Code of Ur-Nammu
composition: probableauthorship: traditional
witness: fragmentary Old Babylonian copies from Nippur and Ur; no contemporary Ur III original survives
Among the earliest surviving law codes, it argues that a king's legitimacy rests on measurable fairness, standardized weights, protected widows and orphans, and monetary compensation for injury rather than physical retaliation.
- earliest known law code
- monetary compensation over physical retaliation
- royal justice as divine mandate
- standardized weights and measures
Predating Hammurabi's code by roughly three and a half centuries, the Sumerian-language Code of Ur-Nammu survives only in fragmentary Old Babylonian copies, principally from Nippur and Ur, opening with a prologue crediting the king's justice to the gods Nanna and Utu before listing around forty surviving provisions. The surviving laws frequently prescribe monetary compensation, for example a fixed silver payment for cutting off another man's foot, rather than the physical retribution of Hammurabi's later lex talionis, although the tablets are fragmentary and the code should not be treated as a complete criminal code.
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