The Code of Hammurabi not the oldest in the world?

At school, I learned that the Laws of the Babylonian King Hammurabi, who reigned from 1792 to 1750 BC, were the oldest in the world. The name Hammurabi stuck with me, and I was very excited to see the actual basalt column at the Louvre Museum in Paris. It was hard to comprehend that these 282 laws were almost 4,000 years old. 

Although the attribution to Hammurabi for being the first is still widely spread, it has been established that several kings wrote a set of laws before him. In 1947, the Code of Lipit-Ishtar, though incomplete, was discovered, and one year later, the Code of Ur-Nammu. Well, they were not exactly laws but rather Codes, like codes of conduct, on how to behave and live in harmony in the ever-changing world and growing population. 

New studies have revealed that some 300 years before Hammurabi, the Sumerian King Ur-Nammu (reigned 2112-2094) composed 57 laws. Later kings followed and adapted these codes to their specific needs. Around 1930 BC, for instance, the Laws of Eshnunna (a city in ancient Mesopotamia) were written down, which, soon afterwards, were revised by the Sumerian King Lipit-Ishtar. In the end, all these codes and laws served as a model to create the Laws of Hammurabi.

In the time of King Hammurabi, Babylon had become a cosmopolitan trade center that attracted people from as far away as Greece and Egypt. I find it hard to believe that such laws and wisdom from centuries ago could have been lost by the time Alexander arrived in Babylon in 331 BC or ignored by later rulers. Law and order are of the essence – then as now! Babylon was not a faraway place in Alexander’s realm, and it still is in today’s world of global exchanges! 

Unlike his predecessors, Hammurabi emphasized the physical punishment of the perpetrator. We all know his famous line, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” while he also established that the accused was presumed innocent until proven guilty (still part of the American Constitution!) What’s more, the Code of Hammurabi served as a blueprint for later legislation implemented by the Romans and far into our modern world. 

Digging deeper, it appears that a much earlier law code from Mesopotamia existed in roughly the 24^th century BC. The actual text of this Code of Urukagina has not been found (yet), but survives through second-hand references in other ancient works. 

[Picture of Ur-Nammu by Donald Mackenzie]

There is very much to tell about the Code of Hammurabi, the Code of Ur-Nammu, and others that go far beyond the scope of this blog. An extensive study on the subject has been made by Joshua J. Mark, published on the site of World History.