Hammurabi Code- Early Form of Insurance

Insurance in business terms can be defined as “a means of protecting or safeguarding against risk or injury”. Lets know a little about how “Insurance” started? Who started it and When?
Well, lets try knowing a bit more about this.

Way back in Babylonian times, around 2100 B.C., the Code of Hammurabi* was the first basic insurance policy. This policy was paid by the traders in the form of a loan to guarantee the safe arrival of their goods by caravan.Caravans faced the same kind of perils our transportation industry faces today – like robbery, bad weather and breakdowns.

One nearly complete example of the Code survives today, on a diorite stele in the shape of a huge index finger 2.25-metre (7.4 ft) tall .The Code is inscribed in the Akkadian language using cuneiform script carved into the stele. It is currently on display in The Louvre, with exact replicas in the Oriental Institute in the University of Chicago, the library of the Theological University of the Reformed Churches. Hammurabi consisted of 282 laws, in the year 1750 BC.  The Code of Hammurabi was inscribed on stone, which suggests that the King accepted the laws from the sun god, Shamash.  The code of laws encouraged people to accept authority of a king, who was trying to give common rules to govern the subjects' behavior..

The vast collection of laws declares that the purpose of these codes is to "promote the welfare of the people" and to allow "justice to prevail in the land." Instead of actual laws, the codes inscribed on the stone pillar are actually the judgments of specific cases that had come before him. The Code of Hammurabi also served as the first known set of laws that was "carved in stone", meaning that not even the king himself could alter the Babylonian Law.

The code of laws is then ended with a epilogue, where Hammurabi declares the he is the rightful king:
"Hammurabi is a ruler who is as a father to his subjects, who holds the words of Marduk in reverence, who has achieved conquest for Marduk over the north and south, who rejects the heart of Marduk, his lord, who has bestowed benefits forever and ever on his subjects, and has established order in the land."