The Code of Hammurabi was inscribed in cuneiform on a stone stele. Covering property, labor, family matters, and punishment, it is an important legal text from ancient Mesopotamia.
A scene of the king with a deity is carved at the top. It is not the earliest body of law in the world, but it is a relatively well-preserved and widely known code.
Hammurabi
Hammurabi (or Hammurapi), the sixth king of the Amorite First Dynasty of Babylon, ruled from around 1792 to around 1750 BC (middle chronology). He secured Babylonian dominance over the Mesopotamian plain through military prowess, diplomacy, and treachery. When Hammurabi inherited his father Sin-Muballit's throne, Babylon held little local sway; the local hegemon was Rim-Sin of Larsa. Hammurabi waited until Rim-Sin grew old, then conquered his territory in one swift campaign, leaving his organisation intact. Later, Hammurabi betrayed allies in Eshnunna, Elam, and Mari to gain their territories.
Hammurabi had an aggressive foreign policy, but his letters suggest he was concerned with the welfare of his many subjects and was interested in law and justice. He commissioned extensive construction works, and in his letters, he frequently presents himself as his people's shepherd. Justice is also a theme of the prologue to the Code, and "the word translated 'justice'... is one whose root runs through both prologue and epilogue".
Earlier law collections
Although Hammurabi's Code was the first Mesopotamian law collection to be discovered, it was not the first written; several earlier collections survive. These collections were written in Sumerian and Akkadian. They also purport to have been written by rulers. There were almost certainly more such collections, as statements of other rulers suggest the custom was widespread. The similarities between these law collections make it tempting to assume a consistent underlying legal system. As with the Code of Hammurabi, however, it is difficult to interpret the purpose and underlying legal systems of these earlier collections, prompting numerous scholars to question whether this should be attempted.
There are additionally thousands of documents from the practice of law, from before and during the Old Babylonian period. These documents include contracts, judicial rulings, letters on legal cases, and reform documents such as that of Urukagina, king of Lagash in the mid-3rd millennium BC, whose reforms combatted corruption. Mesopotamia has the most comprehensive surviving legal corpus from before the Digest of Justinian, even compared to those from ancient Greece and Rome.
Louvre stele
The first copy of the text found, and still the most complete, is on a 2.25 m (7 ft 4+1⁄2 in) stele. The stele is now displayed on the second floor of the Louvre, in Room 227 of the Richelieu wing. At the top is an image of Hammurabi with Shamash, the Babylonian sun god and god of justice. Below the image are about 4,130 lines of cuneiform text: One-fifth contains a prologue and epilogue, while the remaining four-fifths contain what are generally called the laws. Near the bottom, seven columns of the laws, each with more than eighty lines, were polished and erased in antiquity. The stele was found in three large fragments and reconstructed.
It is 2.25 m (7 ft 4+1⁄2 in) high, with a circumference of 1.65 m (5 ft 5 in) at the summit and 1.9 m (6 ft 3 in) at the base. Hammurabi's image is 65 cm (2 ft 1+1⁄2 in) high and 60 cm (1 ft 11+1⁄2 in) wide.
The Louvre stele was found at the site of the ancient Elamite city of Susa. Susa is in modern-day Khuzestan Province, Iran (Persia at the time of excavation). The stele was excavated by the French Archaeological Mission under the direction of Jacques de Morgan. Father Jean-Vincent Scheil published the initial report in the fourth volume of the Reports of the Delegation to Persia (Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse). According to Scheil, the stele's fragments were found on the tell of the Susa acropolis (l'Acropole de Suse), between December 1901 and January 1902. The few, large fragments made assembly easy.