I am using Homer as a “window into the mind”, not a set of precepts, a description, not a prescription.
Hinduism mutated a great deal. I don’t think you will find an ethics as such in the classics. They are very close to Homer. They are stories with Gods in them, not really teachings.
Buddhism did generate a universal ethics, but it made no impression on Mediterranean civilization (unless you want to credit it with an influence on Jesus, which requires fundamentally irreligious assumptions).
And ditto the Tao. None of these pre-date Homer.
Hammurabi’s code, ancient as it is, expresses what amount to tribal customs, that are also strictly functional. Codes of conduct are universal; Islam itself really amounts to a comprehensive code of conduct. Rome had similar laws; that did not lead them to a religious concept of compassion. Laws can exist without an underlying ethic.
I have no idea what you mean by that. Were there or were there not codes of morals and ethics throughout the world pre-dating Islam? Homer's "mindset" hardly accounts for the majority of cultural or religious thinking in the world before Christ.
Laws can exist without an underlying ethic.
Oh? How does that work? What purpose would laws have without an underlying code of ethics?
The Vedas, including the Upanishads, Manu Samhita, Puranas and other ancient Vedic texts including the Ramayana and Mahabharat do indeed codify very clearcut moral codes. The Yoga Shastras have the clear Yamas and Niyamas as well. The Manu Samhita details different rights, duties and responsibilities for different castes and orders of life. The Puranas have many teaching stories illustrating such moral and spiritual codes.
All these of course pre-date Christianity by several thousands of years.
The Code of Hammurabi appears to be all that you say it isn't and more.
[B]y far the most remarkable of the Hammurabi records is his code of laws, the earliest-known example of a ruler proclaiming publicly to his people an entire body of laws, arranged in orderly groups, so that all men might read and know what was required of them.(Sounds universal)
Yet even with this earliest set of laws, as with most things Babylonian, we find ourselves dealing with the end of things rather than the beginnings. Hammurabi's code was not really the earliest. The preceding sets of laws have disappeared, but we have found several traces of them, and Hammurabi's own code clearly implies their existence. He is but reorganizing a legal system long established.
(Sounds a lot more sophisticated than tribal customs.)
Almost all trace of tribal custom has already disappeared from the law of the Code.
(This treatise even says so in no uncertain terms.)
The Code deals with a class of persons devoted to the service of a god, as vestals or hierodules. The vestals were vowed to chastity, lived together in a great nunnery, were forbidden to open or enter a tavern, and together with other votaries had many privileges.
(It even covers every aspect of spiritual or religious law and conduct.)
It is hard to believe that a code that covers every aspect of secular and religious behavior based on centuries of previous written laws and court decisions prescribing exact punishments for violations as well as for incorrectly applying the law could be said to have no basis in ethics or morals.