Hammurabi's Debt Edicts

c. 1754 BCE — Mesopotamia, Babylon

Today: Babylon, central Iraq (near modern Hillah)

Hammurabi of Babylon is famous for his law code — 282 rules carved on a black stone pillar, including the line 'an eye for an eye.' Less famous, but more revealing, are the 'clean slate' decrees around it: periodic royal orders wiping out citizens' debts to stop creditors from swallowing the free population whole. Debt bondage was a recurring crisis in the ancient world, and rulers reached again and again for the same cure — cancellation. The remedy is thirty-eight centuries old; the disease, credit growing faster than the ability to repay it, is older still.

Worth knowing: Ancient Mesopotamian kings periodically voided all debts and freed debt-slaves. The Sumerian word for it, 'amargi,' literally meant 'return to the mother' — humanity's first word for freedom.

Pattern: Debt / credit cycle — Credit expands faster than the real capacity to repay; the gap is eventually closed by crisis, default, relief, or reset.

Entry 17 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.