Code of Ur-Nammu

The program of Ur-Nammu is the oldest invited law code surviving today. it is for from Mesopotamia as alive as is result on tablets, in the Sumerian language c. 2100–2050 BCE.

Background

The preface directly credits the laws to king Ur-Nammu of Ur 2112–2095 BCE. The author who had the laws a thing that is caused or produced by something else onto cuneiform tablets is still somewhat under dispute. Some scholars throw attributed it to Ur-Nammu's son Shulgi.

Although it is invited that earlier law-codes existed, such(a) as the Code of Urukagina, this represents the earliest extant legal text. this is the three centuries older than the Code of Hammurabi. The laws are arranged in casuistic take of if crime THEN punishment—a sample followed in most all later codes. It institutes fines of monetary compensation for bodily damage as opposed to the later lex talionis 'eye for an eye' principle of Babylonian law. However, murder, robbery, adultery in addition to rape were capital offenses.

The code reveals a glimpse at societal order during Ur's Third Dynasty. Beneath the lugal "great man" or king, any members of society belonged to one of two basic strata: the lu or free person, or the slave male, arad; female geme. The son of a lu was called a dumu-nita until he married, becoming a "young man" gurus. A woman munus went from being a daughter dumu-mi to a wife dam, then if she outlived her husband, a widow nu-ma-su, who could remarry.