Regulación de la vivienda en el Código de Hammurabi

Abstract

Often when we read an historical text we undergo a double feeling: surprise and admiration. That was exactly
what I felt the fi rst time I met the Code of Hammurabi’s text. Later, when I faced it more rigorously and critically,
the same feelings came back. And I went rereading, astonish and astounded, to realize how almost four thousand years
ago housing was legislated. It is true that it cannot be considered a concluded regulation but, surely, either did not try to
be. There were regulated those aspects to which people were especially sensitive, in that one historical context. It amazes
and admires the great profusion of laws dedicated to housing and how particularly archaic laws coexist with others which
maintain, in some way, his validity. This paper shows all this regulation covering the scopes of construction, rent, property
transmission, military men housing, donation, inheritance and penal laws on the matter.