Code of Hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi is one of the earliest and most complete written legal codes to survive, promulgated by Hammurabi, the sixth king of the First Babylonian Dynasty, who reigned circa 1792 to 1750 BC. It is inscribed on a basalt stele nearly two and a quarter meters tall, now held in the Louvre Museum in Paris, discovered by French archaeologists at Susa, in modern Iran, in 1901. It contains 282 laws covering commerce, property, family and criminal matters, applying a principle of proportional retribution often summarized as an eye for an eye, though penalties in practice varied by the social status of the parties involved. It is not the earliest known law code; the Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu, circa 2100 BC, predates it by several centuries, but the Code of Hammurabi is the best preserved and most influential on later Mesopotamian legal tradition.