The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1753 BC)
The longest and best-preserved legal text of the ancient Near East, inscribed on a basalt stele by Babylon's sixth king. Its casuistic laws on crime, family, property, and commerce shaped later legal thought and remain a landmark in the history of written law.
Events
Hammurabi Unifies Mesopotamia Under Babylon
Hammurabi, sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon (reigning from around 1792 BC), completed his decades-long series of campaigns and alliances that brought the Mesopotamian plain under Babylonian dominance. The consolidated kingdom provided the administrative stability in which a unified body of law could be issued in his name.
Location: Babylon, Mesopotamia
The Code Is Inscribed on the Basalt Stele
The laws were inscribed in Old Babylonian Akkadian on a basalt stele about 2.25 meters (7 ft 4 in) tall, topped with a relief of Hammurabi receiving authority from Shamash, the sun god of justice. Of roughly 4,130 lines of cuneiform, four-fifths contain casuistic "if... then" laws covering criminal, family, property, and commercial matters; the prologue claims the gods granted Hammurabi rule "to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak."
Location: Sippar, Mesopotamia
Scholarly Transmission Across a Millennium
Mesopotamian scribes copied and studied the Code's text for over a thousand years after its creation, and casuistic law collections continued to be produced in the same tradition. Modern Assyriologists debate whether the document functioned as legislation, a law report, or a work of jurisprudence — a debate reflected in its mixed record of penalties that varied by the social class of offender and victim.
Elamite Plunder — the Stele Carried to Susa
The Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte raided Babylonia and carried the stele off to Susa as war plunder roughly six centuries after its creation. The removal buried the monument far from Babylon, where it lay until the modern era.
Location: Susa, Elam (in modern Iran)
Rediscovery at Susa
French excavations directed by Jacques de Morgan recovered the stele at Susa. The find revealed the most complete Old Babylonian legal text known, and the stele was transported to the Louvre in Paris, where it remains on display.
Location: Susa, Iran
The Code Enters Modern Legal Imagination
Publication of the first translations sparked rapid scholarly debate. Early readings admired the Code's perceived fairness and rule-of-law character, while also identifying the lex talionis ("eye for an eye") principle and comparing its relation to the later Mosaic Law. A relief portrait of Hammurabi hangs in the U.S. Capitol among historic lawgivers, and replicas of the stele stand at the United Nations headquarters and other institutions.