It is commonly referred to as the Law Code of Hammurabi, but some experts argue it's not really a law code at all.

BBC: 10 things readers want in a history of the world

It does however provide an incomparable insight into life and justice during King Hammurabi's reign (1792-1750BC) as first ruler of the Babylonian Empire.

BBC: 10 things readers want in a history of the world

Even before the Gulf war, Mr Hussein hired Muhammad Ghani, Iraq's most prominent sculptor, to churn out a statuary sequence of the region's indigenous rulers from Hammurabi to himself.

ECONOMIST: Monumental

There were precursors to Hammurabi's laws, explains Dr Frances Reynolds, Assyriology expert at Oxford University, but the stele and 130, 000 clay tablet documents from the period establish the king as a "fantastic administrator".

BBC: 10 things readers want in a history of the world

This action is both a commentary on our Twitter-addled attention spans and a classic embodiment of a Wall Street law so old that Hammurabi himself may have written it: Buy on the rumor, sell on the news.

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