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Code of Ur-Nammu
Oldest known surviving law code
The Code of Ur-Nammu, from Sumer, dates to about 2100 to 2050 BCE. It predates Hammurabi's code by roughly 300 years.
The Code of Ur-Nammu is named for the founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur in Sumer, in what is now southern Iraq. It survives on clay tablets written in the Sumerian language, and some are only fragments. Scholars therefore reconstruct its contents from several copies, and it is debated whether the king himself or his son Shulgi issued it.
The laws are phrased as 'if a man does this, then this is the penalty', the same pattern later seen in Hammurabi's laws. A notable difference is that many penalties are payments in silver instead of physical punishments, though some serious offences carried death.
The code is dated by the king's reign, around 2100 to 2050 BCE, and it is usually called the oldest surviving law code. Earlier rulers, such as Urukagina of Lagash, are said to have issued reforms, but those texts are not preserved in the same form. Hammurabi's code was written roughly three centuries later, so the 'oldest' claim holds for what has survived, not for the very first laws ever made.The tablets used for the reconstruction come largely from the ancient city of Nippur and from Ur, and new fragments or readings can refine the text.