Code of Ur-Nammu

The Sumerian law code of about 2100 BCE, the oldest known surviving body of written laws

Overview

Issued in the name of Ur-Nammu, founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur, or possibly his son Shulgi, the code predates Hammurabi's by roughly three centuries. Fragments recovered from Nippur and other sites were first translated by the Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer in the 1950s. After a prologue celebrating the king's justice, it sets out laws in the conditional form later typical of Near Eastern codes: if a man does this, then that follows. Murder, robbery, and rape carried death, but many bodily injuries were compensated with fixed payments of silver rather than physical retaliation, a notable contrast with the later eye-for-an-eye provisions.