Hammurabi

Hammurabi ruled Babylon for forty-two years and left the most complete law code to survive from the ancient world. He came to the throne around 1792 BC as the sixth king of an Amorite dynasty ruling a middling city-state in a Mesopotamia divided among several comparable powers. He spent his first three decades on irrigation canals, city walls and temples, and on careful diplomacy — allying with one neighbour against another and switching when it suited. The military expansion came late and fast. From about 1764 BC he defeated a coalition of Elam, Assyria and others, took Larsa in the south, destroyed Mari, and by around 1755 BC controlled the whole of southern Mesopotamia. The code was inscribed on a diorite stele over two metres high, topped by a relief of Hammurabi standing before the sun god Shamash, and set up publicly so that, as the prologue says, the strong should not oppress the weak. It contains 282 provisions in a conditional form — if a man does this, then that follows — covering theft, marriage, divorce, inheritance, wages, medical fees, building standards and slavery. Its penalties are graded by the status of the parties: an offence against a free man is punished more heavily than one against a commoner or a slave. It contains the retaliatory principle of an eye for an eye, and it also fixes prices, sets standards for surgeons and builders, and presumes innocence in some procedures. The stele was carried off to Susa by the Elamites and found there in 1901. He died around 1750 BC. His empire fragmented within a generation of his death.

• Lived: 1810 BCE – 1750 BCE
• Nationality: Iraqi
• Roles: ruler, lawgiver