Hammurabi

The Law Code of Hammurabi is a set of 282 laws. The codes express laws that tell what punishment or repayment the offender owes for his misdeed. The laws give out different punishment for the same problem depending on what class you are from. The punishments and repayments given out between the classes are extremely unequal, where the higher the class you are the less punishment you have to deal with.

The laws are given differently depending on your group. Whenever there is a law explaining what has happened and what has to be done in return it usually is broken into three sections. The three sections are what does the free-born men and women have to do, what does the freed men and women have to do, and what does the slaves have to do. Within these laws the freeborn are treated better, or have more value than the freed, and then the freed are treated better than the slaves. There are even laws that say if you do something wrong to someone of a higher class then your punishment is going to be worse, which shows a major sign of inequality.

The group that is treated with the most inequality is the slaves. Since the slaves cannot read they are already in a bad position. Most of the laws that are created in this set are directed towards the slaves. These laws make it where once you are a slave, you are always going to be a slave; even their children are born into this system. Slaves are also put at the lowest value compared to any other class. For example, laws 230 and 231 state that if someone kills the son of the owner, the murderer should be put to death, but if he only kills the slave of the owner, than the murderer just has to replace that slave with another slave. (Hammurabi 230-231) Since the slaves cannot read they are easily taken advantage of, which is why it is so easy to put them at such a low value. Slaves are just looked at as a piece of property and they have no rights at all.

Professionals are also treated unequal when dealing with these laws. They...