The Stele of Hammurabi

The stele of Hammurabi (1792-1750 bce) is perhaps better known for its legal text than its art historical properties (see Figure 21.8). The tall (2.25 m or 713 feet), irregularly shaped diorite stele was found at Susa in the same area as Naram-Sin’s stele. Its inscribed text is indeed monumental, consisting of a prologue, nearly three hundred individual laws, and an epilogue carved into forty-two columns that encircle the boulder. Though not the oldest preserved law code, it is the most complete, and many of the laws contain the Biblical principle of talion (‘‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’’), which has ensured it a place in schoolchildren’s history books. Only the upper part of the stele’s front remains bare of text; there the surface is carved into

Figure 21.8 Code of Hammurabi. Source: Louvre, Paris/photo # RMN, Herve Lewan-dowski

High relief, showing Hammurabi standing before the enthroned sun god Samas who extends in his right hand a rod and ring, insignia of authority (see Figure 21.9). The manner in which this representational scene was cut away from the original surface of the stone on which the text was inscribed creates the illusion that the text literally forms a platform supporting god and king.

Of the scene itself Frankfort writes, ‘‘it conveys, not only a sense of confrontation, but of communication between the lord of justice and the lawgiver’’ (1954: 59). The composition places Hammurabi at eye level with the god, establishing a reciprocity of visual exchange that can be equated with Babylonian conceptions of the positive regard that emanates from the gods’ gaze and that connects this work back to the Early Dynastic votive statues. Winter quotes an Old Babylonian hymn to the goddess Ishtar which gushes, ‘‘Prosperityis created by her gaze’’ (Winter 2000a: 37). Moortgat

Figure 21.9 Code of Hammurabi, detail of upper relief. Source: Louvre, Paris / photo © RMN, Herve Lewandowski

Pointed out that the rendering of the divine horned headdress in true profile occurred for the first time on this stele; this he considers its ‘‘unique merit’’ for blending ‘‘three-dimensional reality with a two-dimensional image’’ (1969: 86). If, however, illusionism simply for the sake of imitating reality did not take precedence in Mesopotamian artistic philosophy, this shift in perspectival rendering instead may be associated with a renewed and monumentalized emphasis on vision as a critical form of divine communication.