From: Grant Callaghan (grantc4@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun 10 Nov 2002 - 18:03:31 GMT
>
>It is so much easier to make enemies than friends, in life as in
>international relations. The real measure of a government's proficiency is
>that ability to make friends.
>
>Cheers,
>Lawry
>
While pursuing my interest in the sources of memes I ran across this article
about Hamurabi's code. If you remember I broke the line of conflicting
memes into the Persian line and the Greco-Roman line. Tell me if this
sounds familiar in the memes of the Muslim thought of today.
1700 BC: Hammurabi's Code
This Babylonian king came to power in 1750 BC. Under his rule, a code of
laws was developed and carved on a huge rock column. The expression "an eye
for an eye" has come to symbolize the principle behind Hammurabi's code. It
contains 282 clauses regulating a vast array of obligations, professions and
rights including commerce, slavery, marriage, theft and debts. The
punishments are, by modern standards, barbaric. The punishment for theft was
the cutting off of a finger or a hand. A man's lower lip was cut off if he
kissed a married woman. Defamation was punished by cutting out the tongue.
If a house collapses because the builder did not make it strong enough,
killing the owner, the builder was put to death. If the owner's son died,
then the builder's son was executed.
Grant
P.S. I was wrong to peg the memes at a mere 2,000 years old. It goes back
a lot farther than that. The Muslim memes seem to go back 4,000 years or
more.
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