The Code of Hammurabi — The First Written Law

If a builder builds a house and it collapses and kills the owner, the builder shall be put to death. If it kills the owner's son, the builder's son shall be put to death. The Code of Hammurabi, carved on an 8-foot black diorite stele in 1754 BCE, contains 282 laws covering commerce, property, family, crime, and slavery. It is not the first law code — the Sumerians had earlier codes — but it is the most complete, the best preserved, and the first to articulate the principle that the law applies to everyone equally within each social class. The stele is in the Louvre. Hammurabi is at the top, receiving the laws from Shamash, the sun god of justice, who is handing them to him directly.

These signs carry the black diorite stele, the sun disc of Shamash, the cuneiform inscription, and the law that preceded Moses by five hundred years.