Divorce in Ancient Law Codes

From earliest times and among all peoples, as qe have seen, marriage and divorce have been human experiences around which group habits or folkways have accumulated. These have grown into publicly approved customs which have been handed down as social traditions and have in turn become imbedded in civil law. Thus we find in the early law codes of ancient civilizations many of the customs of preliterate peoples preserved either in similar or in modified forms.In a few of the lower, and in most of the higher, levels of civilization the ideal of marriage is that of a lifelong union of husband and wife. For many reasons this ideal has never wholly been realized in actual experience. The relations entered into at marriage frequently cease. In order to redefine the status of the separated parties, to provide for offspring, and to determine the rights of property, societies have been under the necessity of developing experimentally habitual procedures and of enacting them into rules and regulations. This has been the chief function of law in regard to divorce. Ancient law is far more the codification of emergent behavior uniformities than it is a means of imposing upon the group the arbitrary dictates either of an individual or of a collective will.

A cursory review of the divorce procedures of a few of the ancient codes will be instructive. It will disclose the attitude of ancient historic societies in regard to the subject and their methods of dealing with it. Our chief object in presenting this survey of ancient legislation, aside from its historical value, is to strengthen the position already taken in reference to the secular nature of marriage and divorce. If in any instances regulations are modified by religious influences, it is in the same sense that economic and other social institutions generally are so modified. In the digest of the codes herewith presented we shall see how competent societies have felt themselves to be to deal with the matter.