Cuneiform 103 · Chapter 07

The strong shall not wrong the weak

One box stood in law 1. This chapter removes it, reads the law’s opening line clean, and then lets the stele say — in its own words — why any of these laws exist at all.

Batch eight — and two veterans

The last box falls

What the laws are for

The prologue names the king’s commission twice, and both times it uses the sentence that became the most quoted line of Babylonian law. Read it from the stone:

The line runs on machinery you own, plus one new part. Take it apart, item by item:

• dannum — “the strong (one)”: an adjective standing alone as a noun, wearing chapter 02’s nominativethe case of the subject — the noun the sentence is about; Old Babylonian marks it with -um: šarrum, "the king (does something)" -um. The doer.
• enšam — “the weak (one),” accusativethe case of the direct object — the noun the action lands on; Old Babylonian marks it with -am: awīlam, "(he accused) a man" -am. The done-to. No verb has arrived, and the whole plot is already cast.
• ana — “to, for,” from chapter 00’s preposition pair. Like ina in chapter 02, it governs the genitivethe grammatical case of possession or belonging — "the king's house", "lord of Lagash": whatever ana touches will end in -im.
• lā — chapter 05’s negation, parked this time in front of a noun.
• ḫabālim — “the wronging”: the infinitivea verb packed whole into a noun — ḫabālum, "to wrong / the wronging" — and, being a noun, it wears the case endings like any other, a verb packed whole into a noun — and since it is a noun, ana’s rule applies and it wears the genitivethe grammatical case of possession or belonging — "the king's house", "lord of Lagash" -im.

Now reassemble, literally: “the strong (subject) — the weak (object) — for the not-wronging.” The doer and the done-to hang directly off the packed verb-noun, cases intact, and the whole phrase means: so that the strong not wrong the weak. One preposition, one negation, one noun-shaped verb — that is the entire legal philosophy of the monument, in grammar you can point at.

And the warmer half of the same commission, two veterans deep:

Same drill — item by item:

• ana — “for,” again; again the genitivethe grammatical case of possession or belonging — "the king's house", "lord of Lagash" is coming.
• šīr — “flesh,” with its ending conspicuously gone: chapter 03’s construct signal. The noun is reaching for the next word — “flesh-of…”
• nišī — “the people,” closing the construct chain in the genitivethe grammatical case of possession or belonging — "the king's house", "lord of Lagash". One honest note: “people” is a plural, and its genitivethe grammatical case of possession or belonging — "the king's house", "lord of Lagash" ends in -ī — a column chapter 02’s singular table does not have. Chapter 08 tables the plurals; for now, hold the chain’s sense: flesh-of the-people.
• ṭubbim — “the making-well”: another infinitivea verb packed whole into a noun — ḫabālum, "to wrong / the wronging" — and, being a noun, it wears the case endings like any other, so another noun — and under ana’s rule it takes the genitivethe grammatical case of possession or belonging — "the king's house", "lord of Lagash" -im, exactly as ḫabālim did. It is one of the “thickened” verb shapes chapter 05 promised to name properly in a later chapter: plain ṭâbum is “to be well,” this shape makes it “to make well.”

Literally: “for the making-well of the flesh of the people” — the same purpose-machine as the first half, now with a construct chain riding inside it. Cold justice and warm welfare, built from one identical frame.

Where you stand

Measured against this site’s own count of the Old Babylonian corpus, the twenty new signs and six veteran readings so far — on top of everything Sumerian taught you — cover about two thirds of all syllable-occurrences in the documents of Hammurabi’s age. You have read the stele’s first sentence-opening, its statement of purpose, and its first law in the original. The course keeps walking: more laws, the verbal stemsone of the shapes a verb's root can be built into — G the ground stem, D the doubled-middle, Š the causative, N the passive — each with its own preterite and durative glossed politely so far, and the moment the king finally says anāku — “I am he.”

Drill before you go on

1. Write 𒇴LAM · [lam] · luxuriance, flourishing from memory; say lam.
2. Recite law 1’s opening line in signs, out loud, complete.
3. dannum enšam — which is subject, which is object, and how do you know without a verb?
4. Both veterans this chapter carry sounds Sumerian never wrote the same way. Name the two sounds.

Next: the plural, in chapter 08. The Akkadian Addenda holds every sign’s Akkadian story.