Near Eastern Antiquities
Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, Assyria, and Achaemenid and Sasanian Persia — the civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and the ancient Near East.
Code de Hammurabi1ère dynastie de Babylone : Hammurabi
Code de Hammurabi1ère dynastie de Babylone : Hammurabi
The architecture of the ancient state: Mesopotamia, Elam, and Persia.
ssembled largely through nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French diplomatic excavations in Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Iran, this department documents the emergence of urbanism, monumental statecraft, and written law.
Works such as the basalt Stele of Hammurabi—inscribed with 282 legal rulings under the gaze of Shamash—and the colossal alabaster winged bulls from Khorsabad were built to project legal authority and royal invulnerability. The collection balances these monumental assertions of empire against the mundane administration of clay receipts, foundation deposits, and votive sculpture.
