Separate Sections.
Many discussions arose as to the meaning of particular sections. Thus C F. Lehmann(-Haupt) wrote in Klio, vol. iii, pp. 32-41 (1904), on Ein missverstandenes Gesetz Hammurabis, which was also taken as the title of an article by F. E. Peiser in Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, vol. vii, cols. 236-7 (1904). Neither of these scholars can be said to have quite settled the questions they had raised; but the subject of §§ 185-93 was greatly cleared by their thoughtful treatment.
In 1908 M. Schorr contributed to the Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. xxii, pp. 385-92, an article on Die §§ 280-282 des Gesetzbuches Hammurabis, followed, pp. 393-8, by an article of D. H. Müller on Die §§ 280-282 des Kodex Hammurabis.
M. Schorr in 1906 had written in the same journal, vol. xx, pp. 119-23, an article Zum § 27 des Hammurabi-Gesetzes, and in the Vienna Oriental Journal, xx (1906), pp. 314-36, Der § 7 des Hammurabi-Gesetzes.
Br. Meissner has discussed the correct word for a builder in the Code in the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, vol. xv, cols. 38-59 (1912), under the title Zu Hammurapis Gesetz, xix, R. 93.
Die Lücke in der Gesetzes-Stele Hammurapis, by A. Ungnad, in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vi, Heft 5, discussed all the means known to fill the gap as existing in the text, but the new sources named on p. 66 above will very likely suffice to complete the text.
The Structure of the Code.
Considerable weight may ultimately have to be laid on the grouping of the laws by ‘tens’ or ‘fives’. This aspect had been discussed by D. G. Lyon in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xxv, pp. 248-65, as The Structure of the Hammurabi Code (New Haven, Conn., 1904).
C. F. Kent in his excellent work on Israel’s Laws and Legal Precedents (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1907) makes considerable use of a division of Hebrew laws into groups of five or ten, of which the Ten Commandments forms a well-known example. Whether or no these divisions command general assent, we should notice that D. G. Lyon finds repeated evidence of the same grouping in the Code of Hammurabi. This naturally cannot be pressed too far as evidence of dependence. But it is surely non-essential that laws should be arranged in pentads unless we are to suppose that a reference to five fingers as a method of recalling the separate clauses is involved, and would be natural to expect in such cases. But that Israelite fondness for the number seven, shown in their seven-day week as against the Babylonian week of five days, or their partiality for other sacred numbers, did not affect the numbering of the laws may well be significant. If it turn out that these groups of five also correspond in contents, even though they show traces of change, we have a strong argument for dependence which supports any others pointing in the same direction.
The Place of the Code in Comparative Law.
As early as October and November, 1902, there appeared Le Code Babylonien d’Hammourabi in the Journal des Savants (Paris, Hachette), by R. Dareste, giving a luminous account of the subject-matter of the Code, illustrating it by comparison with a number of ancient legislations. He, of course, based his conclusions entirely upon Scheil’s translation, but his work still remains most valuable. In 1903 appeared Schmersahl’s Das älteste Gesetzbuch der Welt: Die Gesetze Hammurabis in the Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung, pp. 111 ff. R. Dareste also published Le Code Babylonien d’Hammourabi in the Nouvelle Revue historique de droit français et étranger (Paris, Larose, January and February, 1903). Hammurapi und das Salische Recht, by H. Fehr (Bonn, Marcus & Weber, 1910), is a very remarkable study.
A first-rate work was G. Cohn’s lecture, Die Gesetze Hammurabis (Zürich, Füssli, 1903). Kohler and Müller (see pp. 67, 69) have to be weighed.
C. Stooss in his article Das babylonische Strafrecht Hammurabis, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Strafrecht, vol. xvi (Basel, Georg, 1903), took up the question of ‘Crimes and Punishments’, on which see also the article with that title by T. G. Pinches in The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, iv, pp. 256 ff.; and Imprisonment, by the same author, iv, pp. 260 ff. Die peinlichen Strafen im Kriegs-und Rechtswesen der Babylonier und Assyrer, by J. Jelitto (Breslau, 1913), adds considerably to the subject. Compare also Zum ältesten Strafrecht der Kulturvölker, by Th. Mommsen and others (Leipzig, Duncker, 1905).
The judicial procedure remains in many points obscure despite the fine Essai sur l’organisation judiciaire de la Chaldée à l’époque de la première dynastie babylonienne, by Ed. Cuq, in the Revue d’Assyriologie, 1910, pp. 65-101, which records most known facts; Commentaire juridique d’un jugement sous Ammiditana, by the same author in the same journal, 1910, pp. 129-38; and again Un procès criminel à Babylone sous le règne de Samsou-iluna, 1911, pp. 173-81. P. Dhorme discussed in the same volume, p. 99, Un appel sous Samsou-iluna. A Legal Episode in Ancient Babylonian Family Life, in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1910, pp. 81-92, 129-42, is by W. T. Pilter.
The tenure of land was elucidated by H. Winckler in Zum babylonisch-chaldäischen Feudalwesen, in Altorientalische Forschungen, i, pp. 497-503. La Propriété foncière en Chaldée, by Ed. Cuq (Paris, Larose, 1907), chiefly deals with later developments; as do the articles by J. OPPERT, Le droit de retrait lignager à Ninive in the Comptes rendus of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (Paris, 1898), and Das assyrische Landrecht in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, xiii, pp. 243-76 (Weimar, 1898).
