Astral Codex Ten

Hammurabi

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Hammurabi

Article

Hammurabi is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 16, 2023 and August 11, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “Hammurabi was still far in the future, and God’s justice was the only game on offer”; “Hammurabi and Gilgamesh get more play relative to Solon and Achilles”. It most often appears alongside Rome, Solon, Achilles.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: June 16, 2023
  • Last seen: August 11, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: Njal’s Saga
June 16, 2023 · Original source
We go with Man’s justice naturally, almost reflexively, because we’re cattle domesticated by the State. Ten thousand years ago, our ancestors would have gone with God’s justice, just as reflexively, because Hammurabi was still far in the future, and God’s justice was the only game on offer. Njal’s Saga takes place right on the fulcrum of these two world-views, the point where either the natural justice of vengeance or the artificial justice of courts seem like plausible options. All government is a hallucination on the part of the governed, but in medieval Iceland it was a flimsy hallucination, one that a second’s thought could see through immediately5, one of those duck-rabbits where you can switch from seeing the thing to not seeing it at will.
Inline links: 5
Your Book Review: The Weirdest People in the World
August 11, 2023 · Original source
A big silent intellectual change of the past quarter century is the broadening of our self-concept. Educated Westerners are starting to expect each other to know Chinese and Islamic history, which are still ongoing, and perhaps something about pre-Columbian America whose stories were traumatically ended by the conquest of the New World. The earlier past is moving into the light, too. Ancient states like Babylon and Egypt are gradually coming alive: Hammurabi and Gilgamesh get more play relative to Solon and Achilles. And before that, the real prehistory of the first cities, the Neolithic, the growth of agriculture, the end of the Ice Age at 10,000 BC, modern humans around 100,000 BC, the first humans at 1mya (million years ago)… these dates are gradually getting fixed in the mind as turning points in the story of us.
Inline links: story of us