The Code of Hammurabi is fascinating on so many levels. Firstly, it is the longest and most complete set of legal rules known to man. This gives us an insight into the life and times of the ancient Babylonians, but also into the mind of their creator. Secondly, its similarity to some of the ancient laws of Moses leads some scholars to ponder its influence on those laws. For example, the ‘eye for an eye’ principle. And lastly, the rules lead to more questions than they answer.
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We spent a whole week learning about the Code of Hammurabi and the king who constructed them. I am so pleased I have kept a record over the years of all our fun together. Reading back on this (now updated) post, I had a huge smile on my face. Gosh, I can’t begin to express how blessed I feel to have had all these years with my children.
Do check out my MEGA Mesopotamia Unit Study post to find out just where the Natufian people fit into the history of Mesopotamia. This huge post has lots of printable, videos, science experiments and, as always, stacks of suggestions for easy hands on activities you can do with your children! I am always adding new stuff to this post so do go and check it out.
The Goals For The Week
Whilst we covered Assyria and Babylonia in some depth, it was Hammurabi who caught our imagination. The goal was to spend an entire week learning about Hammurabi and the Code of Hammurabi.
The first duty of government is to protect the powerless from the powerful.―To bring about the rule of righteousness in the land so that the strong shall not harm the weak.”
Code of Hammurabi 1772 B.C.
I planned what I thought would be quite a heavy weeks worth of work. The children, as always, surprised me with their enthusiasm as they threw themselves into all the activities. I have included my planning notes below – just click on them if you want to see a close up 😊
Supplies for the Week
Most of the supplies for this week were printed note pages, black bags for making Mesopotamia dress up and shoe boxes to create their own stele, just like the one the code of Hammurabi was written on (well, maybe not that similar!). We did use the following two books:
Hammurabi Biography
Who was Hamurabi?
Hammurabi was one of the most famous kings of ancient Mesopotamia. He ruled Babylon during the Old Babylonian period, traditionally dated to about 1792–1750 BC using the Middle Chronology. When Hammurabi became king, Babylon was important but was not yet the centre of a great empire. During his long reign, he proved a skilled ruler, diplomat, and military leader. Through a mix of alliances and warfare, he gradually brought much of southern and central Mesopotamia under Babylonian control, defeating rivals such as Larsa and eventually making Babylon the region’s dominant kingdom.
What is Hammurabi Famous for?
Hammurabi is best remembered today for the Code of Hammurabi, a collection of nearly 300 laws famously preserved on a large stone stele. The laws covered many aspects of everyday life, including farming, trade, wages, marriage, inheritance, property, debt, and crime. Hammurabi presented himself as a king chosen by the gods to establish justice and protect his people. However, the punishments described in the laws varied widely by a person’s social status. Hammurabi also managed the practical running of his kingdom: surviving letters and records show a ruler concerned with irrigation, agriculture, taxation, temples, and government administration. After his death around 1750 BC, his empire did not remain as powerful for long. Still, Babylon remained an enormously important Mesopotamian city, and Hammurabi’s law collection became one of the best-known surviving documents from the ancient world.
Hammurabi Resources
The children read the first book, The Wise King Hammurabi, as well as the lesson from ‘The Mystery of History’ text about Hammurabi and then created some biographical note pages about him:
We also read the play relating to Hammurabi each day from 25 Exciting Plays for Ancient History Classes. It was SO useful in helping the children fully understand the difference between primary and secondary evidence and therefore the importance of each. It brought forth many great discussions. So worth it! It also helped the children learn a bit more about Hammurabi the man and also the Code of Hammurabi as an historical document.
I also reinforced the idea of primary and secondary evidence using the following sheets (I’m sorry, I’m not sure where I got these from):
The Code of Hammurabi
The Code of Hammurabi is one of the best-known collections of laws to survive from ancient Mesopotamia. King Hammurabi of Babylon created it during his reign, around the 18th century BC, and it contains nearly 300 individual laws. The laws were inscribed in cuneiform on a large stone monument known as a stele. At the top is an image showing Hammurabi standing before Shamash, the Mesopotamian god associated with justice. This helped convey that Hammurabi’s authority to establish justice was supported by the gods. The text also contains a long introduction and conclusion in which Hammurabi presents himself as a ruler whose responsibility was to establish order and protect his kingdom.
The Code of Hammurabi as Primary Evidence
The laws give us a fascinating glimpse into everyday life in ancient Babylon. They cover subjects including marriage, divorce, inheritance, farming, trade, debt, wages, slavery, property, theft and injury. Some laws follow the principle often summarised as ‘an eye for an eye.’ However, punishments were not the same for everyone: a person’s social status could affect both the penalty and the compensation involved. Historians also caution against imagining the Code as a modern law book used in exactly the way our legal codes are today. It may also have served as a public statement of Hammurabi’s ideals of justice and good kingship. Whatever its precise use, the Code is particularly valuable because it lets us examine what Babylonian society valued and the kinds of problems people nearly 4,000 years ago faced in daily life.
