HAMMURABI CODE PRECURSOR

MS 4507
MS Short Title HAMMURABI CODE PRECURSOR
Text LEGAL PRESCRIPTIONS, CONCERNED WITH THE ALIENATION OF IMMOVABLE PROPERTY, AND THE REVERSION TO THE ORIGINAL OWNER OF HOUSES, FIELDS, AND PREBENDS THAT HAD BEEN TRANSFERRED TO ANOTHER PARTY, EVIDENTLY ILLEGALLY
Description MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Larsa, 1774-1763 BC, 1 tablet, 11,8x5,6x2,9 cm, single column, 29 lines in cuneiform script.
Context Ur-Nammu law code, MS 2064.
Commentary In this variation the present tablet resembles the great collections of laws gathered in Hammurabi's name and other similar compilations. The date of this tablet precludes it belonging in the damaged section of Hammurabi's code, which was promulgated a decade after he conquered Larsa and brought to an end the rule of Rim-Sîn. As a set of legal prescriptions that served as models in scribal education it gives a glimpse of the academic sources available to the compiler of that code.
Published Andrew George: Babylonian Literary Texts in the Schøyen Collection, Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology, vol. 10, Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection, Cuneiform texts IV. CDL Press, Bethesda, MD, 2009, text 18, pp. 153-155.
Place of origin Babylonia
Dates 1774-1763 BC