By c.1765 BC, the Old Babylonian Empire encompassed the entirety of Mesopotamia. This dominance over what was then believed to be ‘the four corners of the world’ was brought about by the conquests of the sixth king of the Amorite dynasty, named Hammurabi. Yet despite his achievement of uniting Mesopotamia, Hammurabi is remembered first and foremost for the Code of Hammurabi, which is among the oldest legal texts yet discovered. This legal code’s legacy has been praised by many, with ideas supposedly first introduced by Hammurabi, such as the presumption of innocence, underlying many modern legal systems. It is for this achievement that a marble plaque bearing his portrait is on display in the US Capitol Building alongside 20 other great lawmakers who have contributed to modern American law.
However, Hammurabi’s legacy as a lawmaker who secured stability throughout Mesopotamia merits closer inspection. The significance of the Code of Hammurabi in establishing this stability is questionable, owing to how the Babylonian king frequently relied on violence to quell dissidence. Furthermore, that stability would not prove long-lasting: soon after his death, large regions of southern Mesopotamia were lost to the Akkadian-speaking king Ilum-ma-ili, shattering the unity of the Babylonian Empire.
In c.1792 BC, Hammurabi inherited Babylon from his father, Sin-Muballit, when the kingdom was a relatively minor power that incorporated the city-states of Kish, Sippar, and Borsippa. Nevertheless, it was far weaker than other long-established kingdoms in its locality; Elam and Assyria in particular presented formidable opposition to Hammurabi’s hopes of expansion. In fact, the first couple decades of Hammurabi’s rule were unremarkable; it would be nearly thirty years into his forty-two-year reign before he even had control of the lower Mesopotamian Plain. During the early years of his rule, he was content to pursue defensive policies such as fortifying Babylon with a surrounding city wall. This hardly seems the man who Norman Yoffee would later describe in his essay The Decline and Rise of Mesopotamian Civilisation as “the most ambitious of his line”.
Hammurabi’s wars of conquest began with the defeat of the powerful eastern kingdom of Elam after it attempted to instigate a war between Babylon and the nearby kingdom of Larsa. While Hammurabi and Larsa had formed a nominal alliance against Elam, Larsa had not contributed enough to the war effort in Hammurabi’s eyes; he next turned his forces against it and again prevailed. While Assyria remained his most significant opponent, he turned his attention towards quelling unrest from smaller dissident states until the eventual ousting of the Assyrian king, not long before Hammurabi’s own death.
While impressive, these rapidly acquired territories were not part of Hammurabi’s empire long enough for any expectation of stability in the long term. Yoffee admits in a separate essay, The Power of Infrastructures, that “most of the cities in Hammurabi’s state were only ruled by him in the last years of his reign”. In fact, Hammurabi’s policies were only implemented in wider Mesopotamia for a short period of time, particularly the Code of Hammurabi, that is estimated to have been written at most around five years before his death. Nevertheless, they had far-reaching implications for the people of Babylonia, both after the empire had been established and during the time it was being built.
In the regions where Hammurabi’s domestic policies were implemented, relative stability was achieved in the short term. Yoffee states that Hammurabi ruled through a “powerful, centralised government” with a “well-recognised legal system”. Hammurabi’s rule was marked by his aim of achieving Mesopotamian unification, with him promoting a nationalised religion and interdependent commerce across the empire. With regards to economic organisation, policies were vigorously regulated by the crown in Babylon, and often by the king himself. As Yoffee asserts, “the organs of administration were centralised to an unprecedented degree”. This idea of a heavily centralised state seems like one that could control and stabilise the tumult of Mesopotamia.
However, not only did these methods fail to prevent the rapid decline of the empire after Hammurabi’s death, but their very implementation continued to cause great problems for Hammurabi’s son and successor, Samsu-iluna. If centralised offices had expanded under Hammurabi, under Samsu-iluna and the rulers of Babylon after him, they exploded. As the external power of the empire diminished, Babylonian kings increased their central control over it, as Tate Paulette considers in the essay Domination and Resilience in Bronze Age Mesopotamia.
