Discovered in 1901 at Susa, Iran by the French archaeologist Jacques de Morgan, the stele had been carried there from Babylon as plunder by Elamite raiders in the 12th century BCE. Below the crown, nearly 4,000 lines of Akkadian cuneiform set out 282 rulings on family, property, slavery, trade, medicine, and violence.

What matters here is not only the text. The relief above visualises the divine source of law: the seated god Shamash extends the rod and ring of authority to a standing, attentive Hammurabi. This image distils the core of Mesopotamian royal art: the king does not author law, he receives it from the god and passes it on.

The figural language — profile head, three-quarter shoulders, the carefully curled beard — belongs to the mature phase of Mesopotamian relief, and will feed the Assyrian palace reliefs of the next millennium. The stele is now in the Louvre in Paris.