Hammurabi Issues His Code and Unites Babylon's Empire
Nearly 300 laws carved into black stone, topped by a carving of the king receiving justice from the sun god
Quick facts
- Reign
- c. 1792-1750 BCE
- Number of laws
- 282
- Material and height
- Basalt stele, 225 cm
- Discovered
- Susa, 1901-1902
What happened
Hammurabi, king of Babylon from roughly 1792 to 1750 BCE, conquered and unified the rest of Mesopotamia under his rule and issued a code of 282 laws inscribed in stone, a set of rulings covering commerce, family law, property, and criminal justice. The stele's upper relief shows Hammurabi standing before the seated sun god Shamash, receiving the authority to render judgment directly from the god, a visual claim that Babylonian law flowed from divine sanction rather than royal whim alone. Many of its provisions follow the principle known as lex talionis, proportional retribution, popularly summarized as 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' a formula that also appears in the Book of Exodus centuries later. The stele itself, carved from basalt and standing 225 centimeters tall, was discovered in three fragments at Susa in 1901 to 1902, having been carried off from Babylon by an Elamite king as war booty roughly six centuries after Hammurabi's death.
Why it matters
The Code of Hammurabi is the most complete surviving legal code from the ancient world, and it stands in a specifically Mesopotamian legal tradition that stretches back to Ur-Nammu's code three centuries earlier, not as its origin but as its most famous and best-preserved expression. Its principle that a ruler's power should be exercised through publicly displayed, written law rather than private decree influenced legal thinking across the ancient Near East.
How we know
The stele survives largely intact, missing only a section of laws that appears to have been deliberately chiseled away in antiquity, and is held at the Louvre, where its inscription, material, dimensions, and 1901-1902 discovery at Susa are documented directly against the object.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Code of Hammurabi: The Most Influential Law Code of the Ancient World · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Musée du Louvre. Code de Hammurabi (Law Code of Hammurabi stele) · Primary source (author-declared)collections.louvre.fr · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineAncient Mesopotamia30 events · The land between the rivers where farming villages became cities, cuneiform became writing, and kings first wrote their laws downView all →