Hammurabi's Code regulated loans, interest, and banking-like commerce in ancient Babylon.
Created during the reign of Hammurabi, king of Babylon, the law collection was inscribed on a large stone stele in the eighteenth century BCE. It contains rules covering trade, debt, property, wages, contracts, and responsibilities between borrowers and lenders.
Several provisions address loans of grain or silver and specify repayment terms, collateral, and interest. The code therefore offers valuable evidence about organized credit in Mesopotamia, even though Babylon did not have modern banks with branch networks and central-bank functions.
The text is often described as the first written law code, but that claim is too broad: earlier legal collections survive, including the Code of Ur-Nammu. Hammurabi's Code is famous because it is comparatively extensive and well preserved, not because it was literally the first law code.