The stele of Hammurabi, therefore, constitutes a horizon of juridical certainty,
even if it is not a Codex of laws. The text reads in a formulation of protasis and
apodosis: ‘if X then Y’ (Bottéro 1992 : 158 ). It is a scientific (and, one could say, even
a metaphysical) formulation of justice. As a monument, its presence articulates the
rule of law as transcendental, even beyond the actual cases mentioned in the more
than three hundred specific examples. It is not each case that is at issue here, but law
itself. Therefore, we can say that the subject of this monument is Law itself, as an
abstract phenomenological concept. The Codex Hammurabi, then, demonstrates the
seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal’s observation, in his Pensées, that
‘the law is based only in the act of its own enunciation’ ( 1966 : 46 ). The monument
of Hammurabi can thus be read as an enunciation of the law. Considered in this way,
one can imagine the reasons that the Elamites took this stele along with the stelae
of earlier kings, despite the fact that the monument’s weight, at four tons, would
have been a great burden to transport. As historical monuments of ancestral kings
that were centuries old, the monuments that were taken to Susa all had a totemic
power for the Babylonians (Bahrani 1995 ). But the Codex Hammurabi was, further-
more, a monument of law, of authority and of sovereign rule itself.
THE VOTIVE PORTRAITA small copper statue dating to the same time as the reign of Hammurabi is a fine
example of the Babylonian votive portrait (see Figure 10. 3 ). The statue stands 19. 6
cm in height. It portrays a man, kneeling on his right knee, and with his right hand
held up to his face, with thumb and forefinger pressed together. The figure is made
out of copper, in the lost wax method, and has a gold leaf covering on the hands and
the face. The man depicted wears a tunic with fringed edges that end at the knees.
A simple woollen cap covers his head. His short beard, close to the face, is indicated
by rows of grid-like curls. The figure kneels upon a base, cast in copper with the
figure. At the front of the base, a small basin is placed for receiving oil or incense.
The base bears a cuneiform inscription. It states that Lu-Nanna, son of Sin Le’i,
dedicated this votive to Martu/Amurru for the life of Hammurabi, king of Babylon
(Frayne 1990 : 360 ). The inscription also states that the statue is a suppliant, made
of copper, and that its face is plated with gold. The text thus describes the statue
and the materials out of which it is made on the base itself. In front of the inscription,
at the right side, below the worshipper, an image appears moulded in relief on the
base. It depicts what can be recognised as an enthroned deity with a multi-tiered
gown and long beard. This is Martu/Amurru. In front of the god is the kneeling
worshipper, in the same pose and with the same gesture as the figure of the statue
itself. The opposite side of the base bears a relief of a recumbent lamb.
The object refers to itself and its own function as a votive offering, in the relief
as in the text. The votive image depicts its own positioning in front of the deity, to
pray for Lu-Nanna and for Hammurabi. The image is an offering to the god. On the
opposite side, the lamb, too, is an offering to the god. The object can therefore be
described as a self-referential image, a type of image that begins with the very earliest
forms of representation in Mesopotamia as exemplified by the famous Uruk Vase of
3100 BC(Bahrani 2001 , 2002 ). This is a sophisticated conception of an image that
has the effect of continuously referring back to itself in an endless process of mirroring.
— Zainab Bahrani —