The Code of Hammurabi Activities
We photocopied the whole stele worth of laws, including the prologue and the epilogue. The children read through them as time allowed, keeping an eye out for the one they wanted to concentrate their piece of writing on. We got them from this site.
Applying the Code of Hammurabi
Our next activity was obtained from this site. It was a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant (have I said that enough?) activity. The children so enjoyed it and I really loved listening to them (I was out of the room, and just let them get on with it, but overheard it from the room next door). Just brilliant! (There, I said it again!!):
When we came to study this a few years later with the younger girls, they completed a different activity which was just as educational. We used a primary source document about Hammurabi’s laws, reading a selection of them, and then using them to judge specific situations. I had the girls make up some of their own rules and jot them down on this sheet:
Making a Code of Hammurabi (or Perhaps of Charlotte or Thomas or Lillie…)
Then they had enormous fun making up their own rules and stele by painting a couple of shoe boxes with black paint and writing their own rules with the punishments with Tipex. I really enjoyed their take on this and had to giggle at rules such as having particular limbs cut off for slapping, not controlling their tongue and for getting out of bed before 7am! I laughed at Thomas’ which consisted of people having their food taken away (a fate worse than death for my always hungry son!)- click on the pictures below to see the larger versions:
Using Cuneiform on Clay to Write a Law
Back in Hammurabi’s time, any writing was done on slabs of clay. I thought it would be fun for the younger girls to write one of their own rules onto a slab of clay in cuneiform.
We rolled out the clay with a rolling pin, I supplied them with the cuneiform alphabet and the girls used various utensils to mark out their chosen rule:
Writing an Editorial to a Newspaper
As one of their final activities I had them write a editorial letter to the Babylonian Times. I bought a collection of local papers so they could specifically see how letters to the editor are written. After choosing a law they felt strongly about – either agreeing or disagreeing- they wrote a letter to the editor of the aforementioned ‘paper’ (or would that be tablet?). Here are their letters (Again, click on them to enlarge):
I love teaching my children!
Making Babylonian Dress Up
Lastly, they were to design their own Babylonian dress up out of black bags and black tape. Yup, that’s all!! Oh. My. Goodness.😍
I think they did a great job
Much was achieved, loads was learnt and discussed and most importantly a lot of fun was had!
Hammurabi: Make dolls clothes from black bags
This was a fun, not very educational activity I stole from the above older children’s study. But we only had one black bag. So the littles had to make do with dressing their dolls in black bags. Regardless, it had absolutely no educational benefit, but was bags of fun (ha!! Bags… Geddit?!):
Related: The Benefits of Using Dressing Up in Your History Unit Studies
Free Hammurabi Notepages
I’ve created some free printable notepages to go along with this lesson. They include some pages with a quote, three of the laws, as well as some pages to do written narration on and a couple of pages to add some photos or drawings to. I hope they are useful!
Further Activities to go Along with the Code of Hammurabi homeschool Lesson
1. Make Your Own Code of Laws
Begin by asking the children to imagine that they are responsible for a new Mesopotamian city. What laws would they introduce?
Younger children could create five simple laws, perhaps covering stealing, damaging someone’s property, helping others or looking after animals. They could illustrate each law.
Older children could create a more detailed legal code covering areas such as property, trade, family life, farming, wages and crime. Ask them to include both the law and the consequence for breaking it.
Finish by comparing their ideas with Hammurabi’s laws. What does a society’s law code tell us about what that society values?
2. Build the Stele of Hammurabi
Create a model of the famous stele using clay, papier-mâché or cardboard.
Children could recreate the rounded shape, add an image of Hammurabi and Shamash at the top and cover the lower section with imitation cuneiform.
Younger children: concentrate on constructing and decorating the stele.
Older children: investigate why the laws were placed on a monument and consider what message the imagery at the top communicated about Hammurabi’s authority.
3. Become a Babylonian Judge
This could be great fun as a family role-play.
Give the children fictional disputes such as:
A farmer’s goat has eaten his neighbour’s barley.
A builder has constructed a wall that has collapsed.
A merchant claims that someone has stolen a sack of grain.
Two people both claim that the same piece of land belongs to them.
One child becomes the judge while everyone else plays witnesses, accusers and defendants.
First decide what you think would be fair. Then investigate relevant laws from Hammurabi’s collection and compare them.
For older children, this becomes an excellent exercise in asking whether our modern understanding of justice differs from Babylonian ideas.
4. Create a Cuneiform Law Tablet
Give each child a piece of clay and a simple wedge-shaped stylus.
Choose one of Hammurabi’s laws or create a child-friendly Babylonian-style law and write a shortened version onto the clay using cuneiform-inspired marks.
Younger children can experiment with making wedge marks.
Older children can investigate how Akkadian was written in cuneiform and attempt a more historically informed inscription.
This would work particularly well alongside your existing cuneiform and scribal activities.
5. Hammurabi’s Courtroom
Turn the room into a Babylonian courtroom.
Assign roles such as:
- judge
- accused person
- accuser
- witness
- merchant
- farmer
- scribe
- builder
- family member
- Hammurabi
Give everyone a character card and stage a court case.
