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ancient babylonian society

Around 1900 B.C., the Amorites, a Semitic tribe from west Asia, conquered the Sumerians who had struggled themselves out of Akkadian rule. The new Amorite empire set up its capital in Babylon (also called bab-ilum/Babel) meaning "gate of god" (ancient Babylon had eight gates that surrounded the city).

To maintain order, ancient Babylonian empire built a very hierarchical social order, reflected in a variety of ways:

Social strata: elites; free men, and slaves and differential treatment reflected in the law code implemented by King Hammurabi.

Aspects of Mesopotamian society:

Slaves: prisoners of war captured from outside Mesopotamia. Slaves were also a form of punishment for Mesopotamians who broke the law by assaulting family members. People also entered slavery to pay debts until their debts were all cleared. All slaves could purchase their freedom if they could afford it.

Marriages: mostly arranged by the fathers of the bride and groom. Most men had one wife but they had the right to marry a second wife if the first was unable to have children.

Babylonian women: taught to be wives and mothers but also priestesses, poets, tavern-keepers, cloth-weavers, and cooked/made beverages, especially beer. Property usually passed from father to son, but women could inherit land and household furnishings.

Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC)’s code

By 1760 B.C., king Hammurabi of the Babylonian empire followed his predecessor by centralizing his administration. So a codified set of law, chiseled on stone tablets, was distributed to all the cities in his kingdom. On the stone tablet, King Hammurabi was seen accepting the laws from the sun god Shamash, not only to use Shamash to bolster the authority of the law.

To govern his kingdom effectively, King Hammurabi collected law codes from previous centuries and mixed them with his own to write on stone tablets which were set up in all the cities in the kingdom. These law codes covered a wide range of Babylonian life and are a good source for us to exercise our historical inference and interpretation to understand ancient Babylonian society.

The law codes reflected two types of commercial transactions: that of a bartered economy and of a monetary economy.
The law codes reflected the Babylonian social structure through different forms of punishments.
The law codes reflected to some extent the population ratio between farmers, merchants, and other professionals.
The law codes reflected likely professions for women, gender relationships, family structure, and expectations of different family members.
The law codes reflected the degree of development of law and commerce in Babylonian society.