Human nature in ancient times was as human nature is today, and the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia committed many of the same crimes common in modern societies, including theft, bearing false witness, cheating the customer in a business deal, assault, rape, and murder. And then as now, a person found guilty of one of these crimes suffered some kind of punishment. In general, none of the societies that thrived in Mesopotamia used imprisonment as a penalty, as is commonly the case in modern societies. The theory was that imprisoning someone did not benefit either the victim or society. Compensating the victim, making the criminal do forced labor, or killing or mutilating the criminal as an example to others seemed more beneficial to society as a whole.
For instance, in Sumerian society, the first major culture that developed in Mesopotamia, many penalties forced the guilty party to compensate the victim of the crime. For example, one law stated, “If a man acts in violation of the rights of another and deflowers the virgin slave woman of a man, he shall weigh and deliver [to the victim] 5 shekels of silver.” However, harsher punishments, including the death penalty, were inflicted for crimes such as rape or murder.
By the early second millennium b. c., Babylonian law codes, exemplified by that of Hammurabi dating from ca. 1760-1750 B. C., concentrated much more on physical punishments, perhaps based on the theory that these would more effectively deter potential criminals. The famous statement about crime and punishment from Leviticus in the Old Testament was a later product of the uncompromising view of justice that developed in Babylonian culture:
When a man causes a disfigurement in his neighbor, as he has done, it shall be done to him; fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, as he has disfigured a man he shall be disfigured. He who kills... a man shall be put to death. (Leviticus 24.19-21)
(Nevertheless, Hammurabi’s code did include some provisions for victims’ compensation. For example, law number twenty-three said that if a man was robbed and the thief was not apprehended, local officials had to reimburse the victim for his or her losses.) Indeed, penalties under the Babylonian system were in general quite harsh compared to those in modern democracies. For instance, the death penalty was imposed for theft or falsely accusing someone of murder, crimes that today are punished by fines or brief imprisonment. A Babylonian man and woman found guilty of committing adultery were tied together and thrown into the river to drown. And under some decrees issued by one of Hammurabi’s immediate successors, Ammi-saduqa (reigned 1646-1626 B. C.), other relatively minor offenses were also punished by death:
The wholesale and retail merchants [who use] a false seal [to try to cheat their customers] will be put to death.
The representative of the king... who has forced... the family of a worker [to] harvest or perform work for his own profit, will be put to death.
Penalties under the Assyrian justice system were equally harsh and often more gruesome. A female thief could have her ears or nose cut off, for instance. A male adulterer was castrated and had his face sliced to shreds; the woman with whom he had committed the crime had her nose cut off. A man who touched another man’s wife had a finger cut off; if he kissed her, his lower lip was sliced off. The degree to which these punishments actually deterred crime, if they did at all, remains unknown.
See Also: Ammi-saduqa; Hammurabi; laws and justice
World History
