sumerians

Among the earliest civilizations were the diverse peoples living in the fertile valleys lying between the Tigris and Euphrates valley, or Mesopotamia. In Greek Mesopotamia means, "between the rivers." In the south of this region, an area now in Kuwait and northern Saudi Arabia, a mysterious group of people began to live in cities. They were speaking a language unrelated to any other human language we know. The cities were ruled by some sort of …

…priest or noble person was a far more serious crime than harming a slave or poor person. Yet the penalties assessed for a noble person who commits a crime were often far harsher than the penalties assessed for someone from the lower classes that committed the same crime. This great invention, law, would serve as the basis for the institution of law among all the Semitic peoples to follow: Babylonians, Assyrians, and, eventually, the Hebrews.