There are replicas of the stele in numerous institutions, including the headquarters of the United Nations in New York City and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.īabylonian territory before (red) and after (orange) Hammurabi's reign Capitol has a relief portrait of Hammurabi alongside those of other historic lawgivers. Debate among Assyriologists has since centred around several aspects of the Code: its purpose, its underlying principles, its language, and its relation to earlier and later law collections.ĭespite the uncertainty surrounding these issues, Hammurabi is regarded outside Assyriology as an important figure in the history of law and the document as a true legal code. Scholars quickly identified lex talionis-the "eye for an eye" principle-underlying the two collections. There was also much discussion of its influence on the Mosaic Law. Modern scholars responded to the Code with admiration at its perceived fairness and respect for the rule of law, and at the complexity of Old Babylonian society. Their scope is broad, including, for example, criminal law, family law, property law, and commercial law. The laws are casuistic, expressed as "if. In the prologue, Hammurabi claims to have been granted his rule by the gods "to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak". 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.
The top of the stele features an image in relief of Hammurabi with Shamash, the Babylonian sun god and god of justice. The stele now resides in the Louvre Museum. The text itself was copied and studied by Mesopotamian scribes for over a millennium. The stele was rediscovered in 1901 at the site of Susa in present-day Iran, where it had been taken as plunder six hundred years after its creation. The primary copy of the text is inscribed on a basalt stele 2.25 m (7 ft 4 + 1⁄ 2 in) tall. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hammurabi, sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon. It is the longest, best-organised, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed during 1755–1750 BC. The Louvre, Paris, France (originally Sippar, Mesopotamiaĭebated: legislation, law report, or jurisprudence.
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