UR-NAMMU, CODE of. - Legislative text, deciphered in 1952, which may today be considered the oldest known “code” of law, and which already attests not only to a long tradition of law, but even to reforms of law, and demonstrates the coherent legal tradition of Sumerian and Akkadian Mesopotamia (v. HAMMURABI (HAMMURAPI)).
Its author was King Ur-Nammu (“servant of the goddess Nammu,” the primordial Ocean conceived as the universal mother), founder of the third dynasty of Ur (c. 2050–c. 1950 B.C.).
It contains (in the preface) socially commendable legal principles: “that the orphan and the widow may not become the prey of the rich,” “that he who has one shekel of silver may not become the prey of him who has one mina (= 60 shekels).” Only five laws are decipherable: art. 1 establishes the ordeals of the River; art. 2 the return of the slave to his master; arts. 3–5 compensation in certain cases of bodily injury. The absence of the law of retaliation (v.), so characteristic of Middle Assyrian law, also widespread in the Code of Hammurabi and in Pentateuchal legislation, is due to the effort to humanize the law; in this respect the new code agrees, insofar as can now be judged, with arts. 42–48 of the Code of Bilalama (found in 1948) and with Hittite law.