In this episode, you will learn about how ancient civilizations, specifically Mesopotamia and Babylon, were the first to write down laws to govern the societies that had built up around them. We’ll talk about kings, codes, laws and police just to name a few.

Mentioned This Episode:

Website: Code of Hammurabi

Website: Map of Ancient Mesopotamia

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Website: LCC Public Service Careers

From the watchmen of ancient cities, to the rise of modern police forces, and from medieval dungeons to today's correctional institutions, our systems of law enforcement and punishment have shaped societies for centuries. Welcome to Silver & Blue: Tracing the History of Policing and Corrections, the podcast where we will uncover the beginning to the present of policing and corrections. Each episode will explore how justice was enforced, how punishment evolved, and what these legacies mean for us today. Let's step back in time and see how order and disorder came to be.

Hello and welcome to the very first episode of Silver and Blue. I'm so glad you could join me.

For our first episode, we'll start by traveling thousands of years into the past to where archaeology and tradition give us some of the earliest evidence of law and justice in ancient times. Once that foundation is down, we will move to the civilizations that are often named as the firsts of law and justice.

The first we will visit is the birthplace of civilization itself, Mesopotamia. Before there were distinct civilizations, there were tribal communities that dated back to prehistoric times.

And while the peoples from this timeline did not write, the archaeological evidence can explain some things about how they handled disputes and conflicts between individuals and other communities. What we do know about this time period is that oral tradition was the way that norms were shared within the tribe.

With that, the importance of the tribe was conveyed and the survival of the tribe was communicated. If that was violated, there were elders that were then in place to handle the disputes.

But when it came to tribes and resolution of conflicts and the norms of their time, they relied predominantly on what we would recognize today as restorative justice.

The ultimate goal was to keep the tribe together through such things as mediation, negotiation, compensation from the offender, or ritual reconciliation like gift exchanges or ceremonies that expressed forgiveness. Tribes were also not above public shaming.

Since then, as in now, public opinion matters, serious matters could result in exile or expulsion, which would be a last resort and as close to a death sentence as there was for this time.

That is because for a single tribe member to be left behind or told to leave would leave him with no support supplies and at the mercy of predators, weather, or whatever you can think of. Eventually, tribes evolved into what we would now recognize as civilizations and early society.

And this leads us to where we will concentrate the rest of this Mesopotamia. This is where humans first built cities, first developed writing, and crucially for us, first created written laws.

If you've ever wondered where ideas like contracts, courts, police, or even the concept of justice itself began, Mesopotamia is where the trail leads. So today we will learn and discuss what the structure of Mesopotamian society was what the world's earliest legal codes were.

How policing and enforcement first took shape that long ago, what justice meant to people that lived 4,000 years ago, and how those ancient choices still echo through our modern laws today. So let's say we dive in.

We're going to embark on a journey that started 4,000 years ago in a time with clay tablets, kings, and the earliest attempts to answer a question we still struggle with today. How do we create a just society? Let's imagine what the landscape of this time looked like.

Mesopotamia means the land between the rivers, in this case the Tigris and the Euphrates.

They were bustling urban areas with things like temples that towered high in the sky, palaces that were expansive and grand, markets bustling daily with trade bureaucracies, schools, and thousands upon thousands of people.

When you think about how complex these new urban areas became, there were going to be challenges and questions that would need answers, questions that we would find simple today but weren't in those times. Questions like who owned what, who owned what to who, and who was responsible when things went wrong.

With this realization that, that this new urban life demanded order, Mesopotamia became the birthplace of administration, record keeping, and eventually law. So you're thinking, I'm sure, why Mesopotamia? Well, the region's geography played a huge role.

The rivers, remember, it's the Tigris and Euphrates flooded unpredictably, which meant cooperation was needed for and irrigation systems that needed to be built, labor that had to be coordinated, and distribution of the land that they now controlled. This required central authority, or as we would equate it now, government.

And once you have that central authority, well, you need rules to govern how that works.

It predates Hammurabi by about four centuries. Er Namu's laws governed assault, marriage and divorce, bodily injury, and protections for widows and orphans.

And while we will talk more about punishment in the future, one thing that I think is surprising is that many punishments were monetary fines, not physical retaliation. This suggests a society seeing itself as establishing a society through compensation rather than vengeance.

Well, next we have the reforms of Urukagina.

In other words, a world not just by kings, but by law.

So now we are going to talk about probably the best known of Mesopotamian legal history, Hammurabi, who was king of Babylon, who ruled around 792 to 750 BCE. His legal code, nearly 300 laws carved onto a massive stone steel, is one of the most iconic artifacts in the ancient world.

And while Hammurabi's code wasn't the first, it was the most comprehensive. And it served several purposes. It portrayed Hammurabi as a just ruler chosen by the gods, which provided legitimacy to his rule.

It standardized legal expectations across his empire, which solidified his authority in Babylon. And the stone steel was displayed publicly so citizens could see the laws and thereby not question as to the expectations of society.

In establishing this code, writing it down and displaying it publicly, Hammurabi standardized legal expectations and presented himself as ultimately seen by his people, a ruler that was chosen by the gods. So let's take a look at some of the laws that these stone tablets covered.

If this is the first time that you're hearing about Hammurabi, then you might be surprised to know that the code written almost 4,000 years ago, had laws on theft, contracts, marriage and divorce, wages, medical malpractice, assault, property disputes, slavery, and agriculture.

