Hammurabi (; ;Douglas Frayne, The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Early Periods, vol. 4: Old Babylonian Period (2003–1595 BC), Toronto, 1990: 332. Akkadian: ; ), also spelled Hammurapi, was the sixth Amorite king of Babylon, reigning from BC to BC. He was preceded by his father, Sin-muballit.
During his reign, he conquered the powerful kingdoms of Larsa, Eshnunna, and Mari, bringing almost all of Mesopotamia under Babylonian rule. It was under his rule that Babylon rose to the status of a leading kingdom on the political stage of the Middle East, and that the foundations were laid for it to become one of the major cities of ancient history.
Hammurabi is best known for having issued his law code, said to have been inspired by Shamash, the Babylonian god of Justice. It is one of the oldest legal texts ever discovered, and the longest to have survived from the ancient Near East. His reign is also one of the Mesopotamian reigns best documented by written records, particularly thanks to the correspondence unearthed in two of the cities he subjugated, Larsa and Mari, which sheds light on various facets of how he exercised power during the second half of his reign.
His son Samsu-iluna succeeded him but failed to maintain the empire he had built. After his death, Hammurabi was revered as a great conqueror, but later his military accomplishments became de-emphasized and his role as the ideal lawgiver became the primary aspect of his legacy. Hammurabi was rediscovered by archaeologists in the late 19th century and has since been seen as an important figure in the history of law.
Name
The meaning of the name Hammurabi is a matter of debate. The most common translation is, in Amorite or Akkadian, “the ancestor is great,” Ḫammu-rabi, divided in two parts: ḫammu(m) or ‘ammu, meaning “ancestor,” and rabi, meaning “great” or “to be great.” An alternative reading, in Amorite, translates the name as “the ancestor heals,” ‘Ammu-rāpi. M. Streck, for his part, translates ‘ammu as “paternal uncle,” which he interprets as a reference to a protective deity.
This name was borne by kings contemporary with Hammurabi, the most important being Hammurabi I of Yamhad (Aleppo), as well as by other Amorite kings of Syria who reigned subsequently. It was common among the Amorites for a man holding the rank of chieftain to bear a name referring to his ancestors, as connection to a lineage and dynastic continuity were essential to his legitimacy., col. 320.
Sources Written Sources The sources documenting Hammurabi’s reign are primarily written. These texts have been unearthed at archaeological sites in present-day Iraq and Syria. Some come from official excavations (notably the tablets from Mari), while many are the result of clandestine excavations, which deprives historians of precise information about the context of their discovery.
These are cuneiform texts written on clay tablets, and also on stone, in two different languages: Babylonian, a dialect of Akkadian belonging to the Semitic languages family, which constituted the local language of the time; and in Sumerian, a language with no known relatives, spoken in Babylonia until the end of the 3rd millennium BC and which, during Hammurabi’s time, retained a certain prestige among the literate and scholarly classes (much like Latin in medieval and modern Europe). During the reigns of Hammurabi and his successors, however, Babylonian gradually supplanted Sumerian, acquiring the status of a scholarly language.
Cuneiform inscriptions from the Hammurabi period can be divided into three categories: commemorative inscriptions, archival texts, and educational texts. The first two, in particular, provide insight into Hammurabi’s reign. These written sources offer a relatively clear picture of the events that took place during the years covered by the Mari archives, corresponding to the period from the eighteenth to the thirty-second year of Hammurabi’s reign (from 1774 to 1761 BC), with the documentation being particularly extensive for the years preceding the fall of Mari. This means that political life during the second third of his reign is the best understood. As for the Babylonian kingdom, the first three decades of the reign are very poorly documented, whereas for the subsequent years, written records are more abundant and diverse (notably through royal inscriptions and texts from Larsa).
Commemorative Texts Commemorative texts are issued by the royal authority and therefore reflect the official view of events. These are primarily royal inscriptions, texts celebrating the king himself, often relatively short. Hammurabi was the first king of the First Dynasty of Babylon for whom this type of text, though common in ancient Mesopotamia, has survived, and yet they all appear to date from the period following the conquest of Larsa (after 1763 BC), that is, the last third of his reign.
His inscriptions primarily commemorate the construction or restoration of sanctuaries: these are so-called “foundation” inscriptions, buried beneath the monument that was the subject of the work. This would allow them to be rediscovered by later kings who, in turn, undertook to restore the building, thereby rediscovering Hammurabi’s achievements. Nevertheless, the best-known is the Code of Hammurabi, which takes the form of a lengthy inscription celebrating Hammurabi as a just king and guarantor of equity in his kingdom, and includes legal provisions.