The position of some classes or castes named will be dealt with under the Lexicography of the Code, pp. 74 ff. The Consecrated Women of the Hammurabi Code is an important essay by D. G. Lyon in the Studies in the History of Religions presented to Crawford Howell Toy (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1912), pp. 341-60. See also Altbabylonische Rechtsurkunden aus der Zeit der Hammurabi-Dynastie, by S. Daiches (Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1903).
The view of law as sworn contract has importance enough to be specially considered. It was early discovered in the so-called contracts which were once regarded as legal decisions. We may refer to Sworn Obligations under Egyptian and Babylonian Law, by E. and V. Revillout, and Sworn Obligations in Babylonian Law by the same authors in The Babylonian and Oriental Record, vol. i, no. 7, and vol. ii, no. 1. A. Ungnad pointed out Eine neue Form der Beglaubigung in altbabylonischen Urkunden in the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, 1906, cols. 163-4. The whole subject was taken up by S. A. B. Mercer in his dissertation on The Oath in Babylonian and Assyrian Literature (Munich, 1911).
The idea underlying the appeal to the ordeal is closely allied to that of the oath, and F. E. Peiser wrote Zum Ordal bei Babyloniern in the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, 1911, cols. 477-9.
The importance of the family in the Code and Babylonian Law in general has led to several monographs. Le Mariage à Babylone, by Ed. Cuq (Paris, Lecoffre, 1905), and Zur Terminologie im Eherecht bei Hammurabi, by D. H. Müller, in the Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, xix, pp. 352-8, deal chiefly with the Code. L. Freund’s Zur Geschichte des Ehegutrechtes bei den Semiten (Vienna, A. Hölder, 1909) chiefly deals with Jewish custom. Liebe und Ehe im alten Orient, by F. Freiherr von Reitzenstein (Stuttgart, Franckh, 1909), devotes pp. 51 to 70 to the Babylonian side. Of course, W. Robertson Smith’s Kinship and Marriage will be consulted in its new edition by S. A. Cook (London, A. & C. Black, 1903).
Closely connected are other questions as to the status of women. Already in 1892 J. Oppert was able to make out much about Liberté de la femme à Babylone in the Revue d’Assyriologie, ii, pp. 89-90. V. Marx discussed Die Stellung der Frauen in Babylonien in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, iv, pp. 1-77.
Slavery in Babylonia was very different from either Roman or modern ideals. As long ago as 1888 J. Oppert had made out much from the legal documents of later times in his article La condition des esclaves à Babylone in the Comptes rendus of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres for that year. Br. Meissner had written a dissertation in 1882, De servitute babylonico-assyriaca (Leipzig), which still deserves to be consulted. M. Schorr wrote Arbeitsruhetage im alten Babylonien in Revue Sémitique, 1912, pp. 398-9.
The questions of guarantee, security, &c., are finely treated by P. Koschaker in his work, Babylonisch-assyrisches Bürgschaftsrecht (Leipzig, Teubner, 1911).
Business in general is well dealt with by Fr. Delitzsch in his Handel und Wandel in Altbabylonien (Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1910). Die Commenda im islamischen Rechte, by J. Kohler (Würzburg, Stahel, 1885), is to be compared.
Aus dem altbabylonischen Recht, by Br. Meissner, in Der alte Orient, vii, Heft 1, 1905 (Leipzig, Hinrichs), is excellent.
On the whole subject of Babylonian law a valuable treatise is P. Koschaker’s article, The Scope and Methods of a History of Assyrio-Babylonian Laws in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1913, pp. 230-43. Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts, and Letters, by the present writer, in The Library of Ancient Inscriptions (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1904), and the articles on Babylonian Law, by the same author, in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. iii, 1910, may be consulted, pp. 115-21, and in The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. The French jurist, Ed. Cuq, in his Notes d’épigraphie et de papyrologie, published in the Nouvelle Revue historique du droit français et étranger (Paris, L. Larose), 1906-1909, discussed many points of Le Droit babylonien au temps de la Première Dynastie de Babylone.
Lexicography of the Code.
Most of the discussions and editions above referred to deal with points in the lexicography. The edition by Ungnad in his Band II, named on p. 68, gives the latest results of the investigations in this domain. A few other works deserving of note will be added here.
The meaning of amêlu was elucidated by H. Winckler in his Altorientalische Forschungen, ii, pp. 312-15, 1901 (Leipzig, Pfeiffer).
The difficult word mushkênu, rendered noble by Scheil and after him by Dareste and others, was given this meaning because the fines and penalties inflicted on him in the Code seemed to be less than those inflicted on the ordinary man. The ideogram used in the Code was not rendered into Semitic Babylonian by Scheil, but first in print by H. Zimmern. A crowd of extraordinary guesses as to the meaning of the term were hazarded, founded on the cognate languages. Thus it was discussed by E. Littmann in Zur Bedeutung von miskên, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, vol. xvii, pp. 262-5 (Strassburg, K. J. Trübner, 1903), who made it out to be leper and by Et. Combe in Babyloniaca, vol. iii, pp. 73-4, who settled the meaning from its use in modern Arabic. The present writer had already anticipated much of this in his Oldest Code and the Notes on the Hammurabi Code, above, p. 70.
