Code of Hammurabi

A Babylonian law collection inscribed on a black diorite stele, discovered at Susa in 1901 and now in the Louvre. It contains around 282 rulings on property, family, injury, and commerce, including the principle of proportional retribution often summarized as an eye for an eye. Its parallels with the laws of Exodus are close enough that the two clearly belong to a shared legal world of the ancient Near East. The differences are just as important: biblical law places its statutes inside a covenant with God rather than a royal decree, and it values human life above property in ways Hammurabi does not.