The Code of Hammurabi, from the third millenium B.C.E., was an attempt to encode various laws into a fairly straight forward justice system. Numerous specific crimes are mentioned, along with very specific punishments. Most of the crimes revolve around things dealing with farming, buying and selling things, and debts.Punishments ranged from paying a fine (in money or goods/animals), to somewhat much more severe, like having a hand cut off, all the way to death. Some of the things I found most interesting are as follows:Threaten a witness? You die.Judge makes a mistake in giving the penality? Out of a job.Steal. Depends who you steal from. If you're rich, you pay 30 times the amount stolen; if poor, you pay ten times the amount stolen. The laws seemed to be fairly balanced in this way, the penalty in money or goods higher for the rich person than for a poor person.If a woman opens a wine house? She dies.If a wife has sex with some other guy and is caught, they are tied together and drowned.If a wife is very ill, the guy can take another wife but must still take care of the first one.If a son has sex with his mother and they are caught, both are burnred to death.If a son strikes a father, one of his hands is cut off.If a guy causes another guy to lose an eye or break a limb, the same will be done to him.If a guy hits a pregnant woman and she dies, thus losing the baby, then, if the guy has a daughter, she dies.There's also a whole section on the fees various people can charge, including doctors, vets, house builders and ship builders.All-in-all a very harsh system of laws, but in some ways, especially the rich paying a much stiffer penalty than the poor, most fair than today's laws.
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