The meaning and status of the rîdtsâbê was discussed by S. Daiches, Zur Erklärung des Hammurabi-Codex, in Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 1904-1905, pp. 202-22. Many useful hints will be found in Semitica: Sprach-und rechtsvergleichende Studien, in the Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Klasse der kaiserlichen Akademie in Wien, 1906, cols. 1-88 (Wien, A. Hölder).
The exact way in which the Semitic people of the Hammurabi period exploited the stores of legal knowledge acquired by the Sumerians is still much discussed. So by M. Schorr in his Die altbabylonische Rechtspraxis, published in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. xxiv, pp. 431-61, and again in the Revue Sémitique, 1912, pp. 378-97, Zur Frage der semitischen und sumerischen Elemente im altbabylonischen Rechte. See also Das Sumerische in den Rechtsurkunden der Hammurabi-Periode, by M. Schorr, in the Hilprecht Anniversary Volume, pp. 20-32.
The question whether the Sumerian phrases in the contemporary contracts were read as Semitic or Sumerian has been discussed by A. Poebel in the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, 1911, cols. 241-7, under the title Zur Aussprache der sumerischen Phrasen in den altbabylonischen Rechtsurkunden, and in cols. 373-4 A. Ungnad wrote, under the same title, Eine Berichtigung. M. Schorr replied, cols. 559-61.
The question how far the Hammurabi Code was operative was soon raised. The existence of a very large number of legal documents relating to all manner of transactions seemed likely to afford a ready answer. In 1905 Br. Meissner wrote his Theorie und Praxis im altbabylonischen Recht for the Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, pp. 257-303. The need of a more extended examination made the promise of Kohler and Peiser’s Hammurabi-Gesetz so welcome, see p. 67. Kohler and Ungnad have now fulfilled this by publishing in Heft III-V the whole available material as Übersetzte Urkunden with most valuable Erläuterungen (Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1909-1911). A similar enterprise was undertaken by M. Schorr in Kodeks Hammurabiego a owezesna praktyka prawna, Das Gesetzbuch Hammurabis und die zeitgenössische Rechtspraxis, in the Bulletin de l’Académie des Sciences de Cracovie, followed by Altbabylonische Rechtsurkunden aus der Zeit der I. babylonischen Dynastie in the Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, philosophisch-historische Klasse, 155. Band, 2. Abhandlung, 1907, 160. Band, 5. Abhandlung, 1909, and 165. Band, 2. Abhandlung, 1910 (Vienna, A. Hölder), with transcription, translation, and commentary. Together with Ungnad’s work this should enable any scholar to form a well-founded and independent judgement.
It is natural to inquire what were the laws of that earlier people in Babylonia who preceded the Semites and are now called Sumerians. The Semites took over their legal phrases, see above, and probably with them some of their laws. The Semitic scribes drew up long lists of these Sumerian phrases, many of which they still used in drawing up their legal documents, just as Latin phrases or Norman-French lingered on in our law-books. These phrases they translated, in parallel columns with the Sumerian. Such books of phrases were issued in long series. One such series, usually called Ana Ittishu, was discussed by Br. Meissner in the Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, iv, pp. 301 ff. A great deal of it is published by P. Haupt in vol. i of the Assyriologische Bibliothek; by F. Hommel in his Sumerische Lesestücke; by Fr. Delitzsch in his Assyrische Lesestücke, 3rd edition, 1900, pp. 130-2; and by Meissner in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 1892, vii, pp. 16-32. Pinches gives an account of it in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, iv, p. 256, 1910, where he calls it the Ulutinabishu Series. Not much law can be made out of this scrappy source; but one tablet records a set of regulations which seem to be extracted from a code. They are usually referred to as The Sumerian Family Laws,and are dealt with by T. G. Pinches in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, iv, p. 257, 1910, and by Jeremias in the same work, v, p. 447. A full treatment by P. Haupt is Die sumerischen Familiengesetze in Keilschrift, Transcription und Übersetzung (Leipzig, 1879). Winckler, Cook, Peiser, Ungnad, and most of the writers on the comparative side have quoted them in their above-named works.
It may be doubted whether the so-called Warnings to Kings against Injustice, see T. G. Pinches in his Encyclopaedia article, iv, p. 261, note 1, are so early, or really preserve part of a code. References to legal reforms may be seen in the inscriptions of Urukagina, see L. W. King’s History of Sumer and Akkad, pp. 178-84 and the references, but here again we cannot reconstruct much of the Sumerian law in question.
We have noted the discussion, p. 75, of the way in which Semitic scribes regarded the Sumerian phrases they used.
The conclusion that Hammurabi codified the earlier legislation was natural, and similarities in form suggested that he adopted much of the Sumerian law which was previously in force.
