UrNammu

Ur-Nammu (also Uru-namma) was a Sumerian king who founded the Third Dynasty of Ur, ruling in southern Mesopotamia toward the end of the 3rd millennium BCE. Based on the Sumerian King List and archaeological evidence, his reign is dated to roughly 2112–2095 BCE. He established Ur as the capital of a centralized southern Mesopotamian state and laid the foundations for the Ur III period, which his successors would expand.

Building activity and administrative reforms are attributed to him. He pursued projects that expanded temples and ziggurats and worked to strengthen the royal bureaucracy, tax collection, and military organization. These efforts contributed to reasserting centralized authority after earlier political fragmentation in the region and helped set the stage for later governance under his successors.

The Code of Ur-Nammu is one of the oldest known law codes, dating to around 2100 BCE. The surviving copies are fragmentary and come from sites such as Nippur. The prologue presents Ur-Nammu as a lawgiver who established a system of justice and order. The code prescribes penalties for various offenses, often involving monetary fines or corporal punishment rather than a fixed set of punishments, and it predates the better-known Code of Hammurabi by several centuries.

Ur-Nammu died in the late 21st century BCE and was succeeded by his son Shulgi, who continued the centralization of power and consolidation of the empire. The Ur III dynasty, founded by Ur-Nammu, is remembered for its bureaucratic administration, monumental construction, and the revival of Sumerian culture and institutions that influenced Mesopotamian governance for centuries.