legal-history
Were the ten commandments the first laws of civilization?
<p>As the Ten Commandments were written in stone <em>and</em> writing had hardly developed anywhere else to that time, are those the first laws of civilization?</p>

<p>Nope. Even if we were to accept this definition of law as some written decree, and I'm unsure that's the case<sup>1</sup>, there are civilisations with written law that predate the Ten Commandments.</p>

<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_law">Babylonian Law</a> (c.1800 BC) predates the Ten Commandments. Also, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu">Code of Ur-Nammu</a> predates even that (c.2050 BC).</p>

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<p><sup>
1. Most definitions of law don't require that it be written, but rather that it is some system of rules that govern the behaviour of some group of people.
</sup></p>

<p>Not with your age estimate of the Ten Commandments (3000-3750 years ago). The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi">Code of Hammurabi</a> dates to around 1750 BC, which would make it over 3750 years old, which is older.</p>

<p>First, is the issue that, to the best of my knowledge, there's no actual evidence the ten commandments are real (in the form of stone tablets anyways -- obviously some form of them exists in literature). So it's hard to call "fair" about something that's quite possibly a fairy tale.</p>

<p>Second, even in the Bible story, it's not like God invented the concept of law then and there. The pharaoh obviously had his own laws, and the gods of those guys the Hebrews were partying with during the first writing of the commandments obviously had their versions of law.</p>

<p>Third, and most importantly, "law" isn't about written words, and never has been. Law is an abstract concept that represents the relationships between actions and consequences. The laws of physics existed long before we did, and law of the jungle existed between then and now.</p>

<p>The laws of society were an evolution from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Might_makes_right" rel="nofollow">right of might</a> to what we have today, not some specific event. While it might be interesting to determine the first written law, the law itself existed long before then. Many societies have legal systems but no writing system at all.</p>

<h1>Very much no</h1>
<p>Accepting the &quot;Ten Commandments&quot; or &quot;Laws of Moses&quot; as being written between the 6th and 10th century BC, we have hard evidence of at least the following laws preddating them:</p>
<ul>
<li>The oldest copy of Assyrian law we still have is dated to 1075 BC, thus predating the Laws of Moses by a mere fraction, but they have been first written most likely between 1450 and 1250 BC.</li>
<li>The Hittite Code of the Nesilim was written between 1650 BC and 1500 BC and in effect till about 1100 BC, thus predating the Ten Commandments by about 500-1000 years.</li>
<li>The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi predates Nesilim, and was written around 1750 BC.</li>
<li>The Summerian Codex of Lipit-Ishtar are cones and dated to ca 1780 BC.</li>
<li>The Mesopotamian/Summerian Laws of Eshnunna are copies of an older text. The copies are dated to 1930 BC. They have similarities to the Code of Hammurabi in writing style, and stem from the area north of Ur.</li>
<li>The Mesopotamian/Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu was dated to between 2050 and 2100 BC, was found in at least three places (Ur, Nippur and Sippar).</li>
<li>The clay tablets with legislative reforms of Urukagina were dated to the 24th century BC, and contain insight in the laws of the city-state Lagash from south-east Mesopotamia.</li>
</ul>
<h1>Even older?</h1>
<p>There is little to no legal text surviving from either the Early Dynastic or the Old or Middle Kingdoms of Egypt. However, inscriptions in Old Kingdom graves (2613-2181 BC) graves do indicate a complex legal setup that uses precedent and religious principles to adjudicate cases and stems from the time before. In the Middle Kingdom (2040-1782 BC) we have evidence for full-time judges from grave inscriptions.</p>
<h1>Conclusion</h1>
<p>With the available evidence, it appears that writing down laws started well before 2500 BC, possibly on material that did not survive the test of time like papyrus. The oldest fragments of law we have from original sources are from the 24th century BC. As such, written laws had been around for at least a millennium and a half to two when the Ten Commandments came along.</p>
<p>Even accepting the Jewish tradition that names 1450 BC as the year in which they were given, there is hard evidence of laws that are about a millennium older.</p>

<p>It should be pointed out that many scholars would define criminal laws as laws that show grant a prescribed consequence to illegal action.  The reason why the &quot;Code of Hammurabi&quot; is so remembered is that each law has a prescribed punishment for the offender (I.E. An eye for an eye.) albeit, a rather harsh one by modern standards but at least the criminals knew what would happen if they violated this.</p>
<p>The 10 Commandments lack this in how they were transcribed and are instead moral codes.  The first three commandments are actually rules for proper worship of God, who is purportedly the guy who wrote the law.  While the Bible does contain Laws (in fact, a good part of Old Testament and the Torah are nothing but Law for the Hebrew Peoples, the actual societal laws that were enforced (based off the 10 commandments) were detailed in the Books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.</p>
<p>Law of Moses was actually written as a partial response to legal codes at the time and were unique in that they held that violating the law was a transgression against God, not just society (Sumerian Code and Hammurabi claimed only the later, despite both being divinely inspired) though Biblical Law did borrow from these legal traditions (famously, Biblical Law has &quot;Eye for an Eye&quot; as a consequence of illegal actions... something that was famously repudiated by Jesus Christ, who pointed out instead of following this &quot;law of vengeance&quot; (lex talionis) one should &quot;turn the other cheek&quot; or otherwise arguing that Justice should be tempered with Mercy, which at the time of the writing of the Gospels, was probably the single most controversial line attributed to Jesus.</p>
