Summary

Almost 4,000 years ago, a young king named Hammurabi inherited the small and unimportant city of Babylon in the region of Mesopotamia, now in present-day Iraq. Over his lifetime, Hammurabi expanded Babylon in size and in importance, making the city the most important in the region by the time of his death. It would remain so for more than 1,000 years. Though Hammurabi was a politician, a diplomat, and a warrior, he is remembered mostly for his code of law, the tall monument of stone inscribed with hundreds of legal rulings that influenced the future laws of the region and then of the Western world. Hammurabi explores the life and times of a ruler known as “The King of Justice” through the king’s own words and those of legal and historical documents and literature of the time.

Specifications

Full-color and black-and-white photographs and illustrations. Maps. Chronology. Further reading. Index.

About the Author(s)

Judith Levin has worked for 20 years as an editor and a freelance writer. She is the author of a number of biographies, as well as books for children and teens on history and science. She currently resides in New York City.

Introduction by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities, City University of New York; winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History and for Biography