Fair And Injustice In Hammurabi's Law

The Hammurabi law was a mixture of fair and cruel laws. For example, the first law “If a man bring an accusation against a man, and charge him with a (capital) crime, but cannot prove it, he, the accuser, shall be put to death.” That law would be fair, if the accuser is lying, but let say the accuser is not lying, but just cannot prove it because the accused man destroyed it, then that law would then be considered cruel. The second is just cruel, “If a man charge a man with sorcery, and cannot prove it, he who is charged with sorcery shall go to the river, into the river he shall throw himself and if the river overcome him… If the river show that man to be innocent and he come forth unharmed, he who charged him with sorcery shall be put to death”. If someone is either is innocent or not should not be …show more content…
But in this case it a matter of if you are lucky or not. Which then leads to the questions, how many innocents died because of this? Where things interesting is from one hundred ninety-six to one hundred ninety-eight. For example, the first one, one hundred ninety-six, states that “If a man destroy the eye of another freeman [i.e., a man in the upper class], they shall destroy his eye” I happen to agree with this. And also happen to agree with the next one that states that if you break a man’s bone, they break yours. Then the next one states that, if you destroy the eye of a dependent laborer or break the bone of a freeman, you have to pay one mana of silver, why not have the laborer destroy the other the man’s eye or have the freeman break the bone of the man, since that is what the two laws above this one stating. Law 203, states that “If a man strike another man of his own rank, he shall pay one mana of silver”. Whereas the next law states that “If a villein strike a villein, he shall pay ten shekels of silver”. It seems that depending on your rank, you will either get something fair or something