Grade 6 Fall — Ancient Civilizations from Deep Time to 476 CE: Mesopotamia, Egypt and Nubia, Indus, China, Hebrews, Greece, and Rome — Whose Sources? Whose Voices? Whose Living Descendants?
History · CIV
G6
hist.g6.f.civ.hammurabi_code_governance
Analyze Hammurabi's Code (c. 1754 BCE, Babylon) as the world's earliest extensive law code (282 laws on a diorite stele, Louvre Museum) — including its principle of lex talionis ('eye for eye'), its variation by social class (awilum/mushkenum/wardum — free citizens / commoners / enslaved), and its function as Mesopotamian kingship's claim to divinely sanctioned legal authority
Read 12 selected laws translated by Martha T. Roth (1995); identify lex talionis and its class-stratified application; identify Hammurabi's preamble claim that Shamash (sun-god) gave him the laws; compare/contrast with US Constitution as 'rule of law' founding documents; teach debt-slavery as a category honestly (lessons 4 = trauma-informed)
Mastery threshold
90%
Min instances
12
Typical minutes
45
Spaced intervals (days)
1, 3, 7, 14, 30, 60
Successors
- Analyze Athenian direct democracy (Cleisthenes' reforms 508 BCE through the Periclean period and the end of the Classical Athenian democracy in 322 BCE) — its institutions (Assembly / Council of 500 / popular courts / ostracism) AND its citizenship-exclusion ratio (~10-13% per Mogens Herman Hansen 1991): only adult male citizens could vote; women, enslaved people (~25-30% of Attic population), metics (resident foreigners), and children were excluded
- Analyze the Roman Republic (509-27 BCE) — its founding mythology (Aeneas, Romulus and Remus, Cincinnatus), mixed-constitution governance (2 Consuls + Senate + Plebeian Tribunes + popular assemblies), the Conflict of the Orders 494-287 BCE (patricians vs plebeians), the Twelve Tables c. 450 BCE, and Cicero's De Re Publica political theory — per Mary Beard's SPQR scholarship
Common misconceptions
- Treating Hammurabi's Code as 'just like our laws' — Code laws varied dramatically by social class (a free man's eye = a free man's eye; a commoner's eye paid in silver; an enslaved person's eye paid in lower silver) and included death penalty for many offenses; rule-of-law principle present but very differently applied
- Conflating Mesopotamian debt-slavery (legally time-limited per Code Law 117 — 3 years maximum) with later transatlantic chattel slavery (lifetime, hereditary, racialized) — they are both slavery AND they are distinct legal institutions
- Assuming Hammurabi's Code is the FIRST law code — the Code of Ur-Nammu (c. 2100 BCE, Ur III dynasty) predates Hammurabi by ~350 years