Changes

Certainly we should expect other societies, such as in the Indus or ancient Egypt, to have had major law codes, although these did not survive or have not left understood records for us. What the early Mesopotamia records show is that concepts of witnesses, using judges, protecting the oppressed, individual’s rights, legal frameworks and precedent, law as having divine origin, and a variety of punishments, including imprisonment and fines, had developed early in complex societies.