UR-NAMMU, Code of. - A legislative text, deciphered in 1952, which today can be considered the oldest known "code" of law, and already attests not only to a long tradition of law, but even of reforms of the law, and proves the coherent juridical tradition of Sumerian and Akkadian Mesopotamia (v. HAMMURABI).

Its author is King Ur-Nammu ("servant of the goddess Nammu," the primordial Ocean conceived as universal mother), founder of the third dynasty of Ur (ca. 2050-ca. 1950 B.C.).

It contains (in the preface) principles of law of socially valuable character: "that the orphan, the widow not become the prey of the rich," "let him who has a shekel of silver not become the prey of him who has a mina (= 60 shekels)." Only five of the laws are decipherable: art. 1 establishes the ordeals of the River; art. 2 the return of the slave to his master; arts. 3-5 the compensations on account of certain cases of bodily injury. The absence of the law of retaliation (v.), so characteristic of Middle Assyrian law, widespread also in the Code of Hammurabi and in the legislation of the Pentateuch, is due to the effort to humanize the law; in this the new code agrees, as far as can now be judged, with arts. 42-48 of the Code of Bilalama (found in 1948) and with Hittite law.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: S. N. Kramer, The oldest laws, in The scientific American, 188, 1 (Jan. 1953), pp. 26-28 (with cuneiform text of the law and transcription of a large part of the reverse); P. Nober, Codex U.-N., in Verbum Domini, 31 (1953), pp. 65-69.

Pietro Nober

@incollection{ec12_ur_nammu_codice_di, author = {Nober, Pietro}, title = {Ur-Nammu, codice di}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XII}, pages = {922}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1954}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/ur-nammu-codice-di} }

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Ur-Nammu, Code of

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