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You know some of the laws of the land:

     Do not break any windows.  
     Drive slower than 65 m.p.h.  
     Don't steal that cookie.  

But do you know the laws of the past?  What if you were to trip and fall into a time machine and find yourself 4,000 years in the past?  Would you know how to act?  We had better learn what sorts of laws early humans came up with just in case.  That way, if you do ever find yourself in the past, you can know which laws are still the same . . . and if you can take that cookie or not.  

What does the code say if I take "just one" and leave the other?
Anna Langova, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons


So where do we search for laws that old?  Do not cheat.  No Internet.  Some things on there were written by people who don't know what they are talking about.  In order to know that something is true, we will need real pieces of history.  Someone on the internet could tell you the wrong thing and get you thrown in jail in the past.  Let's see . . . anything left over from the 1700's B.C.E. will not be written on paper.  We need to look for stone.  Babylon was a very old empire that ran along the Euphrates river and into Mesopotamia, and it's where some of the earliest laws that we know of were written.  Let's go check out some of the stones around there.  Are the laws here?  No?!  Looks like the people who found the stone of laws in 1901 moved them to Paris.  Off we go.  

Kind of hard to read from back here. If I could only get a little closer.
Hammurabi, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons


There they are!  Some of the earliest laws.  Look, there's a picture of a man set in the top of the stone.  He's reaching up and taking the laws from a picture of a god.  That must be the man who came up with these laws.  Hammurabi was king of Babylon from 1792 to 1750 B.C.E. and came up with some of the earliest laws that we have found.  There were two hundred eighty-two laws in Hammurabi's code.  No, he was not a mean man who loved rules.  The laws were made to help many separate cities get along with each other so they could make one big empire.  The U.S. works this way.  We all follow about the same laws.  (That's why you will not see lots of people running around, stealing cookies.)  The laws Hammurabi came up with are below his picture and will give us an idea of what life was like back in Babylon.  So let's read them!  Hmm.  Easier said than done.

Not really that much easier to read up close.
Louvre Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons


What does that even say?  The letters are pretty, and kind of look like someone dropped golf tees in little piles, but I cannot tell what it says!  Hammurabi's laws are written in cuneiform, a very old way of writing that uses lines carved into clay tablets and stones.  Good thing we have someone who reads golf tees . . . I mean cuneiform.  What does that say in English?  "Eye for an Eye . . .  Tooth for a tooth?"  That sounds scary.

My parents are old, maybe they can give me some help reading this.
Robert Francis Harper, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons


Again, you know what laws of today are.  They are things you follow so you will not go to jail.  These new laws were good for Babylon because it brought together many cities . . .  but that was not enough for Hammurabi.  Remember the picture of his receiving these laws from a god?  He believed that people should try to be the best people they could be.  A code is a set of rules or laws followed by a people who are trying to become better.  This was meant to be more than just laws that tell you what not to do.  Most of these laws were trying to keep the weak safe.  While Hammurabi took over other cities and then had them follow his laws, it seemed he really was looking out for the people who needed the most help.

If you happen to be in 1700's B.C.E. Babylon, you now know where to look for the rules.  The people followed 282 laws written by their king, Hammurabi.  They were put into stone in cuneiform so they are not easy for us to read now, but there are people in the world who are way into that kind of stuff.  As soon as we understand them, we can decide if Hammurabi's code is still the kind of thing we would like to follow today to become better people.  Some of them look out for the weak.  And now for the most important question: Could you steal cookies in Babylon?  That depends.  Do you want your cookies stolen right back?


References:

History.com.  "8 Things You May Not Know About Hammurabi's Code"  History.com, 2012.
<http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-hammurabis-code>  

History for Kids.  "Hammurabi of Babylon"  History for Kids, 2013.  

US History.  "Hammurabi's Code: An Eye for an Eye"  ushistory.org, 2010. 
<http://www.ushistory.org/civ/4c.asp>