And while anybody who's taken a criminal justice course knows that Hammurabi's law was notoriously harsh, but he is also known for writing some of the first nuanced and fair laws for a society. For example, if a builder constructed a house that collapsed and killed the owner, the builder could be executed.

Harsh, I know, but if the collapse only damaged property, well, then the builder only had to repair it at his own expense. This is an early sign of liability law. Also, Hammurabi and the Babylon society established law and social class.

That's the one thing we do have to remember with this particular society, is that these laws were written at a time when social class were Definitely taken into consideration when these laws were enacted. So there were three classes of people. There were the free citizens, dependents, and enslaved people. Punishments varied by class.

So back 4,000 years ago, especially in Babylon, this tells us that law was deeply tied to social hierarchy. Next up, we're going to move to something that people probably don't realize when they're thinking about ancient civilizations.

Mesopotamia had policing. Well, not policing in the modern sense, but institutions and officials responsible for maintaining order.

So if we take a few moments to look at what the first steps of ancient policing was, let's start with, well, what they were and what they did. They were called the Sabra and the Nubanda.

These were high ranking officials whose job it was to supervise labor, enforce royal decrees, and oversee public works. Next were the temple officials back in ancient Mesopotamia. And Babylon, temples weren't just religious centers.

They were administrative hubs with their own enforcement personnel. They were responsible for things like performing or assisting in religious rituals, like purification rituals.

They were responsible for distributing rations to the population, collecting taxes, but they were also responsible for overseeing contracts, organizing public works, and participating in legal matters. One big thing about ancient civilizations is they were very heavy into community enforcement.

And since there was no formal enforcement, ancient civilizations relied on families and neighborhoods to report crime, help identify suspects, and participate in investigations. This was some of the earliest examples of collective responsibilities.

Now, if we're looking at some of the ways that the civilization looked at guilt or innocence, this was determined by something called the river ordeal. The accused would be thrown in a river, and if they survived, well, then the gods had judged that they were innocent.

If they drowned, the gods had spoken in another way. I know that sounds bizarre today, but it reflects that at that time, the worldview was divine judgment was part of the legal procedure.

As we mentioned, police reports were taken on clay tablets, just like the law code was.

And archaeologists have found clay tablets from cities like Mari and Nippur that have included actual reports of theft, patrol logs, witness statements, and investigative notes. These are some of the earliest bureaucratic records of law enforcement anywhere in the world.

In ancient times, it was not uncommon to have a legal procedure that extended off of the form of policing we just discussed. Mesopotamian courts were surprisingly sophisticated. The judges were the people that served in that role in ancient Mesopotamia.

They were often the elders, people who had the most respect and were typically nobility in society, temple priests who also served as judges, depending on their rank, and royal officials who typically served the king or were a ruler in their court or administration. These people were expected to interpret Laws hear testimony and issue rulings, much as our modern day judges do today.

Some of the common crimes that were policed during this time, theft, which was a major concern, especially because the civilization relied a lot on agriculture. So theft of agricultural goods was extremely concerning. Assault. Assault laws were very detailed. Penalties depended on, well, the injury.

Would the injury hinder the victim from supporting his family? What if the victim was female or a child? Remember the social status of the victim as we will continually come back to in future episodes.

Social status was an important and decisive matter and very influential in criminal cases, including assault. Here's a thought. Do you think that still holds true today? And the circumstances? How did the assault come about?

Another crime and concern was family law. Marriage was a legal contract, and during this civilization, divorce was allowed, but very regulated.

Women had rights, but those rights varied by class.

One thing we have to remember in these ancient civilizations is that slavery existed, but enslaved people had some legal protections, including the right to buy their freedom. We may look at this in another episode in the context of what crimes were unique to enslaved persons in this time?

Punishment, if it was more or less severe. And there were also economic crimes, much like we have today. Interest rates, loans and debt were tightly regulated.

Debt slavery was a constant issue and some kings issued clean slate decrees to free debtors. Imagine that Mesopotamia was one of the first recorded civilizations. Because of this, their law wasn't just a rules.

It reflected a worldview for this time. And this worldview included law as divine order. This time was ruled by kings and high rulers.

Kings like Ur, Nammu and Hammurabi claimed the gods appointed them to maintain justice. Law as social control. The legal system reinforced hierarchy. As mentioned previously, social class was an integral part of society.

The legal system was the way they used that enabled them to keep the system in place. We have now looked at how ancient civilization has influenced societies that came after them all the way to modern day.

So why am I talking about what happened 4,000 years ago? Does it even matter? I ask.

In many ways that we tend to forget, because Mesopotamia represents the first time humans tried to formalize justice, to write it down, preserve it, and apply it systematically. It's the birthplace of written law, legal procedure, policing, contracts, courts and bureaucracy.

As we bring this episode to a close, let's think to ourselves. While their world was very different from ours, the questions they asked are still questions we ask to this day.

How do we balance fairness with order? How do we protect the vulnerable? How do we limit the powerful?

How do we create a society where justice prevails if you are curious about Hammurabi's code and what it looks like, there are several ways to view it. Pictures are on social media platforms like Google and YouTube. However, to see it in person, you can go to the Louvre Museum in Paris.

There is an exhibit of the actual code for viewing. I plan to see that one day myself.

That wraps up today's episode of Silver & Blue: Tracing the History of Policing and Corrections. This podcast is produced by LCC Connect. You can listen to other podcasts in the LCC Connect family by going to LCCConnect.com. If you want to listen to this podcast on Demand, go to LCCConnect.com and visit the Silver & Blue webpage. Until next time, keep questioning, keep learning, and keep the dialogue alive.