About 600 years before the reign of Hammurabi, Urukgina led an uprising against the tyrannical ruler of Lagash. The account of this revolt already contains the concepts of individual liberty (and the oldest known word for “liberty”) and private property.

Among the very oldest existing stories in human history, The Epic of Gilgamesh poses many of the same questions with which people have grappled for the subsequent six thousand years: Why ae we here? What is a good life? Can we be free?

Considered the promulgator of the Mosaic Law, ultimately based on the divinely revealed Ten Commandments. Emerging roughly a thousand years after the Code of Hammurabi, the two law codes bear many similarities, as well as significant differences.