Hammurabi

About Hammurabi

Hammurabi, reigning over Babylonia from approximately 1810 to 1750 BCE, is a pivotal figure in political and legal history, securing him the #270 rank in MIT's Historical Popularity Index. As the sixth king of the First Babylonian Dynasty, his enduring legacy is the Code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest and most complete written legal codes, establishing standardized laws and penalties that profoundly influenced subsequent jurisprudence across the ancient Near East.

Despite this foundational historical importance, Hammurabi's modern internet presence lags significantly behind his influence, suggesting an attention gap. In 2025, his Wikipedia pages accumulated 332K views, putting his attention at approximately 1x his expected level relative to his historical rank. For context, this is vastly overshadowed by contemporaries in the comparison pool like Akhenaten (#337 importance), who garnered 746K views, or figures from later eras like Herod the Great (#503 importance) with 1.2M views. This indicates that while his legal contributions are monumental, they do not translate into comparable digital mindshare in the modern age.

His year-over-year view change was a minor decline of -7.9%, though his first quarter versus third quarter momentum showed a slight positive swing of +8%, suggesting a small, fluctuating level of contemporary digital curiosity.