c. 1750 BCE · Early law

Code of Hammurabi

Babylon

A collection of nearly three hundred laws carved on a stone pillar by the Babylonian king Hammurabi, covering trade, property, family and crimes.

Why it matters

It is one of the oldest surviving written collections of law, and it shows an early idea that laws should be public and written down.

Built on

c. 2100 BCE

Code of Ur-Nammu

Ur (Sumer)

continued a long Mesopotamian tradition of written law collections

Went on to shape

No later text on this timeline is recorded as built on it.

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TheLawToKnow Tools’s timeline lists links of influence only where the borrowing is widely documented. Historians sometimes disagree about how much one text shaped another. It is an educational overview, not legal advice.