A. T. Clay in the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, xvii, January, 1914 (Leipzig, Hinrichs), writing on A Sumerian Prototype of the Hammurabi Code, has made it clear that some of the laws existed in a Sumerian dress. Hammurabi, as we have already contended, modified the previously existing Sumerian laws, and taking some over bodily, changed others to suit the peculiar prejudices of his subjects and the circumstances of his time. We may soon be able to judge whether Clay’s Sumerian Code, as we may call it, was really early, or only the dress in which Hammurabi’s law appeared in his Sumerian provinces.
We may pass on to notice briefly the chief sources from which it is possible to deduce much of the local customary law throughout the history of Babylonia. It may formally be divided into Temple accounts and contracts, but a detailed classification would demand much more space than we can here afford.
The Temple Accounts.
At all times the great temples of Assyria and Babylonia kept extensive accounts of even daily revenue and expenditure. These accounts were most carefully preserved, being written with special care on well selected clay, and have reached us as a rule in exceptionally fine condition. They give us an immense mass of information, largely consisting of dry and disconnected items, but helping to build up knowledge. The French explorations made by De Sarzec at Telloh resulted in the discovery of an enormous number of documents, mostly accounts kept of the daily expenses and revenues of the vast temples there, from the earliest times down to the Dynasty of Ur. One huge find of some 30,000 tablets of the latter period were stolen by Arabs, and have been sold in large quantities to European and American Museums, or to private collectors. Few of them are legal documents, or concerned with other than Temple business, but their contents illustrate the state of society in the times before the First Dynasty of Babylon. They are most important for determining the extent to which the Code of Hammurabi was dependent on, or influenced by, the Sumerian Law of earlier days.
Of those which reached Constantinople, the products of the season of 1894 consisted entirely of tablets of the Dynasty of Ur, and were classified by V. Scheil. The tablets found in 1895 were catalogued by Thureau-Dangin, and are mostly of the Dynasty of Akkad. The finds of 1900 are all of the Dynasty of Ur. These are all now catalogued and largely published in the Inventaire des Tablettes de Tello conservées au Musée Ottoman (Paris, E. Leroux, 1910), by Fr. Thureau-Dangin and H. de Genouillac.
But by far the largest part of the finds came into the hands of dealers, and so into the museums of Europe and America; and these were published sooner. Thus in 1891 some were reproduced by photography in De Sarzec’s Découvertes en Chaldée (Paris, E. Leroux), plate 41. These tablets, preserved in the Louvre, were, however, properly presented by the Sultan. A great many thus acquired were published by Thureau-Dangin as Tablettes chaldéennes inédites in the Revue d’Assyriologie, iv, pp. 69-86 (Paris, E. Leroux, 1897). In the same journal, v, pp. 67-102, 1902, he gave a Notice sur la troisième collection de tablettes, and in 1903 published a Recueil de tablettes chaldéennes (Paris, E. Leroux), which gave improved editions of the above. Other articles appeared in the Revue d’Assyriologie, iii, pp. 118-46 (1895), iv, pp. 13-27 (1897), and in Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions for 1896, by the same writer, pp. 355-61. These works not only made available large numbers of texts, but also gave most important contributions to their understanding.
In 1896 H. V. Hilprecht published three of the tablets in the Imperial Ottoman Museum at Constantinople in his Old Babylonian Inscriptions, part II, nos. 124-6 (Philadelphia, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society).
In Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets, etc., in the British Museum, vols. i, iii, v, vii, ix, x (London, British Museum), copied by L. W. King, 1896-1900; Ancient Babylonian Temple Records, copied by W. R. Arnold (New York, Columbia University Press, 1896); Old Babylonian Temple Records, are texts copied and discussed by R. J. Lau (New York, Columbia University Press, 1906); Haverford Library Collection of Cuneiform Tablets or Documents from the Temple Archives of Telloh, part I, 1905; part II, 1909; part III, 1914 (Philadelphia, J. C. Winston Co.), several hundreds of these texts appeared.
G. Reisner, in 1902, published Tempelurkunden aus Telloh (Berlin, W. Spemann), being the collection presented to the Berlin Museum by H. Simon. H. Radau in his Early Babylonian History (New York, 1903), published and discussed a number purchased for the E. A. Hoffmann collections in the New York Metropolitan Museum. T. G. Pinches dealt with Some Case Tablets from Telloh in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1905, pp. 815-29, and, in 1909, published The Amherst Tablets, being an Account of the Babylonian Inscriptions in the Collection of the Right Honourable Lord Amherst of Hackney, at Didlington Hall, Norfolk (London, Quaritch). H. de Genouillac published and discussed some texts of H. Schlumberger’s as Tablettes d’Ur in the Hilprecht Anniversary Volume, pp. 137-41. In 1911 T. G. Pinches dealt with some Tablets from Telloh in Private Collections in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, pp. 1039-62, and St. Langdon gave Some Sumerian Contracts in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 1911, pp. 205-14. V. Scheil contributed a series of Notes d’épigraphie et d’archéologie assyriennes to the Recueil de Travaux (Paris, E. Bouillon), vol. xvii, 1895, pp. 28-30; xviii (1896), pp. 64-74; xix (1897), pp. 44-64; xx (1898), pp. 55-72, 200-10; xxi (1899), pp. 26-9, 123-6; xxii (1900), pp. 27-39, 78-80, 149-61; xxiii (1901), pp. 18-23; xxiv (1902), pp. 24-9, in which among other priceless records he gave many extracts from the Telloh texts, some entire texts, and much elucidation of the same. Special studies devoted to the subject are: H. de Genouillac’s Textes juridiques de l’époque d’Ur in the Revue d’Assyriologie, 1911, pp. 1-32; H. Deimel’s Studien zu C. T., I, III, V, VII, IX, X, in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 1911, pp. 328-45; Sátilla, textes juridiques de la seconde dynastie d’Our in Babyloniaca, iii, 1910, pp. 81-132, by F. Pelégaud, and Di-tilla, textes juridiques chaldéens de la seconde dynastie d’Our, by C. H. Virolleaud (Poitiers, A. Boutifard, 1903); Comptabilité chaldéenne, by the same author, same place and publisher, 1903, is a series of valuable essays. G. A. Barton gave A Babylonian Ledger Account of Reeds and Wood in the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, 1911, pp. 322-7, and in the same journal, 1912, pp. 207-10, another text of the same sort.
