The Code of Hammurabi, cut on a black basalt stela and now kept in the Louvre

Background

Babylon, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2019, was the seat of the ruler whose law code is the best known document of Mesopotamia. Hammurabi of Babylon reigned from 1792 to 1750 BCE, and the code dates to his reign in the eighteenth century BCE. It is cut in cuneiform on a stela of black basalt more than two metres high, setting out legal cases and their penalties. The top of the stela shows Hammurabi facing Shamash, the god of justice. An Elamite king carried the stela off to Susa in the twelfth century BCE, where Jacques de Morgan found it during his excavations. It is now kept at the Louvre.