Enacted by the sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi (1796–1750 BCE), in Old Babylonia.
Note: Possibly the earliest known collection of laws is the approximately 325–years–earlier codex of Ur–Nammu, king of Ur (c. 2050 BCE).
The Code of Hammurabi laws are engraved on a pillar found at Susa in 1901. Framed in a hymnic prologue that catalogues his conquests and an epilogue that stresses his concerns for justice, Hammurabi’s laws are partly based on older Sumerian and Akkadian codes. They contain 282 articles classified by subjects: property, commerce, family, etc. Among them is the principle of proportional punishment, an idea later expressed in Exodus as “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” This code is thus regarded as the starting point for the understanding of all Near Eastern legal ideals. Many of its individual formulations are apparently paralleled by the legislation of Exodus and Deuteronomy to come.