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Urukagina

Urukagina stands as the first recorded reformer who tried to roll back the abuses of power, proclaiming protections for widows, orphans, and the poor against predatory elites. In asserting that rulers exist to curb injustice rather than profit from it, he introduced a foundational idea of liberty: government as a restraint on power, not merely its instrument. In Urukagina’s code preserved on a stone tablet is the first written reference to the concept of liberty, amagi, found next to the inscription of Urukagina on the east wall of the Goodrich Seminar Room.