The Code of Hammurabi · 8 of 12

Laws 185–209

185.If a man has taken a young child ‘from his waters’ to sonship, and has reared him up, no one has any claim against that nursling.

186.If a man has taken a young child to sonship, and when he took him his father and mother rebelled, that nursling shall return to his father’s house.

187.The son of a NER-SE-GA, a palace warder, or the son of a vowed woman no one has any claim upon.

188.If an artisan has taken a son to bring up, and has caused him to learn his handicraft, no one has any claim.

189.If he has not caused him to learn his handicraft, that nursling shall return to his father’s house.

190.If a man the child whom he took to his sonship and has brought him up, has not numbered him with his sons, that nursling shall return to his father’s house.

191.If a man, after a young child whom he has taken to his sonship and brought him up, has made a house for himself and acquired children, and has set his face to cut off the nursling, that child shall not go his way, the father that brought him up shall give to him from his goods one-third of his sonship, and he shall go off; from field, garden, and house he shall not give him.

192.If a son of a palace warder, or of a vowed woman, to the father that brought him up, and the mother that brought him up, has said ‘thou art not my father, thou art not my mother,’ one shall cut out his tongue.

193.If a son of a palace warder, or of a vowed woman, has known his father’s house, and has hated the father that brought him up or the mother that brought him up, and has gone off to the house of his father, one shall tear out his eye.

194.If a man has given his son to a wet nurse, that son has died in the hand of the wet nurse, the wet nurse without consent of his father and his mother has procured another child, one shall put her to account, and because, without consent of his father and his mother, she has procured another child, one shall cut off her breasts.

195.If a man has struck his father, his hands one shall cut off.

196.If a man has caused the loss of a gentleman’s eye, his eye one shall cause to be lost.

197.If he has shattered a gentleman’s limb, one shall shatter his limb.

198.If he has caused a poor man to lose his eye or shattered a poor man’s limb, he shall pay one mina of silver.

199.If he has caused the loss of the eye of a gentleman’s servant or has shattered the limb of a gentleman’s servant, he shall pay half his price.

200.If a man has made the tooth of a man that is his equal to fall out, one shall make his tooth fall out.

201.If he has made the tooth of a poor man to fall out, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver.

202.If a man has struck the strength of a man who is great above him, he shall be struck in the assembly with sixty strokes of a cowhide whip.

203.If a man of gentle birth has struck the strength of a man of gentle birth who is like himself, he shall pay one mina of silver.

204.If a poor man has struck the strength of a poor man, he shall pay ten shekels of silver.

205.If a gentleman’s servant has struck the strength of a freeman, one shall cut off his ear.

206.If a man has struck a man in a quarrel, and has caused him a wound, that man shall swear ‘I do not strike him knowing’ and shall answer for the doctor.

207.If he has died of his blows, he shall swear, and if he be of gentle birth he shall pay half a mina of silver.

208.If he be the son of a poor man, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver.

209.If a man has struck a gentleman’s daughter and caused her to drop what is in her womb, he shall pay ten shekels of silver for what was in her womb.