[Hammurabi] was the ruler who chiefly established the greatness of Babylon, the world's first metropolis. Many relics of Hammurabi's reign ([1795-1750 BCE]) have been preserved, and today we can study this remarkable King....as a wise law-giver in his celebrated code. . .

[B]y far the most remarkable of the Hammurabi records is his code of laws, the earliest-known example of a ruler proclaiming publicly to his people an entire body of laws, arranged in orderly groups, so that all men might read and know what was required of them. The code was carved upon a black stone monument, eight feet high, and clearly intended to be reared in public view. This noted stone was found in the year 1901, not in Babylon, but in a city of the Persian mountains, to which some later conqueror must have carried it in triumph. It begins and ends with addresses to the gods. Even a law code was in those days regarded as a subject for prayer, though the prayers here are chiefly cursings of whoever shall neglect or destroy the law.

• If anyone ensnares another, putting a ban upon him, but he can not prove it, then he that ensnared him shall be put to death.

• If anyone brings an accusation against a man, and the accused goes to the river and leaps into the river, if he sinks in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river proves that the accused is not guilty, and he escapes unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.

• If anyone brings an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if a capital offense is charged, be put to death.

• If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then the builder shall be put to death.(Another variant of this is, If the owner's son dies, then the builder's son shall be put to death.)

• If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.

• If a man give his child to a nurse and the child dies in her hands, but the nurse unbeknown to the father and mother nurses another child, then they shall convict her of having nursed another child without the knowledge of the father and mother and her breasts shall be cut off.

• If anyone steals the minor son of another, he shall be put to death.

• If a man takes a woman to wife, but has no intercourse with her, this woman is no wife to him.

• If a man strikes a pregnant woman, thereby causing her to miscarry and die, the assailant's daughter shall be put to death.

• If a man puts out the eye of an equal, his eye shall be put out.

• If a man knocks the teeth out of another man, his own teeth will be knocked out.

• If anyone strikes the body of a man higher in rank than he, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-whip in public.

• If a freeborn man strikes the body of another freeborn man of equal rank, he shall pay one gold mina [an amount of money].

• If the slave of a freed man strikes the body of a freed man, his ear shall be cut off.

• If anyone commits a robbery and is caught, he shall be put to death.

• If anyone opens his ditches to water his crop, but is careless, and the water floods his neighbor's field, he shall pay his neighbor corn for his loss.

• If a judge tries a case, reaches a decision, and presents his judgment in writing; and later it is discovered that his decision was in error, and it was his own fault, he shall pay twelve times the fine set by him in the case and be removed from the judge's bench.

• If during an unsuccessful operation a patient dies, the arm of the surgeon must be cut off.