Code of Hammurabi
Justice is the king's duty and must be written in public stone, so the strong do not oppress the weak.
- written public law
- retributive proportion (lex talionis)
- royal accountability to the gods
- social hierarchy in penalty
A nearly eight-foot diorite stele inscribed with a prologue, 282 case-based laws in 'if...then' form, and an epilogue, commissioned by Hammurabi of Babylon and later carried off as war booty to Susa, where it was rediscovered in 1901. The prologue casts Hammurabi as the gods' chosen instrument for making justice shine over the land, and the laws that follow cover contract, family, labor, and injury, including the celebrated but unevenly applied principle of proportional retribution, lex talionis. Scholars now doubt the code was cited as binding statute in actual court verdicts, which almost never quote it directly; its likelier purpose was royal self-presentation, a public monument to a king's justice rather than a functioning legal manual.
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