Tablets of the same period have been found by the thousand at Jokha, the ancient Umma, for centuries the hereditary foe of Telloh, and at Dréhem, which seems to have been a closely dependent city of the Nippur district. They have already found their way in large numbers to Europe and America.
Tablets from Jokha were first noticed by V. Scheil in his Notes d’épigraphie et d’archéologie assyrienne in Recueil de Travaux, vol. xix, pp. 62-3, 1897, who showed that Jokha was Umma. Fr. Thureau-Dangin in the Revue d’Assyriologie (viii), 1911, pp. 152-8, who deals with Les noms des mois sur les tablettes de Djokha, gives a number of these texts from the time of the Dynasties of Akkad and Ur. St. Langdon has published A tablet from Umma in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1913, pp. 47-52. In contents these are very similar to the tablets from Telloh or Dréhem, and seem to have been often confused with them by the dealers.
St. Langdon published Tablets from the Archives of Dréhem (Paris, Geuthner, 1912); L. Delaporte, Tablettes de Dréhem in Revue d’Assyriologie , 1911, pp. 183-98; P. Dhorme, Tablettes de Dréhem à Jérusalem in same journal, pp. 39-63; H. de Genouillac, Tablettes de Dréhem, publiées avec inventaire et tables. Musée du Louvre (Paris, Geuthner, 1911), and La trouvaille de Dréhem, Étude avec un choix de textes de Constantinople et Bruxelles (Paris, Geuthner, 1911); see also Some Sumerian Contracts, by St. Langdon, in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 1911, pp. 205-14. A useful summary is Some Published Texts from Dréhem, by I. M. Price, in the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, 1912, pp. 211-15.
Sumerian Administrative Documents from the Second Dynasty of Ur, from the Temple Archives of Nippur, vol. iii, part i of Series A, Cuneiform Texts, in Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1910), deals with closely related texts.
E. Huber wrote Die altbabylonischen Darlehenstexte aus der Nippur-Sammlung im K. O. Museum in Konstantinopel as a contribution to the Hilprecht Anniversary Volume, pp. 189-222. V. Scheil in his Notes d’épigraphie made some entries about those Nippur texts which reached Constantinople, see p. 78.
An allied text was given by P. Dhorme in the Journal Asiatique, 1912, pp. 158-9, as Un brouillon d’inventaire.
The whole subject of these Temple Records is being studied by H. Torczyner, who has started with Vorläufige Bemerkungen to Altbabylonische Tempelrechnungen, umschrieben und erklärt in the Anzeiger der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, 1910, pp. 136-40.
On the general scope and purpose of the Temple Records, see the article on Babylonian Book-keeping, by A. T. Clay, in the American Journal of Archaeology, 1910, pp. 74 ff.
The very ancient texts from Telloh, usually called Pre-Sargonic, have been issued, beside Thureau-Dangin’s Recueil de Tablettes chaldéennes, by Allotte de la Fuÿe as Documents présargoniques (Paris, E. Leroux, 1908, 1909). Sumerian Tablets in the Harvard Semitic Museum was begun, by Mary Ida Hussey, with part 1 in 1912. Two Tablets of the Period of Lugalanda were published by St. Langdon in Babyloniaca, 1911, pp. 246-7. Much the most useful publication, however, is Tablettes sumériennes archaïques, by H. de Genouillac (Paris, Geuthner, 1909), which gives not only texts, but transcriptions and such translation as is possible, and also an admirable account of all they imply, as to law and custom. A considerable amount of this is strikingly like the later laws. In The Amherst Tablets (London, Quaritch, 1908), T. G. Pinches published a few more. The bulk of them still await publication.
Ancient Bullae and Seals of Shirpurla by N. P. Likhatscheff, published in the Imperial Russian Archaeological Society’s Classical Section IV, pp. 225-63, 1907, written in Russian, gives a number of similar tablets. Oriental Antiquities, by M. V. Nikolsky, in the Oriental Commission of the Imperial Moscow Archaeological Society, iii, Series 2, 1908, has over 300 such texts. These appear to belong to the same period.
