The Code of Hammurabi

It is the second-oldest legal document in the world that regulates trade, marriage, and, surprisingly, price controls. Large sections of the code specify how labor for certain services should be compensated. Rather than focusing solely on punishing wrongdoers, the code appears to protect the vulnerable by ensuring fair wages.

Two interesting laws have endured to this day. The first rule that that if a squatter occupies a property for a certain period without the owner's claim, the property legally becomes the squatter's. The second one covers consumation of marriage. It states that “If a man take a woman to wife, but have no intercourse with her, this woman is no wife to him.