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The Code of Hammurabi is a block of black basalt nearly two and a half metres tall, carved with 282 laws in cuneiform script and topped by a relief of the Babylonian king Hammurabi standing before the sun god Shamash. It is the longest and best-preserved law code to survive from the ancient Near East, and it is one of the foundational documents of human law.
The laws are arranged in cases - "if a man does X, then Y" - and they cover contracts, property, debt, marriage, inheritance, adoption, assault, agriculture and slavery. They are not a modern code: penalties vary according to the social status of the parties, and the famous principle of "an eye for an eye" applies only between equals. The prologue and epilogue present Hammurabi as a king chosen by the gods to bring justice to the land, and the whole monument was probably displayed in a temple rather than used as a working legal manual.
The stele was carried off to Susa in Iran as war booty by an Elamite king in the twelfth century BC, and it was found there in 1901 by a French expedition led by Jacques de Morgan. It was published the following year and translated into French, English and German within a decade, becoming one of the most widely read ancient texts in the world.
The sculptor of the stele is unknown. It was produced in the workshop of the Babylonian court in the eighteenth century BC, in the reign of Hammurabi (c. 1792-1750 BC), the sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon, who united Mesopotamia under a single rule and made Babylon one of the great cities of the ancient world.
Hammurabi’s laws were part of a wider Mesopotamian tradition: earlier Sumerian and Akkadian codes survive in fragments, and later Assyrian laws follow the same pattern. The stele’s removal to Susa shows how ancient monuments were recycled as trophies. Its discovery in 1901 came at a moment when European legal scholars were searching for the origins of law, and it was quickly absorbed into the history of Western jurisprudence.
Richelieu Wing · Ground Floor · Near Eastern Antiquities, Room 227
The Louvre is divided into three wings — Denon, Sully and Richelieu — reached from the hall beneath the glass pyramid.
Other pieces from the same artist, period or type of object.
