2007 AM · ≈ 1754 BCE · world history
The Code of Hammurabi
The king of Babylon carves nearly three hundred laws onto a stone stele for all to see.
Hammurabi unites Babylonia and leaves behind a two-metre stele of black diorite: the king receiving authority from the sun god above, nearly three hundred clauses below. Prices, rents, inheritance, medical malpractice, a builder's liability for a collapsed house. The point is the gesture—law made public, written, citable.
Sources
Documents of the period
- cuneiform chronicles and king lists — the diorite stele bearing the text of the laws (found at Susa in 1901, now in the Louvre)
Scholarship
- archaeology of Mesopotamia — the dating of Hammurabi’s reign and the Old Babylonian context
Basis: documents and evidence.