The Lipit-Ishtar Law Code

TL;DR: The discovery of four fragments of a Sumerian law code and the identification of several other tablets as excerpts from this code prove beyond doubt that the credit for this development in the history of civilization belongs not to Hammurabi but to his predecessor by more than a century, Lipit-Ishtar, king of Isin this paper.

Abstract: EVER since the discovery of the famous diorite stele containing the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi it has been generally held that this celebrated king was responsible for the earliest attempt to reduce law to a single uniform and consistent whole. On several occasions, it is true, brief collections of laws in the Sumerian language had been published as excerpts from or portions of pre-Hammurabi law codes-indeed, Lipit-Ishtar himself had been suggested as an early codifier of law-but there was no decisive evidence for these assumptions. It had also been suggested that although some of the individual Sumerian laws known to us may have preceded the First Dynasty of Babylon, many were probably only Sumerian translations of Hammurabi laws for pedagogical purposes. In any case, it was generally believed that at least in his codification of the existing law Hammurabi was responsible for a significant cultural innovation. There is no longer any room for speculation on these points. The recent discovery of four fragments of a Sumerian law code and the identification of several other tablets as excerpts from this code prove beyond doubt that the credit for this development in the history of civilization belongs not to Hammurabi but to his predecessor by more than a century, Lipit-Ishtar, king of Isin. The four fragments which form the basis for the present reconstruction of the Lipit-Ishtar law code were recovered in the course of the Nippur excavations of the University of Pennsylvania almost fifty years ago. As a matter of fact, these fragments of the Sumerian code were actually dug up before the discovery of the Hammurabi code stele. In all probability their unprepossessing appearance and fragmentary condition are responsible for the fact that they have escaped attention for so long. In the meanwhile the Babylonian code, later both in point of origin and of discovery, has held the position of "the world's oldest known law code."