Most persons, if asked what they considered to be the outstanding characteristic of the law of wrongs in ancient Mesopotamia, would probably reply: “The cruel, bloody sanctions, and in particular the ‘talionic’ and ‘sympathetic’ punishments.” This characteristic is too familiar to need examples. Of the 282 clauses of the Code of Hammurabi (C.H.), some 27 impose capital sentences for a wide variety of wrongs, including adultery and theft. Of the ‘talionic’ sanctions (those applying the principle of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”) one of the best examples is C.H.229, 230: “If a builder has built a house for a man and his work is not strong, and the house he has built collapses and kills the owner, that builder shall be put to death. If the son of the owner is killed, they shall kill the builder's son.” Clauses 196, 197 provide: “If a free man has injured the eye of a patrician, his own eye shall be injured. If he has broken the bone of a patrician, his bone shall be broken.” Of the ‘sympathetic’ sanctions, examples are more familiar in the Middle Assyrian Laws (M.A.L.), e.g. cutting off a man's lower lip for kissing a married woman (§ 9).

But in recent years earlier laws than these have become available from the same field, and they paint quite a different picture.

First, we may mention the laws now attributed to Lipit-Ishtar, King of Isin, though found sixty years ago—a Sumerian Code of an Akkadian King, dating from perhaps 164–175 years before the C.H. They contain over 100 laws of which very few are legible, and these are hardly relevant to the present purpose, save that one (§ 12) at least raises a doubt whether theft was capital in Isin as it was later in the C.H.