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| Code of Hammurabi stele |
The essay was
Rousseau’s entry into a nation-wide essay competition on the topic of ‘What
is the origin of inequality among people, and is it authorized by natural law?’ The title of Rousseau’s
essay, and the question itself, expose an underlying feature of European
society of the time. It was unequal. The question does not ask if inequality
exists. It asks how inequality came into existence.
This blogpiece is not
going to summarise Rousseau’s answer. Rather I intend tracing the roots of
inequality back in time further than did Rousseau in his essay.
Let us return to the
Babylonian Empire, and particularly the reign of King Hammurabi (ruling
from c.1810 – c.1750 BCE). Writing had been invented in Mesopotamia 1,200 to
1,500 years before Hammurabi’s reign. Initially, the scripts of the time were
used for accounting purposes; to record harvest quantities and the like. Over
time writing became more developed and was used to record more and more,
including stories.
Today, Hammurabi is best known for the Code of
Hammurabi, a set of laws including ascribing penalties for various
contraventions of the Code. The Code was inscribed upon a 2.25 m tall stone
stele (found in 1901 in present day Iran) and is today considered to be an
important precursor in the establishment of a legal code. However, you won’t
find the stele in Iran today. The stele was unearthed by the French
Archaeological Mission and transferred (stolen may be a more accurate term) to
the Louvre in Paris.
Although the code of Hammurabi is known as a precursor
to the establishment of a legal code, it is also noteworthy that the laws
inscribed thereon indicate an inequality existing in Mesopotamia at that time –
some 4,000 years ago.
The Code makes mention of various ‘classes’ of
Babylonians. There is mention of superior men, common men, slaves, superior
women, and common women. The penalties meted out to transgressors of
the code depended upon the status, class, and gender, of both the victim and
the perpetrator. Hence, it is easy to determine the relative worth of
inhabitants by reading the penalties imposed. For example, if a superior man
should blind the eye of another superior man, then the penalty is that his eye
is blinded in return. However, if it is a commoner whose eye is blinded, then
the superior man must pay 60 shekels of silver (and not lose his own eye.) The
penalty imposed upon a superior man if he strikes a woman and causes her to
miscarry is entirely dependent upon the class of the woman. If of superior
class then the penalty is ten shekels of silver, if a commoner it is half that
(five shekels) and if a slave then even less, just two shekels.1 The
difference between people was clearly marked out by Hammurabi and the
Babylonians. Hence, on this basalt stele we can plainly read of the way in
which people were thought of and treated as unequal, of different status and
worth. The inequality of people had become codified and written down. Set in
stone, if you will.
It is little wonder then, that some 3,500 years later,
Rousseau was answering a question about how inequality came about, not if
inequality existed.
The inequality that existed at the time of Hammurabi
came to infuse the worldviews of the cultures and Empires that followed
Hammurabi. It informed the Roman Empire. It informed the colonisation of the
Americas. It informed the British Empire. It informed the European colonisation
of Australia and New Zealand.
In many ways the inequality between people remains set
in stone today. It is time we started chipping away at that stele.
Notes:
1. Harari, Yuval Noah, Sapiens: A Brief History of
Humankind, Vintage, London, 2011
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