"The code is inscribed on a tall black-basalt stele that was carried off as booty to Susa [Persian capital] in 1157 B.C. ...  At the top is a relief depicting Hammurabi in the presence of the flame-shouldered sun-god Shamash.  The king raises his hand in respect.  The god bestows on Hammurabi the authority to rule and to enforce the laws...

    The sculptor depicted Shamash in the familiar convention of combined front and side views, but with two important exceptions.  His great headdress with its four pairs of horns is in true profile, so that only four, not all eight, of the horns are visible.  And the artist seems to have tentatively explored the notion of foreshortening -= a device for suggesting depth by representing a figure or object at an angle, rather than frontally or in profile.  The god's beard is a series of diagonal rather than horizontal lines, suggesting its recession from the picture plane."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. I, pp. 29 - 30

    "In the early eighteenth century B.C., King Hammurabi of Babylon formulated a comprehensive law code for his people. ... Hammurabi was following the tradition his Sumerian predecessors established.  Two similar earlier law codes survive in part, but Hammurabi's laws are the only ones known in great detail, thanks to the chance survival of a tall and narrow stele depicting Hammurabi receiving the measuring rod and line from the god Shamash.  The rod and line symbolize the authority to measure people's lives, that is, to render judgments.  The sculptor thus informed viewers that Hammurabi had the god-given authority to enforce the laws spelled out on the stele.  The judicial code, written in Akkadian, was inscribed in thirty-five hundred lines of cuneiform characters.  Hammurabi's laws goverened all aspects of Babylonian life, from commerce and property to murder and theft to marital infidelity, inheritance, and the treatment of slaves."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. I, p. 30

   "[What follows is...] only a small sample of the infractions described and the penalties imposed (which vary with the person's standing in society).

If a man puts out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.

If he kills a man's slave, he shall pay one third of a mina.

If someone steals property from a temple, he will be put to death, as will the person who receives the stolen goods.

If a man rents his boat, and the boat is wrecked, the renter shall replace the boat with another.

If a married woman dies before bearing any sons, her dowry shall be repaid to her father, but if she gave birth to sons, the dowry shall belong to them.

If a man's wife is caught in bed with another man, both will be tied up and thrown in the water."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. I, p. 30