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The Code of Hammurabi, named after the king of Babylon, stands as one of the earliest and most comprehensive written legal codes in history. Comprised of 282 rules, this ancient code reflects a blend of cruelty and justice, with echoes of principles found in modern laws. These regulations were inscribed on a massive black stone pillar that lay forgotten for millennia. King Hammurabi, the sixth and renowned ruler of the First Dynasty of Babylon, governed from approximately 1792 to 1750 BC. During his reign, Hammurabi expanded his kingdom, located in present-day Iraq, throughout the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys. However,...

In the middle of the 19th century, an archaeologist discovered fragments of multiple clay tablets in what is modern-day Iraq. Translated, the cuneiform writing on these and other tablets subsequently found revealed the “Enuma Elish,” the Babylonian account of the creation of the world. The Enuma Elish starts with formless chaos and water. The waters divide into a god and a goddess, who have children who are also gods. War breaks out between mother and father, and between mother and children. Ultimately, the offspring of the first two gods create human beings to be their servants. Other ancient cultures have...

Topics mentioned with David... Greek Dark Age, The Exodus, Trojan War, Hyksos Invasion, The Sojourn, Solomons Temple, Pyramid Construction, Diorite Bowls, Longevity, Babylon Chronology, Hammurabi, Bronze Age Collapse, Etrutria, Aeneas, Greek Expansion, Family Planning in the Ancient World, Festival Of Drunkenness, Golden Calf, Spiked Wine, Psychedelics, Phoenicians in South America, 1177BC, Historicity of The Old Testament, King Saul, King David, etc ...

Babylon has seen it all. From its peak as the Neo-Babylonian capital under King Nebuchadnezzar through its heavy-handed 1987 reconstruction by Saddam Hussein to its post-invasion demise when American and Polish troops ran roughshod over its ruins and ISIS threatened its very existence, the ancient city has witnessed empires come and go. The 2500-acre site, 50 miles south of Baghdad, comprises both the ruins of the ancient city as well as surrounding villages and agricultural areas. Between 626 and 539 BCE, the city was the capital of the Neo-Babylonian empire and the largest metropolis in the world. It was here...

Evidence accumulates of a hoax in Haditha. The weblog Sweetness & Light has done an estimable service gathering together the articles which cast substantial doubt on the charge of a massacre of civilians at Haditha . Because the blog is too busy gathering and fisking the news, I offered and the publisher accepted my offer to put what he has uncovered in a narrative form. Having done so, I can tell you that the story has a whiff of yet another mediagenic scandal like the TANG memos or the Plame “outing.” While the Marines quite correctly will not comment on...

I'll be the first to criticize public education for not being challenging enough and simply passing kids on to the next grade without teaching them anything...but is this too much for first graders? Here's a partial list of what 6 year olds will allegedly be able to do after completing this lesson plan: 2. Explain the importance of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and the use of canals to support farming and the development of the city of Babylon 4. Identify cuneiform as the system of writing used in Mesopotamia 6. Explain the significance of the Code of Hammurabi 9....

I went over to TxRadioGuy's hometown forum, to see an argument ongoing there, about how enemy combatants should be treated. And as usual, there's a primitive mucking up a passage ostensibly from the Bible, but which actually goes back much further than that (Christ was saying it as then-ancient history). This "eye for an eye" bit. I have no idea why that's considered a bad thing. Of course, it's considered a bad thing because it's always misinterpreted.

Cleopatra's Cosmetics And Hammurabi's Heineken: Name Brands Far Predating Modern CapitalismEgyptian perfume bottle. Could product branding have begun in ancient Egypt? (Credit: iStockphoto) ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2008) — From at least Bass Ale's red triangle--advertised as "the first registered trademark"--commodity brands have exerted a powerful hold over modern Western society. Marketers and critics alike have assumed that branding began in the West with the Industrial Revolution. But a pioneering new study in the February 2008 issue of Current Anthropology finds that attachment to brands far predates modern capitalism, and indeed modern Western society. In "Prehistories of Commodity Branding," author David...

WASHINGTON (March 20) -- A bloody videotape shot by a local Iraqi journalism student has prompted the Pentagon to launch a criminal investigation into an incident that left at least 15 Iraqi civilians dead in the city of Haditha. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The details of what happened four months ago in Haditha are just now coming to light with the release of the videotape by an Iraqi organization called Hammurabi Human Rights. The tape shows the bloodied and bullet-marked homes that had been allegedly stormed by the Marines, and includes comments by local residents. "This is my father," a boy says on...

U.S. Sets Stage for March to Baghdad By PAULINE JELINEK .c The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - American units began probing attacks in a rim around the southern outskirts of Baghdad in another effort to pave the way for the battle for the capital, defense officials said Monday. A week of heavy bombing has left some of Iraq's Republican Guard units surrounding Baghdad at less than half strength, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday. And U.S. Army troops spearheading the drive to Baghdad on Monday fought their way into Hindiya, about 50 miles from...

The Avalon Project at Yale Law School The Code of Hammurabi Translated by L. W. King When Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunaki, and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land, assigned to Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and made him great among the Igigi, they called Babylon by his illustrious name, made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting kingdom in it, whose foundations are laid so solidly as those of heaven and earth; then Anu and Bel called by name me,...