The oldest surviving written legal code of any significance — Babylonian king Hammurabi's 282 laws inscribed on a stele, establishing the principle that rulers govern by law, not just arbitrary decree.
Law as technology: the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1754 BCE) is significant not for the content of its specific laws (many are brutal by modern standards) but for the institutional innovation it represents: written, public, consistent law that the ruler claims to apply to all. The prologue frames Hammurabi as shepherd of his people, not arbitrary tyrant. The principle of lex talionis ('an eye for an eye') is actually a constraint on punishment — limiting revenge to proportionality. As the most complete early legal code, it documents the full range of Babylonian commercial, family, and criminal law.
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