Code of Hammurabi

Epic card · No. 13662

The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed c. 1753 BC. It is one of the most recognizable legal texts from the ancient Near East, written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hammurabi, sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon. The primary copy of the text is inscribed on a basalt stele 2.25 m (7 ft 4+1⁄2 in) tall. The stele was rediscovered in 1901 at the site of Susa in present-day Iran, where it had been taken as plunder 600 years after its creation. The text itself was copied and studied by Mesopotamian scribes for over a millennium. The stele now resides in the Louvre Museum. The top of the stele features an image in relief of Hammurabi with Shamash, the Babylonian sun god and god of justice. Below the relief are about 4,130 lines of cuneiform text: one fifth contains a prologue and epilogue in poetic style, while the remaining four fifths contain what are generally called the "laws". In the prologue, Hammurabi claims to have been granted his rule...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Mbzt, CC BY 3.0