Property served to stratify the social structure of the Babylonians. Slaves had no property or very little, freemen had some property, and the elite had much property. The code also maintained order by feeding into the social norm and hierarchy of the Babylonian culture. Laws were made that favored those elites and freemen over the slave. The famous “an eye for an eye” line is not the same for all levels of the social structure. The punishment for putting out a man’s eye dramatically lessens when that man was a former slave, and lessons even more when the man is a slave. (H198, H199) Property also refers to slaves, and the book refers to women as property as well. (WW13) The code also gives harsh punishments to …show more content…
(H130) (H137) (H138) (H142) Slaves and women were very much alike in the aspect that they were considered property, but they still had protection under the law from being completely abused.
Property is the basis of many laws in Hammurabi's code. The code protects property, and is influenced by the social structure property helped to create. By protecting property, perpetuating the existing social structure, and the patriarchal society that was present during the Babylonian Empire, the code attempted to provide order to the