Royal Head, known as the Head of Hammurabi
Unknown · First Dynasty of Babylon or slightly earlier, c. 1800 BC
A bearded man's head, only fifteen centimetres high, wears the round royal cap with a thick brim that Mesopotamian kings adopted around 2000 before our era. The stone is a dark gabbro, polished smooth, and the face is worn by time, yet the expression survives: heavy-lidded eyes, hollow cheeks, and a mouth set in something close to weariness. The beard is arranged in rows of curls, the hair rolls up under the cap, and small ringlets fall at the nape of the neck. It is one of the most human faces to survive from ancient Mesopotamia.
The head has long been called Hammurabi, the king of Babylon whose law code stands in this room, but the museum's own record is cautious. Details of the beard, the hair on the forehead and the ringlets at the neck point to a date a little before his reign, so the sitter is more likely one of the princes who ruled a Mesopotamian city in the generation before him. The head was made in Babylonia and found at Susa in Iran, carried there as war booty by the Elamites. It came to the Louvre through the French excavations of Susa.
Did You Know? The tired, lined face is so individual that it has been read for a century as a true portrait, yet no one can say with certainty whose it is.
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