The Codex Hammurapi is a Babylonian collection of legal sayings from the 18th century BC and is one of the most important and best-known literary works of ancient Mesopotamia as well as one of the most important sources of cuneiform legal codes. It has survived on an almost completely preserved 2.25 metre high diorite stele, on several basalt stele fragments from other stelae and in over 30 clay tablet copies from the second and first millennia BC. The 282 legal sentences contained concern constitutional law, property law, law of obligations, marriage law, inheritance law, criminal law, tenancy law and cattle breeding and slavery law. The law of so-called mirror punishment applied to punishment: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" Source: Two hundred and fifty things architects should know, Michael Sorkin