Some valuable discussions will be found in État des décès survenus dans le personnel de la déesse Bau sous le règne d’Urukagina, by Allotte de la Fuÿe, in the Revue d’Assyriologie, 1910, pp. 139-46.
In his Recueil de Tablettes chaldéennes (Paris, E. Leroux, 1903) Fr. Thureau-Dangin gave as his third series a number of texts of the Sargonic period, dated in the reigns of Shargani-shar-ali and Naram-Sin. A number more are published or described in the Inventaire des tablettes de Tello conservées au Musée Impérial Ottoman, Tome I, by Thureau-Dangin, 1910, and Tome II, by H. de Genouillac, 1911, and several other collections are to be published shortly.
The very early texts from the ancient Shuruppak which have reached the Louvre were published by Thureau-Dangin in his Recueil named above, and in the Revue d’Assyriologie, vi (1904), pp. 143-54, he wrote Contrats archaïques provenant de Shuruppak, with the intention of deciphering and explaining them as far as possible.
Contract Literature.
Many texts published in the above collections of Temple Accounts are bonds, deeds of sale, even legal decisions, &c., and really come under the head of contracts. But even among the collections of contracts some accounts have been published, and it is scarcely necessary here to quote the same book under both heads.
Curiously enough the first contracts to attract attention were of an early date. Loftus found at Senkereh a number of most interesting case-tablets, the principal document being invariably enclosed in a clay envelope which, as was subsequently discovered, was inscribed with an abstract or practical duplicate of the principal document. Many speculations arose as to their purpose. Some regarded them as a substitute for money, or cheques, banknotes in clay (so Layard in 1853), and other weird guesses. George Smith first recognized their meaning and value for history by publishing their dates, the names which the Babylonians gave to the years, calling them after some prominent event.
Discovered in 1854, they were first published in 1882 by J. N. Strassmaier. Owing to some misapprehension, as given in Layard’s Nineveh and Babylon, p. 496, despite the clear statement on pp. 270-72 of Loftus, Travels and Researches in Chaldea and Susiana, they were called Die altbabylonischen Verträge aus Warka in the Beilage to the Verhandlungen des V. internationalen Orientalistischen Congresses zu Berlin, 1881. They were accompanied by a list of words and names. E. and V. Revillout discussed them most interestingly in Une Famille de commerçants de Warka. They proved to be of the time of Hammurabi and his son Samsu-iluna after these kings had expelled Rîm-Sin from the South of Babylonia. But there were several dated in the reign of Rîm-Sin, and in those of Sin-idinnam and Nûr-adad, kings who had preceded him. Thus they showed how, despite changes of dynasty, the civil life of the subject population went on undisturbed, and customs changed but little. They show how closely the Code pictures the daily life of the people. As most illustrative of the Code, constituting a contemporary commentary on its regulations and consisting chiefly of examples of the same cases as there considered, we may here group in order of publication the collections from the First Dynasty of Babylon.
Inscribed Babylonian Tablets in the possession of Sir Henry Peek, Bart., 1888, contained a few texts of this period, copied, transcribed, and translated by T. G. Pinches. This made considerable advances, but there was not yet enough material to solve many obscurities. These tablets came from Sippara.
It was evident that the only hope of understanding such technical documents lay in the publication of further material, so that by comparison of similar passages some information could be obtained as to alternative readings and phrases.
In 1893 a great advance was made by Meissner with his Beiträge zum altbabylonischen Privatrecht (Leipzig, Hinrichs), which gave a full transliteration and translation of 111 texts, all carefully published in autography. Full notes and invaluable comments made this a standard work. The texts were chiefly from tablets found at Sippara, and stored in the British Museum, and at Berlin where a large quantity had been purchased. Meissner also reproduced some of the Warka texts.
In the fourth volume of Schrader’s Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, 1896, F. E. Peiser gave a collection of contract texts in transcription and translation, arranged in chronological order. He included thirty-one texts of this period (Berlin, Reuther and Reichard). These were called Texte juristischen und geschäftlichen Inhalts, and marked a further advance in treatment. In this year also began the great series of publications called Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets, &c., in the British Museum, printed by order of the Trustees. Vols. ii, iv, vi, and viii (1896, 1897, 1898, 1899), contain copies of no fewer than 395 texts mostly of this period, a most valuable addition to our knowledge of the subject. They were from the practised hand of T. G. Pinches, who gave in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1897 and 1899, some transliterations and translations with notes and comments on fifteen of them. They were all Sippara tablets.
In 1902 appeared Une saison de fouilles à Sippar (Le Caire, Institut Français), in which V. Scheil gave an account of his explorations at Abu Habba, the ancient Sippara, in 1892-1893, and many texts in a preliminary form, with transcription, translation, and comments, thus making known a most valuable supplement to the earlier publications of First Dynasty tablets.
In 1906 Th. Friedrich published in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vol. v, a number of texts from the tablets found by Scheil at Sippara, and then preserved in the Museum at Constantinople, as Altbabylonische Urkunden aus Sippara (Leipzig, Hinrichs), which completed Scheil’s work in many ways.
In 1906, A. H. Ranke published Babylonian Legal and Business Documents from the time of the First Babylonian Dynasty, as vol. vi, part 1, of the Series A, Cuneiform Texts, of the Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania). They probably all came from Sippara, though two may be from Babylon, unless the king was then holding Court in Sippara.
