Anali Pravnog fakulteta u Beogradu

disposals were with or without consideration, are not in concordance with the legal nature of the last will. Finally, the failure to mention the possibility to unilaterally modify or revoke such disposal until the moment of death, is another argument for the assertion that the idea of the freedom of testation was still not in its infancy at the time.

Although the insistence on the existence of all, or even most of the necessary elements of the legal nature of the last will in the Code of Hammurabi, would at first glance appear to be an anachronism, one should not forget that these contemporary features of the legal nature of last will are familiar with the Roman law from their very first testamentary forms - most of them being familiar with the .Ancient Greek law as well, through the testamentary legacy and the testamentary adoption. Bearing in mind the entirety of the Code of Hammurabi, it can be said that it is more familiar with the beginnings of the contractual inheritance (contractual legacies, to be more precise), i.e. the consensual arrangement of the legal destiny of precisely certain parts of the estate of certain categories of persons after their death, for which, as a proof, there primarily are nudunu and donatio mortis causa. It is quite in accordanve with the hypothesis that in almost all civilizations the bilateral disposal of property in the case of death has preceded the unilateral ones.

Despite the innovative role in creating Article 182 of the Code of Hammurabi, the absence of last will in this codex was confirmed both by the combined application of the comparative and historical method, as well as the systematic interpretation and the interpretation by purpose of the Code of Hammurabi itself. None of the codes, spatialy and civilizationally speaking, close and similar to the Code of Hammurabi, as well as none of the codes that are related to it in terms of the level of social and legal development, such as the Ur-Namu Code, the Lipit-Ishtar Code, the Central Syrian Laws, the Hittite Laws, or the Law of Moses, are fimiliar with the roots of a legal transaction which could be qualified as a last will. Bearing in mind that the very content of the Code of Hammurabi is a combination of existing customs in the area between Tigris and Euphrates and the innovating ambitions of the legislator, the absence of clear indications of the freedom of an individual to unilaterally regulate the future of his/her estate in the case of his/her death, indicates that the Babylonian law of the emperor Hammurabi had not yet reached the level of the necessary development for the affirmation of this legal transaction.

On the other hand, we should not overlook the fact that the Code of Hammurabi had an appropriate systematics - truly enough, not in the spirit of the modem time, but certainly in the manner of understanding the way of how to present legal matters in the time the Code was created. If things are perceived in this way, it is clear that both Article 182 and .Article 179 actually constitute a part of the corpus of norms that sought

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Милош Станковић (стр. 124-152)