Dreros inscription

The Dreros inscription is the earliest surviving inscribed law from ancient Greece.

It was discovered in Dreros, an ancient settlement on the island of Crete, in 1936, and first published by Pierre Demargne and Henri van Effenterre in 1937.

Thirteen stones inscribed with archaic letters were discovered in a Hellenistic cistern in Dreros.

The first three full lines are written in boustrophedon – that is, alternating between right-to-left and left-to-right.

[6] The text dates to the second half of the seventh century BC, and is the oldest surviving Greek law.