Law and (Dis)Order in the Ancient Near East

Mesopotamia is often considered to be the birthplace of law codes. In recognition of this fact and motivated by the perennial interest in the topic among Assyriologists, the 59th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale was organized in Ghent in 2013 around the theme “Law and (Dis)Order in the Ancient Near East.” Based on papers delivered at that meeting, this volume contains twenty-six essays that focus on archaeological, philological, and historical topics related to order and chaos in the Ancient Near East.

Written by a diverse array of international scholars, the contributions to this book explore laws and legal practices in the Ur III, Old Babylonian, Middle Assyrian, and Neo-Assyrian periods in Mesopotamia, as well as in Nuzi and the Hebrew Bible. Among the subjects covered are the Code of Hammurabi, legal phraseology, the archaeological traces of the organization of community life, and biblical law. The volume also contains essays that explore the concepts of chaos/disorder and law/order in divinatory texts and literature.

Wide-ranging and cutting-edge, the essays in this collection will be of interest to Assyriologists, especially members of the International Association for Assyriology.

“This handsomely produced proceedings of the 2013 Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in Ghent successfully reflects the main title and theme of the conference, with many of the contributions dealing with legalities and law codes.”—M. J. Geller, Review of Biblical Literature

“This collection is outstanding and brings together a conglomerate of sub-disciplinary essays in ANE studies, all of which are focused upon the motifs of order, disorder, and law. I cannot recommend this book enough.”—Nathan S. French, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Katrien De Graef is Associate Professor of Assyriology and History at Ghent University. She is the author of De la dynastie Simaški au sukkalmaḫat: Les documents fin PE IIB–début PE III du chantier B à Suse and Les archives d'Igibuni: Les documents Ur III du chantier B à Suse.

Anne Goddeeris is Post-Doctoral Researcher and Teaching Assistant of Assyriology at Ghent University. She is the author of The Old Babylonian Legal and Administrative Texts in the Hilprecht Collection Jena and Tablets from Kisurra in the Collections of the British Museum.

Preface

Abbreviations

Program

1. Foreseeing the Future, Classifying the Present: On the Concepts of Law and Order in the Omen Literature

Netanel Anor

2. Le vol à l’époque paléo-babylonienne: L’application de la loi à travers la jurisprudence

Dalila Bendellal-Younsi

3. “Let the Sleeping Dogs Lie” or the Taboo (NÍG.GIG=

ikkibu) of the Sacredness of Sleep as Order and Noise at Night (“tapage nocturne”) as Disorder in Some Ancient Near Eastern Texts

Daniel Bodi

4. Lorsque les généraux prêtent serment . . . : Quelques remarques sur l’usage du serment de loyauté (depuis la documentation d’Ur III jusqu’à l’époque néo- assyrienne)

Daniel Bonneterre

5. Unjust Law: Royal Rhetoric or Social Reality?

Sophie Démarre-Lafont

6. The Vocabulary of Rebellion in Neo-Assyrian Documents

Aline Distexhe

7. Legal Fiction in Emar and Ekalte: A Source of Order or Disorder in the Legal System?

Lena Fijałkowska

8. What the “Man of One Mina” Wanted: Law and Commerce in the Ur III Period

Steven Garfinkle

9. How Ancient Near Eastern Societies Regulated Life in the

Community: Crucial Clues from Archaeology

Mònica Bouso and Anna Gómez-Bach

10. A Variationist Approach to Orthographic and Phonological

Peculiarities of the Language in the Laws of Hammurabi

Rodrigo Hernáiz

11. “For Each Runaway Assyrian Fugitive, Let Me Replace

Him One Hundred- Fold”: Fugitives/Runaways in the Neo- Assyrian Empire

Krzysztof Hipp

12. Perfections of Justice? Measure for Measure Aspirations

in Biblical and Cuneiform Sources

Sandra Jacobs

13. Putting Some Order in Ur III Letter-Orders

Daniele Umberto Lampasona

14. Luminous Oils and Waters of Wisdom: Shedding New Light on Oil Divination

Alex Loktionov and Christoph Schmidhuber

15. (Mis)Translating Gender: The Scribes Couldn’t Have Been

Competent, They Didn’t Go to Yale

Kathleen McCaffrey

16. Rétablir l’ordre par la mort dans les textes législatifs

du début du IIe millénaire av. J.-C

Virginie Muller

17. To Be Guilty at Nuzi

Paola Negri Scafa

18. Fremde Götter—eigene Götter: Zu den neuassyrischen

Götterbeschreibungen

Reettakaisa Sofia Salo

19. “Not Even Her Own Jewelry”: Marital Property in the

Middle Assyrian Laws

JoAnn Scurlock

20. Disorder and Its Agents: The Akkadian Epic of Anzû

Revisited

Dahlia Shehata

21. When the Trial Does Not Work: Pathological Elements

in the Judicial Procedure in the Old Babylonian Period

Cristina Simonetti

22. The Ashurbanipal Library Project at the British Museum

Jon Taylor

23. The Sea and Monarchic Legitimation in the Ancient Near East

Joanna Töyräänvuori

24. Putting Life in Order: The Architecture

of the New Excavations in Kamid el-Loz, Lebanon

Julia Linke and Elisabeth Wagner-Durand

25. Enmity Against Samsu-ditāna

Elyze Zomer

Contributors

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Chapter1