Code of Hammurabi

These paragraphs of the Code of Hammurabi show us a lot about what the ancient Mesopotamians valued. They believed that justice was guided by an idea called "lex talionis", or "the way of the claw." This meant that anyone who committed a crime would be punished as closely to their crime as possible. However, I think that how they followed this rule shows that they did not value the human life as much as we do now. Many punishments for crimes would be the punishment for death- even for things like withholding compensation for a mercenary. It seems also that they valued property as much as their lives, as basically any type of robbery would be punished by death I think that they did not have very just laws for this reason; because punishing by death many crimes that do not endanger the lives of others does not follow the principles of lex talionis. We can also learn from  these passages that the people trusted the gods a lot. Many deciding factors in justice would be things that were out of human control (like seeing if the accuser would float or not in a river), so they could have the gods decide for them. So, I think that we can see that they view the gods as completely just, and left much deciding to them.