June 19, 2011

Code of Ur-Nammu


Oldest known extant legal text, 3100 years ago:

Violent times: 
  • - a man knocks out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out ½ a mina of silver. 
  • - If a man has cut off another man’s foot, he is to pay ten shekels.
  • - If a man, in the course of a scuffle, smashed the limb of another man with a club, he shall pay one mina of silver. 
  • - If someone severed the nose of another man with a copper knife, he must pay two-thirds of a mina of silver. 
  • -  If a man knocks out a tooth of another man, he shall pay two shekels of silver.
How often did it come to pass that a man severed another man's nose off?  Or cut another man's foot off?  Why was it necessary that there should be a code of law which addresses such particular crimes?  

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