Each city had its own god. At the center of the city was a large temple or ziggurat built to that god. This was where the priests would live and make sacrifices. Some of the ziggurats were huge and reached great heights. They looked like step pyramids with a flat top.

Sumerian Gods 

Some of the Sumerian gods and goddesses included:

Babylonian Gods 

The main religion of the Persians was called Zoroastrianism. It was based on the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster. In this religion there was only one god named Ahura Mazda. Ahura Mazda created the world. He was all good and constantly fought against evil. The Persians believed that good thoughts and actions would help to fight the evil.

When people first moved into the region between the Tigris and Euphrates, they found living pretty easy.  There was wildlife to catch, fish in the rivers, and edible vegetation growing wild.  So they stayed.

Soon they found that they could grow their own food if they tended the land.  Then they figured out how to get river water into the fields, and crops grew in abundance.  Other tribes saw the wealth and food the people of the river valleys had, and started raiding to take it.  So to protect themselves, they started building walls around their town.  Cities grew from these towns.

As they learned how to grow them, the people of the Mesopotamia area planted and grew wheat, barley, dates, cucumbers, onions, apples and many different herbs and spices.  They also raised sheep goats and cattle.  Thus a civilization grew along the two rivers.

The text was compiled at the end of Hammurabi’s reign, a proclamation of principles than a collection of legal precedents, set between prose celebrating Hammurabi’s just and pious rule. Hammurabi’s Code provides some of the earliest examples of the doctrine of “lex talionis,” or the laws of retribution, sometimes better known as “an eye for an eye.”

Code of Hammurabi Content
The Code of Hammurabi includes many harsh punishments, sometimes demanding the removal of the guilty party’s tongue, hands, breasts, eye or ear. The code is also one of the earliest examples of an accused person being considered innocent until proven guilty.

The 282 edicts are all written in if-then form. For example, if a man steals an ox, then he must pay back 30 times its value. The edicts range from family law to professional contracts and administrative law, often outlining different standards of justice for the three classes of Babylonian society, the propertied class, freedmen and slaves.

There also has a Code of Laws of
Builders and Code of Laws Shipbuilders and Sailors.

Stele of Hammurabi
In 1901 Jacques de Morgan, a French mining engineer, led an archaeological expedition to Persia to excavate the Elamite capital of Susa, more than 250 miles from the center of Hammurabi’s kingdom.

There they uncovered the stele of Hammurabi that broken into three pieces, that had been brought to Susa as spoils of war. Likely by the Elamite king Shutruk Nahhunte in the mid 12th century B.C.

The stele was packed up and shipped to the Louvre in Paris, and within a year it had been translated and widely publicized as the earliest example of a written legal code one that predated but bore striking parallels to the laws outlined in the Hebrew Old Testament.

The U.S. Supreme court building features Hammurabi on the marble carvings of historic lawgivers that lines the south wall of the courtroom.