

Supreme Court Associate Justice Joseph P. In 1816, an archeological excavation in Minya, Egypt (under an Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire) produced a Nerva–Antonine dynasty-era tablet from the ruins of the Temple of Antinous in Antinoöpolis, Aegyptus that prescribed the rules and membership dues of a burial society collegium established in Lanuvium, Italia in approximately 133 AD during the reign of Hadrian (117–138) of the Roman Empire. The law of general average constitutes the fundamental principle that underlies all insurance. 750) that led to the proliferation of the Doric Greek dialect. In the Digesta seu Pandectae (533), the second volume of the codification of laws ordered by Justinian I (527–565) of the Eastern Roman Empire, a legal opinion written by the Roman jurist Paulus at the beginning of the Crisis of the Third Century in 235 AD was included about the Lex Rhodia ("Rhodian law") that articulates the general average principle of marine insurance established on the island of Rhodes in approximately 1000 to 800 BC as a member of the Doric Hexapolis, plausibly by the Phoenicians during the proposed Dorian invasion and emergence of the purported Sea Peoples during the Greek Dark Ages (c. 1755–1750 BC) stipulated that a sea captain, ship-manager, or ship charterer that saved a ship from total loss was only required to pay one-half the value of the ship to the ship-owner. Chinese merchants travelling treacherous river rapids would redistribute their wares across many vessels to limit the loss due to any single vessel capsizing.Ĭodex Hammurabi Law 238 (c. Methods for transferring or distributing risk were practiced by Babylonian, Chinese and Indian traders as long ago as the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC, respectively. Pictured, Governors of the Wine Merchant's Guild by Ferdinand Bol, c. Merchants have sought methods to minimize risks since early times.


A person or entity who buys insurance is known as a policyholder, while a person or entity covered under the policy is called an insured. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent or uncertain loss.Īn entity which provides insurance is known as an insurer, an insurance company, an insurance carrier or an underwriter. Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss.

1900–1918 depicts an armored knight Financial market participants An advertising poster for a Dutch insurance company from c.
