Hummurabis code
Hummurabis codeBy: Ksenya
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History is the past, which for the most part can not be scientificately proven. The real; goal of History is to rediscover past. A dramatic error happens when past is rediscovered from our own bias that is from the way we see it. Even certain artifacts and works pf literature that we have left from earlier civilizations can be interpreted in several different ways, or misinterpreted to a certain extend or entirely. Usually interpretation or even misinterpretation is affected bu the concept of ethnocentrism, where different communities have an already set up establishment of certain norms based on their own believes, traditions, social, legislative, and personal values and ethics from which they judge other foreign communities. When considering other societies, it is usually a difficult task to view �other world� without any observer prejudices. Each world, our and their can evoke its own realities that are more or less comparable from one period to another, or from one culture to another. One of the obvious misinterpretations, discussed in this paper, took place considering historical document written by king of Mesopotamia. Our textbook, Arts and Culture,(p 98) presents Hammurabi�s Code as a �Law Code� of king Hammurabi. It was, in turn something quite different from a Code of Laws existing in our judicial and legislative structure of government and society. Hammurabi�s Code- �A law Code� or a set of royal decisions??? As written in Mesopotamia: The Mighty Kings, (p26), the code consists if 282 laws that are branched at the beginning and end by a prologue and epilogue. The �Code� touches almost every aspect of everyday life in Babylonya. As the prologue states, the laws were supposedly written �to promote the welfare of the people,�to cause just to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil, that the strong might not oppress the weak� ( The Human Record, p 12). Furthermore, just like a real Law Code, each �law� is written in the form of conditional sentence: in which the phrase is introduced by a certain condition, �if� and the consequence follows �then�. Another fact makes Hammurabi�s �Code� so similar to the U.S. Constitutional Law Code is that it follows specific order, consisting of separate �chapters� associated with similar issues. For instance;� The Administration of Justice� �chapter� is followed by �Felons and Victums�, which is in turn followed by �chapter� that talks about �Property� issues. Thus from a point of view of an ordinary contemporary American,theHammurabi�s Code is an ancient set of detailed legal codes of Mesopotamia. As mentioned above, the code is composed of 282 �law codes� which are started in conditional sentences, typical to a legislative document, and broken down in sets of chapters which are associated with particular issue considered and in addition follow a certain order. Therefore keeping in mind such a definition of Hammurabi�s �Code�, Americans can look at it as primitive, and even savage prototype of contemporary set of laws. From the American bias and American...
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