Around 1755 BCE, a king in Babylon did something no ruler had done before. Hammurabi took 282 laws — rules about murder, theft, divorce, even shoddy construction — and carved them into a seven-foot pillar of black stone so hard it was nearly impossible to work. Then he placed it in a temple for anyone to see. The message was radical: the law isn’t a secret. It belongs to everyone.
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Crowns & Conquests·1/6·1′
The place
Babylon
The Law Written in Stone
How a Babylonian king carved 282 laws into black stone and changed the meaning of justice forever
c. 1755-1750 BCE (code's promulgation); discovered at Susa, Iran, in 1901-1902Babylon
Moral of the Story
“Before Hammurabi, justice was whatever the strong imposed upon the weak. After Hammurabi, justice was -- at least in principle -- written down, visible, and applicable to all. The code was not fair by modern standards. It distinguished between classes, it punished the poor more harshly than the rich, and it prescribed cruelties we would not tolerate. But it established the revolutionary idea that the law exists before the crime, that punishment must be proportional, and that even the king is bound by something greater than his own will. That idea, carved into black stone in a language that would be unreadable for three thousand years, turned out to be indestructible.”
Characters
H
Hammurabi -- sixth king of the First Babylonian Dynasty (r. 1792-1750 BCE)S
Shamash -- the sun god of justice, depicted handing Hammurabi the rod and ring of kingshipS
Shutruk-Nahhunte -- Elamite king who looted the stele as war booty around 1158 BCEJ
Jacques de Morgan -- French archaeologist who discovered the stele at Susa in 1901-1902J
Jean-Vincent Scheil -- Dominican friar who translated the code and revealed it to the modern worldSource
The Code of Hammurabi (Louvre, Sb 8); Scheil, Jean-Vincent. Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse, vol. 4, 1902 (first translation); Roth, Martha T. Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, Scholars Press, 1995; Van De Mieroop, Marc. King Hammurabi of Babylon: A Biography, Blackwell, 2005; Richardson, Seth. 'On Seeing and Believing: Liver Divination and the Era of Warring States,' in Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World, Oriental Institute, 2010; Driver, G.R. and Miles, John C. The Babylonian Laws, 2 vols., Oxford, 1952-1955; Charpin, Dominique. Hammurabi of Babylon, I.B. Tauris, 2012; Laws of Ur-Nammu (c. 2100 BCE); Laws of Eshnunna (c. 1930 BCE)