With his code, he arranged issues of land ownership and cultivation, heritage, dowry, loans, mortgage contracts, and regulating relations between citizens and the state. A totally pioneering thing that no other lawmaker dared to repeat was that he defined that the town or governor of a city was obliged to compensate the victim of theft or a disaster. It makes clear that the powerful should not oppress the weak and that the laws must protect the widows and the orphans and always be fair towards the weak. Hammurabi, during his reign, ordered four times to write off debts to the state.
A dominant element in his criminal code was the law of remedies, that is, if someone was tearing someone's teeth or eyes, he had to suffer exactly the same punishment. If someone killed one's daughter, they did not kill himself but his daughter. Those who were accused of magic or adultery had to fall to the Euphrates, and if they were saved they were innocent. Penalties had great fluctuations between aristocrat, a citizen or a slave.
In addition to his legislative work, Hammurabi made a huge canal to water large areas and protect the south from floods, built fortresses and temples to have the favor of the priesthood and a magnificent bridge on the Euphrates that allowed Babylon to grow on both sides of the river, and to become the richest and brightest city the world had ever seen, and to remain the center of arts and science for the next thousand years. Babylon, fortified with walls of 85 km. and 50 meters high was the first big city of history. The need for the construction of major building works of Babylonians led to the deepening and multiplication of practical scientific knowledge.
For the need to transmit writing and mathematical knowledge, there were schools. At the time of Hammurabi, the first literary work was created, the epic poem "Gilgames", which addressed the importance of life and death, and put forward the power of wisdom and civilization. From the religious beliefs of Babylonians, it was important that the fate of humans was determined by the position of stars in the sky at the time of their birth, as well as the idea of the punishment of sinners by the gods.
The peak of the ancient Babylonian state, 150 years after the death of Hammurabi, followed a period of constant riots and invasions of Hittites, Cassites and other races. In the middle of the 12th century BC the weakened by internal disputes, Babylonia, was completely subjugated to the cruel and wise Assyrians who lived in the northern mountainous areas of Mesopotamia. The glorious Babylonians, those who were not slaughtered, became slaves of the Assyrians.
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