Carved around 1750 BCE on a basalt stele now displayed in the Louvre, the Code of Hammurabi also regulated medicine. A surgeon who healed a free man with a bronze lancet earned 10 shekels of silver, 5 for a commoner and 2 for a slave, paid by the owner. But if the free man died under the knife, the law called for the surgeon's hands to be cut off. Both the fee and the penalty depended on the patient's rank.
Around 2300 BCE, Enheduanna, daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, became high priestess of the Moon god at Ur. She composed hymns to the goddess Inanna and put her name to them. She is the oldest person identified as the author of a literary work, about 1,500 years before Homer.
Squeeze Earth's 4.5 billion years into a single 24-hour day. Homo sapiens shows up around 11:59:54 p.m., roughly six seconds before midnight. All of written history, from Sumerian tablets to today, fits into the final tenth of a second. A cosmic blink.