What Louvre department houses the Code of Hammurabi?
Answer
Department of Near Eastern Antiquities
The Louvre’s Department of Near Eastern Antiquities houses the Code of Hammurabi.
The famous object is a large black-basalt stele inscribed in cuneiform. It was created during the reign of Hammurabi, king of Babylon, around the 18th century BCE, and records a collection of legal decisions and regulations. The surviving text contains 282 laws.
French archaeologist Jacques de Morgan’s expedition discovered the stele at Susa, in present-day Iran, in 1901–1902. It had been carried there centuries earlier as war booty by an Elamite ruler, so its discovery place is not the same as its Babylonian place of origin. The Louvre has displayed it since 1904.
The department’s name can cause confusion because the stele is Babylonian rather than “Near Eastern” in a modern political sense. The Louvre classifies it by the ancient Near Eastern civilizations it represents. It is also often called the “Code,” although it is better understood as a royal law collection than as a modern legal code.