Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [69]
—from The Code of Hammurabi Translated by L. W. King (1910)
Who was Hammurabi?
The most famous and significant king of Old Babylon, Hammurabi (c.1792–1750 BCE), was an Ammorite, or “Westerner,” whose family invaded Sumer sometime after 2000 BCE. Hammurabi conquered several Sumerian and Akkadian cities and founded the empire based in Babylon, raising it from relatively small town to major power center. But Hammurabi is even more renowned for a code of laws that is considered one of the oldest and most significant in human history. Although Hammurabi’s code is often cited as the “first” law code, that designation rightfully belongs to the code of an otherwise obscure Sumerian king called Ur-Nammu, who preceded Hammurabi by about three hundred years, according to the leading Sumerian historian Samuel Noah Kramer. But not much of Ur-Nammu’s law code is readable, and it exists only in fragmentary pieces. That is why Hammurabi gets so much credit. We have his complete works.
Carved on stone columns discovered in 1902 in the city of Susa (now Shush in Iran), Hammurabi’s code is now on display at the Louvre in Paris. The columns show the sun god Shamash handing the code of laws to Hammurabi, laws derived from even older Sumerian codes, including those of Ur-Nammu. Severe by modern standards, with the death penalty prescribed for even relatively minor offenses, the code addressed commonplace issues such as business and family relations, labor, private property, and personal injuries.
While Hammurabi’s code was seemingly ruthless when it came to punishment—literally calling for “an eye for an eye”—it still represented a great step from the lawlessness of pre-civilization era. The laws governed everything from traffic regulations on the Euphrates River to the rights of veterans, but also provided protections for the weakest members of society—including women, children, the poor, and slaves. This shift from arbitrary violence and clan vengeance marked a startling step toward civilized norms of justice.
This is one more example of how myth and history sometimes blend. In Egypt, a pharaoh tried to make one mythical god the only god and failed to change the people’s minds. Hammurabi was a man who used the gods to give his laws the weight of worship. It was no different from the biblical Ten Commandments, which were said to have been handed to Moses by his one god on Mount Sinai. In a few more centuries, the Greeks would also create new law codes, but they would be the creation of men, not gods—civilization was slowly being born from barbarism, and sometimes myth was the midwife to that long labor.
WHO’S WHO OF MESOPOTAMIAN MYTHS
Just as the Greek gods and goddesses were later borrowed and renamed by the Romans, the chief gods of the early Sumerian myths were adopted by the later Akkadians and Babylonians. As cities grew, new gods were added to the pantheon, weaving a complex web of sometimes competing deities.
This list includes most of the chief deities of Mesopotamia, with their Sumerian names followed by their Akkadian or Babylonian names. As with many other mythologies, there are often variant stories and differing versions of the Mesopotamian gods, reflecting the different people who moved through this part of the world over the course of thousands of years of conquest, and then adapted and reshaped the local myths to suit their needs and political agendas.
An (Anu) The Sumerian sky god, originally presided over the assembly of gods. With his mate, the earth goddess Ki, he is the father of other gods, including Enki. In the Sumerian view, the stars are his soldiers and the Milky Way his royal road. Originally the source of rain, An is the father figure who makes seeds sprout, but later evolves into the chief god. An has the power to proclaim the Sumerian kings, who were believed to be chosen by the gods when they met in a sort of democratic forum. Sumerian royalty