In 1908 J. É. Gautier gave us Archives d’une famille de Dilbat au temps de la Première Dynastie de Babylon (Le Caire, Institut Français), with transcriptions and translations of sixty-six tablets from a new site, which the contents of the texts certainly prove to be that of the ancient city of Dilbat. The work was well done, but needed revision by fresh material.
About this time native diggers brought to light fresh material from several new sites. Especially valuable were the texts from Kish, Larsa, Opis, Babylon, and Shittab. These were eagerly acquired by the various Museums, and shortly gave rise to a crop of fresh publications.
In 1909 came Babylonian Legal and Business Documents from the time of the First Dynasty of Babylon, by A. Poebel, being vol. vi, part 2, of Series A, Cuneiform Texts, of the Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania). Again a fresh site, the ancient Nippur, yielded its contribution. Here most of the tablets exhibit the old Sumerian phraseology.
A. Ungnad published, in 1909, a large number of texts from tablets in the Berlin Museum, acquired at various dates. They appeared as vols. vii, viii, ix of the Vorderasiatische Denkmäler (Leipzig, Hinrichs). Most of them undoubtedly came from Sippara; one from Der-ez-Zor, near the Chabour, and those in vol. vii from Dilbat, apparently the modern Delam. Thus we can again compare contemporary documents from a fresh site, which proves to have been influenced by other peoples, the Mitanni, Elamites, &c. In Urkunden aus Dilbat, vol. vi, part 5, of the Beiträge zur Assyriologie (Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1909), A. Ungnad transcribes, translates, and comments upon the large collection of letters and contracts which had been published from Dilbat. His works brought a large amount of most valuable information for the period.
In 1910 Thureau-Dangin issued Lettres et contrats de l’époque de la Première dynastie babylonienne (Paris, Geuthner), a most valuable work for its indexes, as well as the interesting texts. A long and extremely fine text was also given by him as Un jugement sous Ammiditana, in Revue d’Assyriologie, 1910, pp. 121-7. Here were texts from Sippara, Babylon, Dilbat, Kish, and possibly Shittab, as well as some more from Der-ez-Zor. In the Revue d’Assyriologie, 1911, pp. 68-79, Thureau-Dangin published Sept contrats of the reigns of the kings of Kish, who were contemporary with the foundation of the First Dynasty and themselves Amorites. St. Langdon published several more of these Tablets from Kish in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1911, pp. 185-96, and in the same journal for 1912, pp. 109-13, gave eleven Contracts from Larsa.
C. E. Keiser published Tags and Labels from Nippur in The Museum Journal of Philadelphia, vol. iii, no. 2, pp. 29-31. These closely related documents form a borderland between contracts and accounts.
These contracts are so much more important for the elucidation of the Code than any later documents that we may now notice the chief discussions of them.
Not much of this class of documents has yet come to light for the Third or Kassite Dynasty of Babylon. A. T. Clay gave us vols. xiv, xv of the Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, 1906), entitled Documents from the Temple Archives of Nippur, dated in the Reigns of Cassite Rulers. They showed how the old customs were preserved and modified with fresh immigrations. These were followed in 1912 by Documents from the Temple Archives of Nippur, dated in the Reigns of Cassite Rulers, the Museum Publications of the Babylonian Section, vol. ii, no. 2 (Philadelphia Museum), completing the collections. Some of the same sort from Nippur, in the E. A. Hoffmann collection in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, were noted in Radau’s Early Babylonian History, pp. 328-9 (New York, 1900).
F. E. Peiser, in 1905, had published Urkunden aus der Zeit der dritten babylonischen Dynastie in Urschrift, Umschrift und Übersetzung, dazu Rechtsausführungen von J. Kohler (Berlin, Wolf Peiser). These appear to have belonged to a family of Babylonians, some of whom adopted Cassite names. More of the same group found their way to the Berlin Museums, and more are in private hands and in the Louvre.
C. J. Ball contributed to the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology for 1907, pp. 273-4, A Kassite Text.
D. D. Luckenbill in the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, 1907, pp. 280-322, gave a most valuable Study of the Temple Documents from the Cassite Period.
The scarcity of legal documents from this period may be estimated from the fact that in Texte juristischen und geschäftlichen Inhalts (see p. 81, above) only the so-called boundary-stones could be quoted.
It is in the Third Dynasty of Babylon that the Boundary-Stone or Kudurru inscriptions first appear. These have been much discussed, especially from the side of the curious symbols which occur upon them, often regarded as signs of the Zodiac, or emblems of the gods.
