Hammurabi's Code

Around 1750 BCE, Babylonian king Hammurabi issued 282 laws inscribed in cuneiform on a 2.25-meter diorite stele. The code governed commercial transactions, property rights, family law, and criminal penalties across three social classes, applying lex talionis — proportional retribution. Elamite invaders carried the stele to Susa around the 12th century BCE. French archaeologists rediscovered it there in 1901. It now resides in the Louvre as one of the earliest near-complete written legal codes.