A code of 57 laws including criminal law, family law, inheritance law, albor law including slave rights and agricultural and commercial tariffs
Manuscript (MS) in Sumerian on clay, Sumer, reign of King Shulgi, 2095-2047 BCE, 1 cylinder, l. 28 cm, diam. 12 cm, 8 columns (originally 10 columns), 243 lines in cuneiform script.
Commentary: The Ur-Nammu law code is the oldest known, written about 300 years before Hammurabi's law code. When first found in 1901, the laws of Hammurabi (1792- 1750 BCE) were heralded as the earliest known laws. Now older collections are known: The laws of the town Eshnunna (ca. 1800 BCE), the laws of King Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (ca. 1930 BCE), and Old Babylonian copies (ca. 1900-1700 BCE) of the Ur-Nammu law code, with 26 laws of the 57 on the present MS. This cylinder is the first copy found that originally had the whole text of the code, and it is the world's oldest law code MS. Further it actually mentions the name of Ur-Nammu for the first time.
Hammurabi's laws represented the inhuman Law of Retaliation, "an Eye for an Eye". One would expect the 300 years older laws of Ur-Nammu would be even more brutal, but the opposite is the case: "If a man knocks out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out 1/2 a mina of silver".
© Al Tamimi & Company 2006
