Although Hammurabi was a great unifier, he never set up a proper bureaucracy to administer the Babylonian Empire. After his death, Babylon was attacked by the Elamites (from Sipur) in the 12th century BC. The Elamites took Hammurabi's stele to
Susa, their capital just east of the Tigris River and north of the Persian Gulf (in today's western Iran). Use the right arrow and the down arrow to locate Susa on this ancient-world map.
In 1901, a French archeological team lead by Jean-Vincent Scheil was working in Susa (known today as Shush, Iran). During the winter of 1901-2, the French team found the stele. It was broken in three pieces. Jean-Vincent Scheil had the stele removed from Susa. It is now restored and in Paris, where it is one of the Louvre's greatest treasures.
The Louvre's official
description of the stele also includes a reference to the headpiece Hammurabi is wearing: "The king wears the royal headpiece like Gudea." To help you understand that phrase, here is an image of the
statue of Gudea, Ruler of Lagash, Telloh. Note how the headpiece of Gudea does, in fact, resemble the headpiece Hammurabi is wearing.
Because Sir Henry Rawlinson, and other scholars, had solved the cuneiform mystery about fifty years before French archeologists found Hammurabi’s stele, Jean-Vincent Scheil was able to translate Hammurabi's laws within six months. It was Scheil who organized the laws as we see them today.