Some fourteen centuries apart, one carved his code onto a basalt stele before the temple; the other moved a wooden pole to prove the new law meant what it said. Both believed the same thing: law must be public and predictable to become power. They differed on where law comes from, whom it serves — and what happens to the lawgiver himself.
From the gods. The stele’s crown shows the sun god Shamash handing Hammurabi the rod and ring — law’s authority is divine; the king merely administers it.
Made by the ruler. For the Legalists law came from neither gods nor tradition — it is an instrument the sovereign forges. "Take no model from the past"; if old custom blocks the way, remake it.
Public justice: "an eye for an eye" is a cap on vengeance — retaliation may not exceed the injury, and the penalties stand carved in stone for anyone to read.
A rich state and a strong army: rewards for farming and fighting, curbs on merchants, collective liability — every clause aimed at forging Qin into a war machine. Law was the means; strength the end.
He reigned over forty years and died in his bed; the stele survived him — it stands today in the Louvre, the most complete early law code we have.
When his patron Duke Xiao died, Shang Yang fled; an innkeeper turned him away — "by the Lord Shang’s law, no lodging without papers." Caught by his own law, he was torn apart by chariots. The law knew no persons — including its maker.
Two stones answered law’s two founding questions: Hammurabi proved that public rules can cage vengeance; Shang Yang proved that rules enforced without exception can remake a state — sparing not even the lawgiver. Two cornerstones of the rule of law: one by the Euphrates, one by the Wei.