Another type of commemorative text consists of the sovereign’s regnal years, which also celebrate memorable events of his reign, whether pious deeds or military victories. They are essential for reconstructing the relative chronology of Hammurabi’s reign (see below)
Finally, a few hymns in Sumerian and Akkadian celebrate Hammurabi.
Archives The archival documents take the form of cuneiform tablets written in a style that is less literary than the previous ones, and thus closer to the spoken language. Many economic and legal texts date from the reign of Hammurabi: these are extremely rich sources for reconstructing the social and economic life of the period, and can also provide some information on political history. There are far more of these texts than those from his predecessors due to the expansion of the kingdom? But no archives of the Babylonian royal court have been unearthed for this period.
Far richer in information are the letters dating from Hammurabi’s reign, which directly concern his activities. Two collections provide documentation of great importance: one from the city of Mari in Syria, destroyed by Hammurabi in 1761 BC, where the Babylonians left behind part of the diplomatic correspondence from previous years, documenting in particular the rise to power of their kingdom; one from Larsa, following its conquest by Hammurabi in 1764 BC, which documents the activities of Babylonian officials who were in constant contact with Hammurabi to organize this province after its conquest. In total, just over 200 letters were written by Hammurabi, making him the Mesopotamian king with the largest number of known sent letters.
Non-written Sources In comparison to the written ones, there are far fewer non-written sources regarding Hammurabi's reign. Official sculpture from this period is poorly documented. Art is known primarily in the form of terracotta plaques or cylinder seals and impressions of cylinder seals on tablets. There are relatively few royal depictions dating from his reign, and from the First Dynasty of Babylon in general. The only confirmed depiction of Hammurabi is the one on the stele of his Code; others are disputed.
Hammurabi’s royal palace has not been identified in Babylon, and, in general, the archaeological strata of the First Dynasty of Babylon are very poorly understood in Babylon itself, as they are covered by the water table and thus beyond the reach of excavations.
Dating Several factors combine to make reconstructing the chronology of Hammurabi’s reign an approximate endeavor. The dates given in the rest of this article are established by convention but are clearly inaccurate; the question is to what extent they are so.
Babylonian sources indicate that Hammurabi reigned for 43 years. The dating system used at the time was based on year names:https://cdli-gh.github.io/year-names/HTML/T12K6.htm each year was named after a significant event that had taken place during the previous year, typically a religious act (work on a temple, the offering of a divine throne, etc.), a military victory, or the digging of a canal. The new name for the year was chosen at the end of each year.
Year names of Hammurabi’s reign are all known, which makes it possible to reconstruct the major events of his reign and place them in chronological order relative to one another.
Ancient texts also make it possible to synchronize Hammurabi’s reign with those of other contemporary rulers well-documented by sources: his accession occurred while Rim-Sin of Larsa and Samsi-Addu of Ekallatum and Upper Mesopotamia were in power, and the reign of Zimri-Lim of Mari took place during Hammurabi’s reign. This makes it possible to establish a relative chronology of his reign, although such synchronizations are often approximate.
Establishing an absolute chronology—that is, assigning dates to Hammurabi's reign within the conventional system of year-based dating (BC)—is an even more complex matter. Several dating systems have been proposed, "chronologies" that place Hammurabi's reign at different points in time within a span of nearly two centuries, ranging from the mid-19th to the mid-17th century BC. The most commonly used system, favored both out of habit and because it is generally considered the most accurate, is the "Middle" chronology; this places the reign in the middle of that range, from 1792 to 1750 BC (or, according to a proposed revision, from 1784 to 1742 BC.). Under the "high" or "long" chronology, which has few remaining proponents, the reign is placed about half a century earlier, whereas under the "ultra-low" chronology, the most widely advocated alternative since the late 1990s, Hammurabi's reign would have occurred approximately a century after the conventionally accepted date.
Dating of Hammurabi's reign according to the various chronologies. Long or High Middle Short or Low Ultra-Low 1848-1806 BC 1792-1750 BC 1728-1686 BC 1696-1654 BC
Reign
Background Hammurabi’s reign occurred at a pivotal moment in Mesopotamian history. Since the fall of the powerful empire of the Third Dynasty of Ur (or Ur III) in 2004 BC, Mesopotamia had been divided among several kingdoms ruled by Amorite dynasties. In the south, the most powerful were first Isin, then Larsa, which attempted to carry on the tradition of the kings of Ur, but without imposing their hegemony.
Babylon was then merely a secondary city, situated away from the major centers and lacking a notable history, where an Amorite dynasty took root around 1880 with the accession of Sumu-la-El (1880–1845). He succeeded in carving out a kingdom that dominated several important neighboring cities (Borsippa, Kish, Kutha, Dilbat, Marad, Sippar). His successors consolidated the kingdom and thus emerged as increasingly serious rivals to Larsa.