{"id":7098,"date":"2022-12-27T09:54:55","date_gmt":"2022-12-27T14:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=7098"},"modified":"2025-11-13T14:20:28","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T20:20:28","slug":"105-hammurabi-ruins-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=7098","title":{"rendered":"105. Hammurabi Ruins Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s right: “The Illustrated Guide to Law \u2014 Proving everything
you thought you knew is wrong, since 2012.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n

Constitutional Law<\/p>\n

Part 2: \u201cWhat Were They Thinking?\u201d<\/p>\n

Digression: \u201cA History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia\u201d<\/p>\n

105. Hammurabi Ruins Everything<\/p>\n

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Panel 1: A line drawing of Hammurabi, in scale armor and helmet, holding a shield and wielding a spear over a background of his part of the globe.<\/p>\n

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NARRATAION:<\/p>\n

Hammurabi<\/strong> was another brilliant military commander and charismatic leader like Sargon had been.<\/p>\n

Like Sargon, Hammurabi conquered<\/strong> and unified all of Mesopotamia under his personal rule.<\/p>\n

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Panel 2: A little puff of smoke.<\/p>\n

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NARRATION:<\/p>\n

But also<\/strong> like Sargon, Hammurabi\u2019s empire would disintegrate soon after his death.<\/p>\n

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PUFF OF SMOKE: Pfft.<\/p>\n

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NARRATION:<\/p>\n

Not the first time this would happen\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026and nowhere near the last.<\/p>\n

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Panel 3: Hammurabi gesturing in front of a hanging banner\/tapestry with the words \u201cThe Art of the Stele\u201d and an image of a law stele.<\/p>\n

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NARRATION: But not for lack of trying. To get all the Mesopotamian peoples to accept his rule as legitimate, Hammurabi co-opted<\/strong> (and copied) their traditional \u201claw codes.\u201d<\/p>\n

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HAMMURABI:<\/p>\n

This\u2019ll be the greatest code you ever saw.<\/p>\n

All the best words, from all the best codes, all in one place.<\/p>\n

Do I need a monument? I don\u2019t think so. Many, many people are saying my rule is legitimate already.<\/p>\n

But we\u2019re going to do this. We\u2019re gonna have the best government ever.<\/p>\n

So legit. So<\/strong> legit.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s gonna be amazing. You\u2019re gonna love it.<\/p>\n

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-=-<\/p>\n

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Panel 4: Narration box.<\/p>\n

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NARRATION:<\/p>\n

Law-code monuments may have worked for local city-state priest-kings, but an outsider like Hammurabi?<\/p>\n

If he was going to get all those conquered peoples to accept his rule and dominion, he was going to need a lot<\/strong> more than a mere symbolic gesture.<\/p>\n

The code of Hammurabi failed<\/strong> to foster the necessary sense of legitimacy.<\/p>\n

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Panel 5: A fresh grave. The gravestone has an image of a skull, and the words \u201cHere lies the law code. We just can\u2019t believe it.\u201d A shovel is sticking out of the dirt. Voices are coming from the grave.<\/p>\n

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NARRATION: When Hammurabi\u2019s empire collapsed, that just proved<\/strong> how meaningless and ineffective his code had been.<\/p>\n

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VOICE 1: And that killed<\/strong> any cultural association of law codes with a sense of rulers\u2019 natural authority.<\/p>\n

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VOICE 2: After that, nobody bothered making them ever again.<\/p>\n

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-=-<\/p>\n

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Panel 6: Stick figures show a class of young scribes seated on the ground inscribing their clay tablets, as one student hands his to the standing teacher.<\/p>\n

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NARRATION: Hammurabi\u2019s code would live on,<\/strong> however, as a practice text<\/strong> used for training apprentice scribes.<\/p>\n

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TEACHER (to student): No, no. Get a fresh tablet and start over.<\/p>\n

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-=-<\/p>\n

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Panel 7: A view of a Mesopotamian city-state\u2019s temples and grand architecture alongside a river.<\/p>\n

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NARRATION: For the next 1,200 years<\/strong> and more, countless scribes made countless copies, and the Code of Hammurabi joined the literary canon<\/strong> familiar to all educated Babylonians\u2026 then Assyrians\u2026 Hittites\u2026 Neo-Assyrians\u2026 Neo-Babylonians\u2026<\/p>\n

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VOICE 1: It\u2019s an empirical study.<\/p>\n

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VOICE 2: Epic.<\/p>\n

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NARRATION: And not just educated locals,<\/strong> either.<\/p>\n

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-=-<\/p>\n

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Panel 8: On the walkway of a battlement before the Ishtar Gate, two men lean against the blue crenellations. The grandeur of Babylon can be seen beyond them<\/p>\n

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NARRATION: During the 6th century B.C., for example, Hammurabi\u2019s old law code made a big impression<\/strong> on a new ethnic group\u2014one which had recently relocated to Babylon from the hill country away off to the southwest.<\/p>\n

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DISTANT VOICE 1:<\/p>\n

Heh. \u201cImpression.\u201d I get it. Because we write cuneiform by making impressions in wet clay and-<\/p>\n

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DISTANT VOIE 2 (interrupting):<\/p>\n

Shush, apprentice. Get back to practice.<\/p>\n

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MAN 1 (to Man 2):<\/p>\n

A symbolic tool, you say?<\/p>\n

Intriguing.<\/p>\n

It occurs to me that Hammurabi only<\/strong> ruined law codes for kings who had already been using<\/strong> them.<\/p>\n

I wonder if the idea would work back home.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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NARRATION: Wherever could we be going next?<\/p>\n

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-=-<\/p>\n

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FOOTNOTE:<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right: \u201cThe Illustrated Guide to Law \u2014 Proving everything you thought you knew is wrong, since 2012.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/div><\/div>View Transcript<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s right: “The Illustrated Guide to Law \u2014 Proving everythingyou thought you knew is wrong, since 2012.” \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48,35,63,60,1,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-brief-history-of-government","category-constitutional-law","category-inventing-the-law","category-the-institution-revolution","category-uncategorized","category-what-were-they-thinking"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10575,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098\/revisions\/10575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}