The Laws of Hammurabi: At the Confluence of Royal and Scribal Traditions. By Pamela Barmash. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 336. $99.00 (cloth); $97.99 (digital). ISBN: 9780197525401.

Abstract

Pamela Barmash’s The Laws of Hammurabi: At the Confluence of Royal and Scribal Traditions is a terrifically energetic new engagement with some very old legal material. This latest work from her is important insofar as it offers new exposition of the Laws of Hammurabi, reinterprets their character in their immediate context and their legacies, and has important implications for other scholarly thinking about ancient Near Eastern law and biblical law. Barmash is a significant expert on biblical law, who has published major reference works,1 but with this book, she expands the reach of her scholarly contribution in ways that matter not just to scholars of ancient Near Eastern law and biblical law but also anyone interested in legal history within the Western tradition generally. She delves many centuries earlier than Roman law to demonstrate the beginnings of sophisticated legal thinking in an earlier phase of history than often realized, and this is the genuinely groundbreaking dimension of the book. Barmash builds this significant contribution gradually through the course of the book. In her introduction, she hints at some of her aspirations, notably offering a “histoire totale” (3) of the Laws of Hammurabi, and considering the text’s origins, immediate reception, and later impacts. Barmash asserts from the outset the claim that the Laws of Hammurabi bestrides a royal tradition of exalting the monarch and a scribal tradition in which it became a classic text ultimately contributing within a tradition of legal thought. She uses the bulk of the introduction to situate her claims within prior accounts of the Laws of Hammurabi, surveying past views that have ascribed a statutory interpretation, a reading of it as pure scholarly literature, a reading of it as royal propaganda, and views that have tried to integrate various past views (6–11). In the later pages of the introduction, Barmash skillfully sketches the argument to come: the Laws of Hammurabi start within a royal tradition and become a classic legal text. In chapter 1, Barmash introduces the physical stela containing the Laws of Hammurabi, offering a helpful introduction for those new to the subject and highlighting the literally