Older children could receive different pieces of evidence and have to construct an argument, while younger children could decide what they think happened.
6. Fair or Unfair?
Choose several child-appropriate examples from Hammurabi’s laws.
Create two signs:
FAIR
and
UNFAIR
Read each law aloud and ask the children to stand beside the sign that represents their opinion.
The important part comes afterwards:
Why?
Older children can go further by considering the danger of judging an ancient society entirely by modern standards. Ask:
Why might this law have made sense within Babylonian society?
What does it reveal about that society?
Can we understand a law historically without agreeing with it?
7. Archaeologist’s Mystery: Find the Stele
Turn the discovery of a fictional law stele into an archaeological investigation.
Hide fragments of a cardboard or clay ‘stele’ around the room or garden.
Each fragment contains part of an inscription.
Children must locate the pieces, record where they were discovered, reconstruct the monument and work out what it might have been.
For older children, deliberately leave several pieces missing.
Ask:
What can you confidently conclude?
What can you infer?
What can’t you know from the surviving evidence?
This would fit beautifully with the archaeological-evidence approach you’ve been using in your Mesopotamia activities.
8. Design a Babylonian Law Stele
Instead of copying Hammurabi’s monument, children design their own.
Ask:
Who appears at the top?
What symbols represent justice?
Where will the laws appear?
How will people know who created them?
What message should the monument communicate?
Older children could then compare their design choices with the actual imagery of Hammurabi and Shamash.
9. Hammurabi’s Law Detective
Give children a selection of laws without explaining what they reveal about Babylonian society.
Their task is to become historical detectives.
For every law, complete:
THE LAW SAYS…
THIS TELLS ME…
I THINK…
BUT I CANNOT KNOW…
For example, a law concerning irrigation channels provides evidence that irrigation and farming mattered. It doesn’t necessarily tell us how frequently that particular dispute occurred.
This is a particularly useful way of teaching the distinction between evidence and inference.
10. Write a Babylonian Newspaper
Create:
THE BABYLON TIMES
with the headline:
KING HAMMURABI ANNOUNCES NEW LAWS!
Younger children can draw the stele and dictate or write a few sentences.
Older children could include newspaper sections such as:
New Laws Announced
Interview with Hammurabi
What Do Babylon’s Merchants Think?
Farmer Reacts to New Irrigation Laws
Opinion: Are the New Laws Fair?
It provides a lovely mixture of history, literacy and creative writing.
11. The Babylonian Builder Challenge
Hammurabi’s laws include several dealing with builders and responsibility when buildings collapse.
Challenge children to become Babylonian builders.
Using blocks, cardboard, clay, craft sticks or LEGO, construct a house that must support a particular weight.
Then introduce the question:
If your building collapses, who should be responsible?
The builder?
The owner?
The person who supplied the materials?
Older children can investigate Hammurabi’s actual building laws before debating how responsibility for unsafe construction works today.
12. Hammurabi’s Irrigation Problem
Create a miniature landscape in a tray using soil, sand or clay.
Add:
a river → irrigation channel → two fields
Present the children with a problem:
One farmer fails to maintain the irrigation system, and water damages another farmer’s crops. Who is responsible?
Let them propose a solution before discovering that Hammurabi’s laws actually addressed problems involving irrigation and damaged fields.
This connects particularly well with a wider Mesopotamian study because children can see why laws about water management mattered.
13. Social Classes and Justice
For older children, investigate how punishments could vary according to the social status of the people involved.
Give three fictional Babylonian characters different social positions and present them with the same basic incident.
Ask children to predict whether Hammurabi’s laws would treat them equally.
Then investigate.
Create a chart showing:
Person | Offence | Consequence | Why was it different?
This can lead into a thoughtful discussion about whether equality and justice mean the same thing.
For younger children, explore the idea:
Should everyone who breaks the same rule receive the same consequence?
14. Hammurabi: King, Lawgiver and Propagandist?
This is an excellent challenge for ages 12–16.
Give older students extracts from the prologue and epilogue of Hammurabi’s law collection alongside an image of Hammurabi before Shamash.
Ask:
How does Hammurabi want people to see him?
Look for ideas such as:
powerful
just
chosen by the gods
protector of vulnerable people
bringer of order
Then introduce the concept of royal propaganda.
Their challenge is to decide what the stele can reliably tell historians about Hammurabi and what claims about himself shouldn’t automatically be accepted as objective fact.
15. The Great Hammurabi Debate
Finish the unit with a family debate.
Possible questions include:
“Were Hammurabi’s laws fair?”
“Should the same crime always receive the same punishment?”
“Is punishment more important than compensation?”
“Was Hammurabi’s stele mainly about law or royal power?”
“Can we judge ancient laws using modern ideas of justice?”
Younger children can choose a position and explain why.
Older children could be assigned historical roles: farmer, enslaved person, merchant, builder, judge, wealthy landowner, scribe or woman managing a household and consider how the laws might look from that person’s perspective.
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Further Reading
I have covered history twice, once with my older ones, and now with my younger two. You can find all my history posts from the links below:
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