It’s not every day you’re asked about Hammurabi’s Code!

A recent inquiry from a teacher about Hammurabi led me to an interesting discovery at the Library of Congress.

Some of you might be aware of Chronicling America, which is a collection of over 100,000 newspapers dating back to 1789.  While exploring this resource to help the teacher, I came across an article from 1912 that refers to Hammurabi's Law Code (the law code was discovered a few years before the article, in 1901). The article cherry-picks a few of the laws that had to do with alcohol in an attempt to argue for Temperance in America while ignoring the rest of the laws.

As I read, it dawned on me that this was a resource that could serve several different purposes in my classroom. The article, titled “Prohibition vs. Legislation,” would be a great way to show students how ancient material could be used (or misused) to influence a society, how the news covered discoveries, and the importance of close reading of materials to understand bias and perspective. 

Articles like this could also be a gentle way to start a conversation with students about the “fake news” phenomenon and stress the importance of close evaluation of information.   

As part of my residency at the LOC, I write monthly blogs about using primary sources in the classroom. If you are interested in reading more about this topic in my December post, visit http://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/. 

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