Contemporary c. 1754 BC

282 provisions carved on a 2.25 m diorite stele, topped by Hammurabi receiving the rod and ring from Shamash, god of justice.

Genuinely contemporary - carved in Hammurabi’s own reign, and the stele survives intact in the Louvre after being carried off to Susa as plunder. Not the earliest law code (Ur-Nammu precedes it by ~300 years) and probably not a working statute book: no court record cites it. Its lex talionis provisions run closely parallel to Exodus 21.

Standing: Written within living memory of what it records.