Ur-Nammu

Ur-Nammu founded the Third Dynasty of Ur and issued the earliest law code that survives. He came to power around 2112 BC as a governor of Ur under the king of Uruk, and took over after his overlord was defeated by the Gutians, the mountain people who had overrun Mesopotamia after the Akkadian empire collapsed. He expelled them, defeated Lagash, and reunified Sumer and Akkad under a single administration for the first time in a century. He rebuilt on a scale that is still visible. The ziggurat at Ur, a stepped platform of mud brick faced in baked brick set in bitumen, is the best preserved in Mesopotamia, and he built comparable ones at Uruk, Eridu and Nippur. He restored temples, dug canals and organised the irrigation network. He standardised weights and measures and the calendar. His law code, surviving in later copies, predates Hammurabi's by about three centuries. It differs from it in a way that matters: where Hammurabi prescribes retaliation in kind, Ur-Nammu's provisions assess monetary compensation for injuries — a specified weight of silver for a broken bone, a severed foot, a knocked-out tooth — while reserving death for murder, robbery and adultery. Its prologue states that he ensured the orphan was not given over to the rich, the widow to the powerful, or the man of one shekel to the man of one mina. He was killed in battle against the Gutians, and a Sumerian lament describes the shock at a king dying abandoned on the field. His dynasty lasted about a century and produced the most documented bureaucracy of the ancient world.

• Lived: 2112 BCE – 2095 BCE
• Nationality: Sumerian
• Roles: ruler