Code of Hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi, inscribed on a 2.25-metre basalt stele by Babylonian king Hammurabi around 1750 BCE, is one of the world's oldest and most complete written legal codes. Its 282 laws cover property rights, wages, trade, marriage, and criminal punishment — famously introducing the principle of proportional justice ('an eye for an eye'). The stele was discovered in 1901 in Susa, Iran, and is now housed in the Louvre, Paris. It predates Roman law by over a millennium and influenced legal systems across the ancient Near East.

Earlier law codes exist, such as the Code of Ur-Nammu (~2100 BCE), but Hammurabi's is the most complete surviving example.

Context

The stele is a tall, black basalt pillar with a carved scene at the top showing Hammurabi in front of a seated god, usually identified as the sun god Shamash, god of justice. Below it is a long text in the Akkadian language, written in cuneiform, with a prologue, the laws and an epilogue in which the king presents himself as a just ruler.

The laws were not applied equally. Penalties depended on social class, with different rules for free people, commoners and slaves, and the well-known 'eye for an eye' principle applied mainly between people of the same rank. Many provisions are practical, covering wages, loans, builders' responsibility for faulty work and marriage and inheritance.

The stele was not found in Babylon. It was carried off to Susa, probably as war booty, in the 12th century BCE, and a French archaeological team led by Jacques de Morgan found it in 1901 to 1902. Copies of the text were also written out on clay tablets and used in scribal schools for centuries, which shows how influential it was.