [120] However, recent authors such as Marc Van De Mieroop, Jean Bottero and Ann Guinan have either avoided value judgments or expressed admiration. Lists were at the heart of Mesopotamian science and logic, and their strong structural principles made it possible to generate endless entries. [118] The connection between the codex and the writing tradition in which the “science of lists” was born also explains why aspiring writers have copied and studied it for more than a millennium. [24] The codex appears at the end of the Babylonian (7th-6th century BC). List of literary and scientific texts. [121] No other body of law has been so firmly anchored in the curriculum.

[122] Instead of a legal code, it can therefore be a scientific treatise. [100] A third theory that has gained importance in Assyriology is that the codex is not a real code, but an abstract treatise on how judgments should be formulated. This prompted Fritz Rudolf Kraus to name legal decisions in an early formulation of the theory. [107] Kraus suggested that it was a work of Mesopotamian science in the same category as collections of omens such as šumma ālu and ana ittišu. [107] Others have provided their own versions of this theory. [108] A. Leo Oppenheim noted that the Hammurabi Codex and similar collections of Mesopotamian law “represent an interesting formulation of social criticism and should not be considered a normative direction.” [109] There they discovered the stele of Hammurabi, divided into three parts, which had been brought to Susa as spoils of war, probably by the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte in the mid-12th century BC. Here, following the principle of pointillism, circumstances are added to the first entry to create other entries. [116] Pointillism also makes it possible to generate list entries by following paradigmatic series common to several branches of science. It can thus explain implausible entries. In the case of goats used for threshing (Law 270),[117] the previous laws concern other animals used for threshing.

The established series of pets dictated that a goat should come next. [118] However, the arguments against this view are strong. First, it would result in a very unusual code – Reuven Yaron called the term “code” a “persistent misnomer.” [95] Important sectors of society and commerce are left out. [96] Marc Van De Mieroop, for example, notes that the Code “deals with livestock and agricultural fields, but almost completely ignores the work of herders, which is vital to the economy of Babylon.” [97] Second, contrary to legislative theory, highly implausible circumstances are generally recorded, such as threshing with goats, animals that are far too unruly for this task (Bill 270). [98] The laws are also strictly casuistic (“si. then”); Unlike the Mosaic law, there are no apodictic laws (general commandments). These would more clearly indicate a prescriptive law. The strongest argument against the legislative theory, however, is that most judges seem to have ignored the code.

This criticism comes from Benno Landsberger in 1950. [87] No Mesopotamian legal document makes explicit reference to the Code or any other statute book,[92] despite the large size of the corpus. [99] Two references to recipes on “a stele” (narû)[100] come closest to each other. On the other hand, many judgments cite royal decrees of mīšarum. [92] Raymond Westbrook argued that this reinforced the silence argument that the ancient legal codes of the Middle East had legal significance. [101] Moreover, many ancient Babylonian judgments completely contradict the provisions of the Codex. [102] Bills 215 and 218 illustrate the principle of opposition: a variable of the first law, the result of operations, is modified to create the second. [114] Scheil speculated that the stele was brought to Susa by the Elamite king Shutruk-Nakhunte and that he ordered the removal of several columns of laws to write his legend. [19] Roth suspects that the stele was taken as a plunder of Sippar,[21] where Hammurabi lived towards the end of his reign. [22] The Code of Hammurabi was one of the many laws of the ancient Near East.

Most of these legal texts, which come from similar cultures and racial groups in a relatively small geographical area, necessarily have passages that are similar. For example, the laws found in the later Hittite Code of Law (c. 1300 BC). A.D.) have individual laws that have a temporary resemblance to those found in the Code of Hammurabi, as well as other codices of the same geographical area. The earlier your-Nammu dynasty, prolific your-III dynasty (21st century BC), also produced a codex of laws, some of which are similar to some specific laws of the Code of Hammurabi.