<P> Some notions of righteousness present in ancient law and religion are sometimes retrospectively included under the term "human rights". While Enlightenment philosophers suggest a secular social contract between the rulers and the ruled, ancient traditions derived similar conclusions from notions of divine law, and, in Hellenistic philosophy, natural law . </P> <P> The reforms of Urukagina of Lagash, the earliest known legal code (ca . 2350 BC), is often thought to be an early example of reform . Professor Norman Yoffee wrote that after Igor M. Diakonoff "most interpreters consider that Urukagina, himself not of the ruling dynasty at Lagash, was no reformer at all . Indeed, by attempting to curb the encroachment of a secular authority at the expense of temple prerogatives, he was, if a modern term must be applied, a reactionary ." Author Marilyn French wrote that the discovery of penalties for adultery for women but not for men represents "the first written evidence of the degradation of women". The oldest legal codex extant today is the Neo-Sumerian Code of Ur - Nammu (ca . 2050 BC). Several other sets of laws were also issued in Mesopotamia, including the Code of Hammurabi (ca . 1780 BC), one of the most famous examples of this type of document . It shows rules, and punishments if those rules are broken, on a variety of matters, including women's rights, men's rights, children's rights and slave rights . </P> <P> The Northeast African civilization of Ancient Egypt supported basic human rights . For example, Pharaoh Bocchoris (725 - 720 BC) promoted individual rights, suppressed imprisonment for debt, and reformed laws relating to the transferral of property . </P> <P> Some historians suggest that the Achaemenid Persian Empire of ancient Iran established unprecedented principles of human rights in the 6th century BC under Cyrus the Great . After his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, the king issued the Cyrus cylinder, discovered in 1879 and seen by some today as the first human rights document . The cylinder has been linked by some commentators to the decrees of Cyrus recorded in the Books of Chronicles, Nehemiah, and Ezra, which state that Cyrus allowed (at least some of) the Jews to return to their homeland from their Babylonian Captivity . </P>

When did the concept of human rights first emerge