Code of Hammurabi

The laws in this section begin a transition toward miscellaneous categories of laws dealing with issues not covered elsewhere. Most of the laws from 195 to 214 are relatively short, most only amounting to a single line, in contrast to the previous sections, where translations of the individual laws are often full paragraphs in length. 

The rules considered here deal with cases of assault, and multiple rules are required because the penalty for assault varies both by the severity of the wounds and by the classes of person involved in the struggle. For someone of a lower class assaulting a higher-class person, strict corporal punishment is prescribed, as Law 202 makes clear: “If any one strike the body of a man higher in rank than he, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-whip in public” (46). By contrast, striking a person of equal rank simply merits a fine, though the cost of that fine depends on the social class of the people involved. 

Special protections are afforded to pregnant women who are the victims of an assault, particularly if it causes a miscarriage or if the woman herself dies. This section of laws also includes the famous principle of the lex talionis, encoded in Law 196: “If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out” (46)—or in other words, an “eye for an eye.