Ashtray decorated with § 25 of The Code of Hammurabi

A sturdy hand-made ceramic ashtray with the text of one of the laws of The Code of Hammurabi (in modern days known as the § 25). The law specifies the punishment for the one who would loot a burning house. The text translated to English reads as follows: "If a fire had broken out in a house of a (full) citizen and another citizen who had come to the extinguishing lifted his eye towards (i. e. got hankering for) the possessions of the master of the house and took the possessions of the master of the house, that citizen will be casted into this fire." The original text is inscribed on The Stele of Hammurabi which is now deposited in Louvre. The text on the ashtray is written by hand in Old Babylonian in an Old Babylonian cursive cuneiform script. The ashtray is hand-built, fired in a kiln with wood, without glaze. There is my sign on the bottom of the ashtray, also in the cuneiform script.

Size: diameter - 11,5 cm, height - 4 cm

I will enclose a paper with transliteration, transcription, translation to English and with some basic information about the text, the language, the script etc.

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