Sentencing: Principles and Procedures

Archaeological research suggests that the world‘s earliest system of laws, which expressly forbade certain acts and prescribed penalties for them, was the Code of Urukagina, originating from ancient Mesopotamia and dating from around 2,360 BCE. King Urukagina is thought to have been a socially reforming ruler who set out to fight the corruption that had flourished under the ruler who preceded him. Unfortunately there are no extant remains of this code: its existence has been inferred from other materials. Considerably more is known of the Code of Hammurabi, which dates from c. 1,850 BCE in Babylon. (Babylon, like Mesopotamia, was located in what is present-day Iraq.) This code was engraved on an eight-foot-high stele (an upright stone slab) and was placed in public view so that citizens might acquaint themselves with it, though it is thought that few would have been able to read it. Figure 16.1 shows a side view of this almost 4,000-yearold object. (You can see the original in the Louvre Museum, Paris – Room 3 in the Department of Near East Studies, Richelieu Wing, if you are pushed for time.)