Review: Government & Laws

Overview Key Vocabulary

How did People organize themselves? Hammurabis Code

One of the problems facing early civilizations once people

started living in communities instead of hunting, gathering, Stele
and roaming for food, was setting up laws to govern
themselves. Four thousand years later, we take a lot of this
for granted. But, it is a slow process, and we are still trying
to perfect it today.
Eye for Eye

One of the earliest surviving codified sets of laws are the

Code of Hammurabi.
King Hammurabi ruled Babylon, located along the Euphrates
and Tigris Rivers, from 1792-1750 BCE. During his time as Retribution
king he oversaw a great expansion of his kingdom from a city-
state to an empire. However, today he is most famous for a
series of judgments inscribed on a large stone stele and
dubbed Hammurabi's Code. Scholars are still debating its
Cuneiform
precise significance as a set of laws, but the Code's
importance as a reflection of Babylonian society is
indisputable.
Key Questions
How did a codified law code help Hammurabi unite Shamash the sun god
Babylon?
What was the point of writing the code on steles?
What can the law code tell us about Babylonian City-State

society?
What can it tell us about how Hammurabi wanted to be
viewed?
Codified

Miss Knight 1