Paulette writes that “some theories ascribe the Old Babylonian collapse, at least in part, to ‘natural’ processes,” but “more commonly […] explanations for the collapse of the Old Babylonian state have pointed to economic, administrative, and political problems”. The systems of economy and bureaucracy put in place by Hammurabi failed to prove sustainable, and brought about inflation, spiralling debt, administrative inflexibility, and pressure from external groups. Without the ability to both profit and quell dissidence from rival states immediately through conquest, they quickly fell apart, adding “administrative inflexibility” to the list of problems preventing later Babylonian leaders from effectively dealing with foreign threats.
What, then, of Hammurabi’s ultimate achievement, his namesake code? While still proving ineffectual in the preservation of his empire, the Code of Hammurabi may be counted as a more useful policy in its combined effects of unifying religion across the empire and inspiring loyalty to Hammurabi himself. The legal content of the Code itself was, on the whole, not revolutionary; much of it was written as a simple development of earlier Mesopotamian law codes such as the Code of Ur-Nammu or the Code of Lipit-Ishtar. Similar to those codes, it is based on the principle of lex talionis (the law of retaliation). Although it is remarkable for its complexity and, in parts, fairness, in others it retains the hallmarks of superstitious and primitive conceptions of justice: for example, the second of Hammurabi’s laws describes the guilt of an accused party being proven or disproven based on whether or not he sinks in a river.
Much of the real utility of the Code to Hammurabi during his lifetime is instead found in its prologue and epilogue, a combined 800 lines of praise for the emperor and his works, reminding his subjects of the supposed benefits of his rule. In his essay Obedient Bellies: Hunger and Food Security in Ancient Mesopotamia, Seth Richardson notes that this attention to the appearance of meeting his people’s wants was an unusual tactic, writing that “most kings made claims of abundance in providing for temples and gods rather than lands or people”. Hammurabi was careful to follow certain patterns of legitimate interaction by issuing ‘law codes’ and legal ‘reforms’ in the attempt to portray Babylonian domination as being quintessentially just. Littered with grandiose sentiments such as those found in the prologue and epilogue glorifying the finite justice of the monarch and the assurance of unparalleled prosperity under his rule, Yoffee concludes that “the famous law code of Hammurabi served, if nothing else, as a piece of political propaganda designed to win the hearts and minds of the citizens of formerly autonomous cities”.
Though the significance of the Code was not in the nobility and justice of its lawmaking, the fact that it was effective as a propaganda tool to bring stability to Babylonia is evidenced by Hammurabi’s reputation in the region for centuries after his rule. Echoing the godlike language in which he is exalted in the Code, the personal name Hammurabi-ili (meaning Hammurabi is my God) was common for years after his death, while many later hymns and poems commend his virtues, sometimes to a supernatural degree. Suggesting the specific role of the Code in his legacy, one hymn even named him “the king of justice”. Hammurabi was claimed to be the king to whom the gods themselves revealed their divine law, uniting Babylonia in religious loyalty to him.
The fact that this loyalty resulted from his personal deification, however, meant that the stability he enjoyed as a result of it did not extend to the empire of his heir, Samsu-iluna. This presented yet another problem for the future of Babylonia: none of its subsequent rulers could hope to command the same respect and confidence from their people as Hammurabi. In comparison to him, each of his successors would seem weak. Aside from reducing the internal unity of Babylonia, this apparent weakness emboldened enemies of Babylon, such as Ilum-ma-ili, to attack the cities on its borders, where they met with success.
While Samsu-iluna continued the tradition of conquest that began with Hammurabi and saw many of his own successes, such as the sackings of the key cities of Ur, Isin, and Uruk, these methods could never be as effective at maintaining an empire as they were at building it. Babylon was eventually forced to abandon many of its most important cities, eventually returning to a level of influence comparable to that of its state before Hammurabi’s reign. Hammurabi’s rapid expansion of the empire, coupled with the adverse effects of his centralisation of power and the long-term impact of his self-serving mythologising of himself in his Code, ensured that it would be impossible for his successors to preserve his empire. Hammurabi only achieved the stability that he sought in Babylonia during the few years for which he personally ruled it; therefore, while he remains an impressive and influential ruler, he failed to create a stable state that could survive after his death. All told, the peak of Babylonia’s power lasted less than twenty years before its decline began.
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