The story of the origin of law is that of greed and treachery. The earliest known written code of laws dates back to Babylon under the rule of Hammurabi who claimed that the aforementioned code of laws was given to him by Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. A full third of the code was dedicated to dictating the price of trade goods, expressed as a weight of agricultural goods such as barley. The purpose of this, of course, was to ensure the continued prosperity of the wealthy.
The rest of the code was dedicated to defining crimes and associated punishments for such crimes. By this time civilization had already been divided into the well known three tiered class system for thousands of years. The punishment for each crime depended upon the transgressors class with the harshest punishments reserved for slaves in the lower class and lightest punishments for those in the upper class.
In addition to that punishments were also dependent on the class of the victim. A slave could be punished for transgressions against other slaves, punished more harshly for transgressions against middle class citizens and likely put to death for transgressions agains those in the upper class. If the victim of a trangression was in a class lower than the transgressor there was no punishment. Middle class citizens could commit crimes against slaves and upper class citizens could commit crimes against middle and slave class citizens without being punished.
Law itself, however, predates the Code of Hammurabi by thousands of years. All Hammurabi did was have written that which had already been done for a great many generations. Law and civilization are inseperable, law defines a civilization.
The human race, of course, predates law and civilization by several hundred thousand years. The beginning of civilization, and with it the origin of law, marks the beginning of slavery. The purpose for the inception of civilization was as a means to manage slave labor.
The story of law is the story of a conspiracy as old as civilization itself. The claim was that law was given to man by the gods, such as the Babylonian Shamash, with the purpose of creating justice and equality. In fact, the gods that gave these laws to man did not exist. The laws these false gods supposedly gave to man were not meant to create justice, rather they were intended to create injustice and inequality, dividing society into a three tiered system where power was taken from the majority and handed to the few.
Before even Babylon, among the earliest civilizations there was Sumeria. Within this ancient empire lay the city of Uruk. The central feature of Uruk was a giant imposing ziggurat with a temple at the top. The people of Uruk would come to the temple to give a portion of their produce to the goddess Inanna who promised to divide these offerings evenly among the people of Sumeria. Of course, there was no goddess Inanna. The offerings were collected by the high priests and divided quite unevenly among the populace.
The high priests kept the vast majority of the offerings for themselves. They gave the next largest portion to their more faithful laborers, the middle class, to be used to keep this class of citizens better armed and able to police the slave class, but also as payment for their treachery in turning against their fellow man.
After over ten thousand years civilization remains the same with the exception of titles. Where once there were gods and high priests now there are presidents, CEOs, CFOs and COOs. That doesn't mean that the criminal conspiracy as old as civilization is still a conspiracy. The conspiracy remains, but only in spirit. The conspirators are long dead, usually assassinated by their own subjects.
Really it's all about that middle class. You see the middle class receives a small payment for their treachery in managing the slaves, but when that payment dries up, often due to drought or similar circumstances, they have a tendency to turn, instead, against their benefactors, the upper class.
Time and time again civilizations fell, either to revolt or external forces, and with it the truth behind the conspiracy faded into the annals of history. Yet many of the citizens of said civilizations lived on. After thousands of years they knew of no other way of life and still believed staunchly in their gods, false gods.
Now the lies, the conspiracy, took on a life of their own. Terrorizing humanity for millennia to come.
P.S. This was not meant to be a confrontational post, but more like and introduction so that we can better understand each other. This is my reality.
