The code was widely distributed during the reign of Shulgi, who, as mentioned earlier, may even have been the actual author. However, there was no need to publicly display the laws, as the people of your-Nammu and Shulgi shared a common set of values and traditions, and the laws were designed to promote correct behavior within predetermined parameters. Scholar Samuel Noah Kramer describes the code as it appears in columnar cuneiform script on a clay tablet: By studying some of our early attempts at law and order, we can better understand both the evolution of different cultures and the progress of man as a civilized species. Below are ten of the oldest known legal texts from different regions and cultures. The Twelve Tablets of Roman Law are both the oldest surviving piece of Roman literature and their first attempt to write a code of law. The twelve tablets of Roman law showed remarkable Hellenic influence, but nevertheless remained almost purely Roman. They avoided specific details about cases and instead focused on principles that should be mimulated. However, there are exceptions, such as “rules for the observance of funeral ceremonies, laws and obligations that exist between neighbours and the treatment to which the debtor may be subject”. The original Twelve Tables were set up for the Forum, but were destroyed when the Gauls sacked Rome in 390 BC. First, let`s look at the oldest registered legal system known to mankind: the Ur-Nammu Codex. your-Nammu was the king of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur between 2111 and 2094 BC. J.-C. His code was a series of laws that advanced several important legal concepts, such as the requirement for financial compensation for bodily injury inflicted on others.
In addition, murder, theft, adultery and rape are defined as capital crimes punishable by death, while mutilation was punishable by a fine (10 skeletons for cutting off a man`s foot). This system, although obviously not 100% like what we have today, was essential for the development of law and order in ancient Mesopotamia, as well as for all the civilization that followed it. Whenever people had legal problems, they sought advice from lawyers who studied the laws. These opinions were written and collected to be part of the law. The Mesopotamian judicial system relied mainly on customary law, confirmed by the assembly of elders or municipal officials or courts. Judges could be elected from the local community or appointed by the king. Interested parties presented their own case and brought witnesses with them if necessary. The trials, or at least the judgments, were written, and many plaques from most historical periods have been preserved. In the absence of witnesses, the accused could be sent back to an ordeal, such as being thrown into a river or canal. The innocence of the person was proven when the “river” rejected the perpetrator.
Defendants and plaintiffs had to take an oath on divine emblems, such as the sun disk representing the god of justice, Shamash. The word “Torah” has several different meanings, but in this case it refers to the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. This Torah has been one of the cornerstones of Jewish culture, faith and identity for millennia. Jewish tradition holds that the Torah existed before the creation of the world and was written only after it was revealed to Moses by God. But trying to determine the date when the Torah was first compiled and physically written is very difficult. The Torah has undergone many rounds of redactions over the centuries. However, many scholars believe that the last great series of writings took place after 539 BC. A.D., when the Jews were freed from Babylonian captivity by Cyrus the Great. The first copy of the code, in two fragments found in Nippur in present-day Iraq, was translated by Samuel Kramer in 1952.
These fragments are in the archaeological museums of Istanbul. Due to its partial preservation, only the prologue and five of the laws were recognizable. [1] Kramer noted that luck was involved in the discovery:[1] “The `editions` were more in the sense of `updating the language`. It must only be for the Torah, because of what is known about the Bible, there are more than 18,000 differences (and verses that have completely disappeared) compared to the Bibles that now circulate in a few days. The King James version is one of the worst (if not the worst translated) of all, but the most popular. The dating of the five books of Moses is disputed. The traditional view is that the majority of the books (with the exception of the last part of Deuteronomy) were the words of Moses from about 1,400 to 1,300 B.C. Internal evidence tends to support early writing theory.
The mere fact that these books were mentioned in the context of Scripture shows that they were written before some of these older books (such as the Samuels, Kings, and Chronicles). At least they were written and supplemented by the reign of Josiah, who reigned around 650-600 BC. As kings were considered the guardians of law and order, they often issued legal reforms, debt discharges and decrees, which were recorded in writing and are often referred to as legal texts, although there is no evidence that the courts ever referred to such edicts. (105) “Laws are organized in the casuistic form of si-(crime), then – (punishment) – a model to be followed in almost all subsequent codes. For the oldest known code of laws in history, it is considered remarkably progressive because it provides for fines for bodily injury, in contrast to the later principle of lex talionis (“an eye for an eye”) of Babylonian law; However, the capital crimes of murder, theft, adultery and rape are punishable by death. As one of the oldest civilizations in the world, it stands to reason that China has one of the longest legal traditions on record. But despite the fact that the earliest surviving Chinese historical records date back to the Xia Dynasty (c. 2100-1600 BC), the oldest surviving legal document dates back to the Zhou Dynasty. Known as Kang Gao, it was essentially a long letter from King Wu of Zhou to the young Prince Kangshu to rule a new fiefdom.