Law-abiding societies have long recognized the Code of Hammurabi for giving us the concept of a detailed written law. Hammurabi’s Code is harsh but fair: wrongdoers are punished in accordance with the harm done to their victims; few if any provisions are made for so-called “extenuating circumstances”. And although the 3,000-year-old Babylonian papyrus has been supplanted by more modern laws, sometimes we must look to Hammurabi for guidance on dealing with crimes not properly addressed by our modern legal doctrines.

I witnessed one such crime yesterday, while shopping for plumbing fixtures at Home Depot.

While browsing the reduced-price faucets, a man in a desperate condition wandered up to the toilet display — one of the grandest parts of any Home Depot, always arranged like a stately boulevard along the back wall of the store — and selected a premium 500-series American Standard bowl as his victim. He groaned something about the Arby’s next door before defiling the porcelain with unspeakable substances which I will not describe here. After completing his gastrointestinal expulsion, the man was ejected from the store peaceably with little more than a lifetime ban and allowed to carry on as if nothing had happened. However, I assure you, something had happened.

Notice how I referred to Hammurabi’s refusal to recognize any “extenuating circumstances” in my introduction. Regardless of whether or not this man had been wronged by an Arby’s franchise, he had absolutely no right to punish that innocent toilet, not to mention hordes of traumatized shoppers and the poor teenager in the orange apron who was forced to return the toilet display to a sanitary condition on his very first day on the job.

With all that said, I have never taken the time to read and analyze the Code of Hammurabi in great detail, or consider how the Code’s dictums should be interpreted in a world so vastly different from that of ancient Mesopotamia. I also lack more than the most cursory grip on the complex Babylonian language. So although I look to Hammurabi for advice on how to justly handle the diarrhea vandalism incident, I would require the input of a true scholar to determine exactly how Hammurabi should be applied in this case. For example, where Hammurabi calls for those who taunt military horses to be “torn asunder and banished to the depths of the Euphrates”, what exactly does he envision? Can this clause be extended to those who “taunt” our modern workhorse, the faithful toilet, with their foul torrents of digestive waste? Does it apply in a retail setting? And can we substitute the Susquehanna River in place of the Euphrates?

Thank you for helping improve our world with the wisdom of the ancients.