Babylon: the code of Hammurabi, the first “table of the law”
3,800 years ago in Babylon, King Hammurabi decreed a code, a veritable collection of jurisprudence for daily life, whose innovative character is still surprising today.
Since its discovery in December 1901 on the Iranian site of Susa, the code of King Hammurabi was recognized as a major source for understanding the political and social organization of the Babylonian kingdom in the 18th century BC. AD
Its author was king of Babylon from 1792 to 1750 BC. BC and the version that has been preserved dates from the end of his reign, after Hammurabi had established through his conquests the preponderance of the kingdom of Babylon over all of Lower Mesopotamia (the countries of Sumer and Akkad ) and a large part of Upper Mesopotamia. The list of cities and states that he conquered during his reign also appears in the prologue to his code.
By enacting this set, Hammurabi is part of the tradition of the vigilante king, whose decisions make it possible to enforce fairness in social relations. The same concern had animated his Sumero-Akkadian predecessors. But none of their collections of laws have been found in such a good state of preservation. And the code of Hammurabi seems to have very quickly become a “classic” of Babylonian legal literature. It was thus copied in several copies on clay tablets which made it possible to reconstruct the damaged passages of the original.
A code in 282 articles
This long document of 282 articles was written in a classic form of the Babylonian language from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. BC and engraved using a cuneiform syllabary with an “archaic” layout, characteristic of prestigious inscriptions. The top of the stele is decorated with a representation of Hammurabi and Shamash, god of Justice. Placed below, the text covers the entire front and part of the back side of the stele. It is arranged in superimposed cartridges and distributed over a series of columns, the direction of writing of which is not horizontal, as it should be, but vertical.
Source: websites