Body of laws revealed by documents written in cuneiform script (see cuneiform writing ).
It includes the laws of the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Elamites, Hurrians, Kassites, and Hittites. Unlike modern legal codes, these ancient codes do not systematically treat all the rules applicable to a given area of law; rather, they treat a variety of matters but often ignore many highly important rules simply because such rules were so grounded in custom that they went unquestioned. The most important of the ancient codes is the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi .