The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest known law code surviving today. It is from Mesopotamia and is written on tablets, in the Sumerian language c. 2100–2050 BCE. It contains strong statements of royal power like “I eliminated enmity, violence, and cries for justice.”
Discovery
The first recension of the code (Ni 3191), an Old Babylonian period copy in two fragments found at Nippur, in what is now Iraq, was translated by Samuel Noah Kramer in 1952. These fragments are held at the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. Owing to its partial preservation, only the long prologue and five of the laws were discernible. Kramer noted that luck was involved in the discovery:
In all probability I would have missed the Ur-Nammu tablet altogether had it not been for an opportune letter from F. R. Kraus, now Professor of Cuneiform Studies at the University of Leiden in Holland … His letter said that some years ago, in the course of his duties as curator in the Istanbul Museum, he had come upon two fragments of a tablet inscribed with Sumerian laws, had made a “join” of the two pieces, and had catalogued the resulting tablet as No. 3191 of the Nippur collection of the Museum … Since Sumerian law tablets are extremely rare, I had No. 3191 brought to my working table at once. There it lay, a sun-baked tablet, light brown in color, 20 by 10 centimeters in size. More than half of the writing was destroyed, and what was preserved seemed at first hopelessly unintelligible. But after several days of concentrated study, its contents began to become clear and take shape, and I realized with no little excitement that what I held in my hand was a copy of the oldest law code as yet known to man.
— Samuel Kramer, History begins at Sumer
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