Sumer, southern Mesopotamia
The Code of Ur-Nammu, the king of Sumer at the time, is written on tablets in Sumerian and predates the well-preserved, more complete and more well-known Code developed c. 17551750 BCE for Hammurabi, king of the later Babylon, by 300 years. Earlier law-codes existed, such as the also Mesopotamian Code of Urukagina, c. 24th century BCE, a well as some slightly later ones but the texts themselves have only been discovered in still more fragmentary form if at all. The Code of Ur-Nammu decreed "equity in the land...banished malediction, violence and strife, and set the monthly Temple expenses" ...mandated that "The orphan was not delivered up to the rich man; the widow was not delivered up to the mighty man; the man of one shekel was not delivered up to the man of one mina", as well as standardising weights, and regulating trade, slavery, divorce (either way) and penalties for crimes including robbery, rape (either way), perjury, theft, and damage to agriculture.
