Code of Hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi is a code of laws dating to 1790 BCE. As the name implies, the laws were written during the reign of King Hammurabi.

Though it is not the oldest collection of laws known, it predates the Bible by a wide margin.

The code is primarily concerned with setting out a just punishment for any given crime. It is from the code that we get the phrase "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."