Code of Ur-Nammu
The oldest surviving law code argues that a king's legitimacy rests on measurable fairness, standardized weights, protected widows and orphans, and monetary compensation for injury rather than physical retaliation.
- earliest known law code
- monetary compensation over physical retaliation
- royal justice as divine mandate
- standardized weights and measures
Predating Hammurabi's code by roughly three and a half centuries, the Sumerian-language Code of Ur-Nammu survives only in fragmentary Old Babylonian copies, principally from Nippur and Ur, opening with a prologue crediting the king's justice to the gods Nanna and Utu before listing around forty surviving provisions. Unlike Hammurabi's later lex talionis, most Ur-Nammu penalties are monetary fines rather than physical retribution, for example a fixed silver payment for cutting off another man's foot, marking an earlier and in some ways gentler approach to codified justice.
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