What makes the Code of Hammurabi so revolutionary in the history of law?
Nearly 4,000 years ago, a Babylonian king carved 282 laws into stone - including the first known rules about medical malpractice and minimum wage.
The answer
The Code of Hammurabi, dating to approximately 1754 BCE, is one of the oldest deciphered legal codes in the world. Carved onto a 2.25-meter black diorite stele, it contains 282 laws covering commerce, property, family, labor, and criminal justice. King Hammurabi of Babylon established scaled punishments based on social class and codified concepts still recognizable today: minimum wages for laborers (6 gerahs of silver per year), surgeon liability for botched operations, and builder accountability if structures collapsed. The famous "eye for an eye" principle (lex talionis) appears in several provisions. The stele was discovered in 1901–1902 at Susa, Iran (taken there as war plunder around 1150 BCE), and now resides in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Source: Louvre Museum
- Hammurabi
- ancient law
- Babylon
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