AskHistoryAI — Interactive Timeline of Everything

What Is the Code of Hammurabi?

The Code of Hammurabi is a collection of about 282 laws issued by Hammurabi, king of Babylon, who reigned from about 1792 to 1750 BC. Its best-known copy, carved near the end of his reign around 1754 BC, is a black basalt stele about 2.25 metres tall, topped by a relief of Hammurabi before the sun god Shamash. The laws cover trade, wages, property, marriage, inheritance and injury, and set punishments that depended on the social rank of victim and offender. The stele was found at Susa in Iran in 1901 and is in the Louvre. It is the most complete Mesopotamian law collection, but not the oldest.

The stele

The stele is a single block of black basalt about 2.25 metres high. At the top, Hammurabi stands before the seated sun god Shamash, the god of justice. Below, in Akkadian cuneiform, a prologue lists the king’s achievements and claims he was called by the gods to bring justice to the land; then come the laws; an epilogue invites anyone wronged to come and read the stone.

It was not found in Babylon. In the twelfth century BC the Elamite king Shutruk-Nakhunte carried it off as war booty to Susa, in what is now south-western Iran. A French archaeological expedition found it there in the winter of 1901–1902, and it went to the Louvre. A section of the laws had been erased, probably for an inscription that was never added, which is why the numbering of about 282 laws, assigned by modern scholars, has a gap.

What the laws say

The laws are written as cases: if a man does this, then that follows. They cover theft, trade and debt, the hire of boats and oxen, farming and irrigation, wages for builders and doctors, marriage, divorce and inheritance, and injury. A builder whose house collapsed and killed the owner could be put to death. A doctor who caused the loss of an eye in surgery could lose a hand.

The famous retaliation laws apply between equals. If a man of the upper class put out the eye of another such man, his own eye was to be put out; but if he put out the eye of a commoner, he paid a fixed amount of silver, and for a slave, half the slave’s value. Punishment depended on who you were.

Was it the first law code, and was it used?

It was not the first. The Code of Ur-Nammu, from the Sumerian city of Ur, is about three centuries older, and the laws of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin and of the city of Eshnunna also predate Hammurabi. What makes Hammurabi’s collection stand out is its length, its completeness and the survival of the monument itself.

Whether it was a working law code is debated. Very few surviving court records from Babylonia cite it, and many scholars read it as a royal statement of justice and a model of legal reasoning rather than a statute book judges applied clause by clause. Copies of it were still being made by scribes more than a thousand years later.

What most scholars accept, and what stays contested

Frequently asked questions

When was the Code of Hammurabi written?

Around 1754 BC, near the end of Hammurabi’s reign (about 1792–1750 BC on the usual middle chronology).

Where is the Code of Hammurabi now?

The original basalt stele is in the Louvre in Paris. It was found at Susa, Iran, in 1901.

Is “an eye for an eye” from the Code of Hammurabi?

The principle appears in it, but only between people of the same class. Injuring someone of lower rank was punished with a payment of silver instead.

Was Hammurabi’s code the first law code?

No. The Code of Ur-Nammu is about 300 years older, and other Mesopotamian law collections also came before it.

Sources and further reading