Hammurabi
c. 1792 BCE · Babylon
Hammurabi was the sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon, ruling c. 1792–1750 BCE (Middle Chronology), who over a long reign transformed Babylon from a modest city-state into the dominant power of southern Mesopotamia, defeating Larsa, Mari, and Ešnunna. He is best known for the Laws of Hammurabi, a long collection of casuistic rulings framed by a prologue and epilogue in which the king, commissioned by the gods, declares that he has established justice and protected the weak; the stele depicts him receiving his commission from the sun-god Šamaš.
Did you know?
Hammurabi's law stele was carried off as war loot to another country
The famous black stele inscribed with Hammurabi's laws was raised in Babylonia — most likely in the city of Sippar, home of the sun god Shamash — but archaeologists dug it out of the ground in Susa, in what is now Iran. Centuries after it was carved, an Elamite king hauled it home as plunder; it was rediscovered there in 1901–02 and now stands in the Louvre.
How we know
Stele carved c. 1754 BCE, probably erected in Sippar (Babylonia); taken to Susa (Elam, modern Khuzestan, Iran) as booty by Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte I in the 12th century BCE (c. 1155 BCE); excavated winter 1901–1902 by the de Morgan expedition; on display in the Louvre since 1904.
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Babylon
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About Babylon
The great city on the Euphrates that gave its name to Babylonia, capital under Hammurabi and again under the Neo-Babylonian kings. The pin marks the findspot of the excavated tablet.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Hammurabi’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
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