Essays on Hammurabi's Code

c. 1792–1750 BC

Hammurabi was the king in the Babylonian dynasty, which ruled in central Mesopotamia from c. 1894 to 1595 B.C. He expanded the city-state of Babylon along the Euphrates River to unite all of southern Mesopotamia. The Hammurabi code was a code of laws, a collection of 282 rules.

The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text, a collection of 282 rules, established standards for commercial interactions and set fines and punishments to meet the requirements of justice. The 282 edicts are all written in if-then form. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hammurabi. Hammurabi’s Code was carved from a single, four-ton slab of diorite.

The stele was discovered in 1901, at the site of Susa (Iran) by Jacques de Morgan, a French mining engineer. The stele now resides in the Louvre Museum, Paris, France.