托福阅读背景知识：the code of Hammurabi

托福阅读经常会涉及到一些学术类和科技类的文章，了解一些常见的托福阅读背景知识，对于大家提高托福阅读做题准确率，拓展知识储备都很有好处，下面，小编就为大家整理“托福阅读背景知识：the code of Hammurabi”，希望对大家有所帮助。

Hammurabi was the ruler who chiefly established the greatness of Babylon, the world's first metropolis. Many relics of Hammurabi's reign ([1795-1750 BC]) have been preserved, and today we can study this remarkable King....as a wise law-giver in his celebrated code.

by far the most remarkable of the Hammurabi records is his code of laws, the earliest-known example of a ruler proclaiming publicly to his people an entire body of laws, arranged in orderly groups, so that all men might read and know what was required of them. The code was carved upon a black stone monument, eight feet high, and clearly intended to be reared in public view. This noted stone was found in the year 1901, not in Babylon, but in a city of the Persian mountains, to which some later conqueror must have carried it in triumph. It begins and ends with addresses to the gods. Even a law code was in those days regarded as a subject for prayer, though the prayers here are chiefly cursings of whoever shall neglect or destroy the law.

Yet even with this earliest set of laws, as with most things Babylonian, we find ourselves dealing with the end of things rather than the beginnings. Hammurabi's code was not really the earliest. The preceding sets of laws have disappeared, but we have found several traces of them, and Hammurabi's own code clearly implies their existence. He is but reorganizing a legal system long established.

以上就是今天的托福阅读背景知识，大家可以在了解托福阅读背景知识的同时，积累一些相关词汇及句型，以便考试的时候更好地把握文意，夺得托福阅读的高分。