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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 12 Sep 2022

Taken: 12 Sep 2022

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
His most famous remains are the somewhat overinterpreted and perhaps misnamed Code of Hammurabi. Originally, it was an eight-foot-high black basalt stele erected at the end of his reign beside a statue or possibly idol of himself. So far as we can make out, someone seeking redress from another would come to the steward's statue, to "hear my words" (as the stele says at the bottom), and then move over to the stele itself, where the previous judgments of the steward's god are recorded. His god, as I have said, was Marduk, and the top of the stele is sculptured to depict the scene of judgment-giving. The god is seated on a raised mound which in Mesopotamian graphics symbolizes a mountain. An aura of flames flashes up from his shoulders as he speaks (which has made some scholars think it is Shamash, the sun-god). Hammurabi listens intently as he stands just below him ("under-stands"). The god holds in his right hand the attributes of power, the rod and circle very common to such divine depictions. With these symbols, the god is just touching the left elbow of his steward, Hammurabi. One of the magnificent things about this scene is the hypnotic assurance with which both god and steward-king intently stare at each other, impassively majestic, the steward-king's right hand held up between us, the observers, and the plane of communication. Here is no humility, no begging before a god, as occurs just a few centuries later. Hammurabi has no subjective-self to narratize into such a relationship. There is only obedience. And what is being dictated by Marduk are judgments on a series of very specific cases.

As written on the stele beneath this sculptured relief, the judgments of Marduk are sandwiched in between an introduction and an epilogue by Hammurabi himself. Here with pomp and fury he boasts of his deeds, his power, his intimacy with Marduk, describes the conquests he has made for Marduk, the reason for the setting up of this stele, and ends with dire implications as to the evil that will befall anyone who scratches out his name. In vainglory and naivete both prologue and epilogue remind us of the Iliad ~ Page 199/200
20 months ago. Edited 20 months ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESSIN THE BREAK-DOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND
20 months ago.

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