Controversial Sayings

If a man takes a woman to wife, but has no intercourse with her, this woman is no wife to him.

Until the child married, the father had legal rights to use children for labor for himself or his debtors. Fathers could even choose to sell their children off.

Were a child to strike a father, the child's hands were cut off.

Incest was punishable by burning, adulterous murder by impaling.

Cutting off hands was another popular punishment if, for example, a son struck his father, or a field hand stole the crops they were tending.

If a woman neglected and left her husband, she might be cast into the water; if a husband neglected his wife, his only punishment was that she could leave him.

Men were also allowed to take another wife if their first wife bore them no children (though the law did stipulate that he must continue to care for her).

I was granted my rule by the gods 'to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak'.

If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction firm, and the house which he has built collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death.

If it causes the death of the son of the owner of the house, they shall put to death the son of that builder.

If a physician operates on a man for a severe wound with a bronze lancet and causes the man's death, or opens an abscess in the eye for a man with a bronze lancet and destroys the man's eye, they shall cut off his hands.

If a barber, without the knowledge of the owner of a slave, cuts off the slave's 'mark,' he shall cut off the barber's fingers.

If a man strikes a free-born woman and causes her to abort her fetus, he shall pay ten shekels for her fetus.

If a man opens his ditch for irrigation, and the water overflows and floods his neighbor's field, he shall pay grain to his neighbor for his loss.

If a man accuses another man and brings a charge of murder against him, but cannot prove it, his accuser shall be put to death.

If a man has harbored a runaway slave, male or female, in his house and has not brought him forth at the summons of the public crier, the owner of the house shall be put to death.

If a man steals an ox, a sheep, an ass, a pig, or a boat, from a god or the palace, he shall pay thirtyfold. If he steals from a private citizen, he shall pay tenfold. If the thief has nothing with which to pay, he shall be put to death.

Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before a…

We do not get into a state with our next-door neighbour if he enjoys himself in his own way, nor do we shoot him the kind of black looks which, though they do no real harm, still vex an honest man. We are free and open in our political life; in our p…

We are lovers of the beautiful, yet with economy, and we cultivate the intellect without effeminacy. Wealth we employ rather for use than for show, and we set more store by a confession of poverty than by a vaunt of riches.