Tablet with the Prologue of the Code of Hammurabi
Unknown · First Dynasty of Babylon, early eighteenth century BC
A clay tablet fourteen centimetres high is covered with one hundred and twenty lines of small cuneiform. The text is familiar: it is the prologue of the Code of Hammurabi, the passage in which the king of Babylon announces that the gods called him to make justice shine in the land and lists the cities he has protected and the temples he has restored. The lines on the tablet correspond to the first three hundred and five cases of writing on the great basalt stele that stands in this room. Hold the two in your mind together: the same words, one version carved for eternity, the other written on a school-sized tablet.
The tablet is more than a copy. Its list of cities and benefactions has gaps compared with the stele, which suggests that it preserves an earlier stage of the text, written before the final version was carved in stone, perhaps as a draft or an intermediate edition. That makes it a rare witness to how a royal inscription was composed. The Louvre acquired the tablet in 1925; it comes from Mesopotamia without a recorded findspot.
Did You Know? The tablet appears to be an earlier draft of the prologue than the version on the famous stele, missing some of the cities that Hammurabi later added to his list.
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