Code of Hammurabi 1.750 BC
CODE OF HAMMURABI (1.750 BC)
The Code of Hammurabi (or Code of Hammurabi) is a Babylonian legal text dating from around 1750 BC, and to date the most complete code of laws known from ancient Mesopotamia. It was rediscovered in 1901-1902 in Susa, Iran, engraved on a 2.25-metre-high stele containing almost the entire text in cuneiform script and Akkadian, and is now on display at the Louvre Museum. It is in fact a long royal inscription, with a prologue and an epilogue glorifying the ruler Hammurabi, who reigned over Babylon from around 1792 to 1750 BC, the majority of which consists of court rulings.
Those concerning architects are as follows :
§ 228. If an architect has built a house for another, and has brought it to completion, he shall give him for his gift two shekels of silver for every sar of area.
§ 229. If an architect has built a house for another, and has not made his work solid, if the house built has collapsed, and has killed the master of the house, that architect is liable to death.
§ 230. If it is the child of the master of the house whom he has killed, the child of that architect is to be killed.
§ 231. If it is the slave of the master of the house whom he has killed, he shall give slave for slave to the master of the house.
§ 232. If it was the movable property which he destroyed, he shall restore all that he destroyed, and because he did not make the building solid, and it collapsed, he shall restore the ruined house at his own expense.
§ 233. If an architect has built a house for someone, and has not solidly based his work, if a wall falls, that architect shall strengthen that wall, at his own expense.
source: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Loi_de_Hammourabi