In the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vol. ii, pp. 111-204, a number of such texts were published and partly discussed by C. Belser, as Babylonische Kudurru-Inschriften. Peiser incorporated some in the fourth volume of Schrader’s Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek. W. J. Hinke gave in 1907, as vol. iv of Series D of the Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania), A New Boundary-Stone of Nebuchadrezzar I from Nippur, in which he also gave a full bibliography of the subject, collected names, words, &c., from all the texts of the sort hitherto published, and discussed the symbols. In Babylonian Boundary-stones and Memorial Tablets in the British Museum, with an Atlas of Plates (London, British Museum, 1912), L. W. King gave the whole of the British Museum material. In 1911 Hinke contributed to the Semitic Study Series (Leiden, E. J. Brill), a useful collection in Selected Babylonian Kudurru Inscriptions. Many such inscriptions are published by V. Scheil with transcriptions and translations in Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse (Paris, E. Leroux), vols. ii, pp. 86-94, 97-116; vi, pp. 30-47; vii, 137-53; x, 87-96. F. Steinmetzer contributed Eine Schenkungsurkunde des Königs Melishichu to the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vol. viii, pp. 1-38.
Hinke gives an excellent bibliography of the Babylonian kudurru inscriptions, their publications, transliterations, translations, and discussions. Some are of the nature of Freibriefe, and Meissner so treated one in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 1889, pp. 259-67, cf. pp. 403-4. He also wrote Assyrische Freibriefe in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie II. (1894), pp. 565-72, 581-8, giving text, transliteration, translation, and discussion of three examples from the reign of Ashurbanipal and one of Adad-nirari. In my Assyrian Deeds and Documents (Cambridge, Deighton, Bell & Co., 1902), nos. 646, 647, 648, and 651, I republished these texts and added nos. 649, 650, two texts of Ashur-etil-ilâni, son and successor of Ashurbanipal, nos. 652, 653, 654, 655, 656 (= 808 in vol. ii) of Adad-nirari, nos. 657, 658 (dated in B. C. 730), 659 (names Tiglath-Pileser), 660 (now joined to other fragments as 809, an important grant by Sargon II in connexion with the site of Dur-Sargon), 661, 662(?), 663, and possibly also nos. 669, 671, 672, 673, 674 (see now no. 1101), 692 (now part of 807), 714 (now part of 809), and in vol. ii, nos. 734, 735, 736, 737, 738(?), 739, 740(?), 741(?), on to 752, all possible fragments of similar proclamations, Freibriefe, charters, or the schedules to them. I have collected the references here, as the texts seem to have met with insufficient attention. Winckler had published parts of some of them in his Altorientalische Forschungen (Leipzig, E. Pfeiffer, 1898), vol. ii, pp. 4-8, and assigned the Ashur-etil-ilâni texts to Esarhaddon’s reign, and in the note on p. 192 to Sin-shar-ishkun. F. E. Peiser made some acute suggestions as to the readings of the text and their meanings.
On no. 809 Meissner wrote a full discussion in the Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1903, pp. 85-96.
In 1883 H. V. Hilprecht published Freibrief Nebukadnezar’s I. (Leipzig, Hinrichs), with great advances on the previous treatment, and published others in Old Babylonian Inscriptions, vol. i, part 1 (1893), nos. 80, 83, part 2 (1896), nos. 149, 150. In 1891 K. L. Tallqvist wrote on Babylonische Schenkungsbriefe (Helsingfors). In the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, 1894, pp. 258-73, Fr. Delitzsch published and admirably treated Der Berliner Merodachbaladan-Stein.
Ed. Cuq in La Propriété foncière en Chaldée gave a new view of the meaning of these documents and the significance of their first appearing in the Kassite period. It will be seen from the titles given in the above works that no complete unanimity prevails as to their nature and purpose.
We may now turn back to the class of texts usually called contracts.
The Assyrian empire has not yielded much of this class of document, before the time of Sargon II, B.C. 785-722. A number of texts have been reported in the Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin as found at Asshur by the German excavators there, which date from times both early and late. The publication of these texts will doubtless soon be achieved and add greatly to our knowledge. The treatment in Assyria seems to be largely reminiscent of that of Babylonia under the First Dynasty, but there are wide divergences doubtless due to the foreign elements in the Assyrian population. We are not yet possessed of sufficient material to assign the changes to their true causes, but we know enough to be sure that they were not on the whole due to contemporary developments in Babylonia.
In Assyrian Deeds and Documents relating to the transfer of Property, in three volumes, by C. H. W. Johns, published in 1898-1901 (Deighton, Bell & Co., Cambridge, 3 vols.), practically all the material of this class in the British Museum then catalogued was edited. These tablets apparently all came from Nineveh. There are now many more similar tablets in the British Museum listed in the Supplement to the Catalogue. Recently in Assyrische Rechtsurkunden von J. Kohler und A. Ungnad (Leipzig, Ed. Pfeiffer, 1913), a series of transliterations and translations have been commenced which will form a key to the whole, including many other texts since published.
It was on these texts that J. Oppert formed his views given in Das Assyrische Landrecht, and in Le droit de retrait lignager à Ninive, see p. 72.
V. Scheil published in his Notes d’épigraphie in the Recueil de Travaux, xx, note xl (1898), pp. 202-5, four tablets which possibly did not come from Nineveh. I republished the texts as nos. 779-82 in my Deeds and Documents above. The first is discussed by Meissner as Eine assyrische Schenkungsurkunde in the Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1903, pp. 103-5, where he points out that my no. 619 is another like text. Here Adi-mati-ilu and other property were given to a son who was to take a double portion and divide the rest with his brothers.
F. E. Peiser in the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, 1905, cols. 130-4, gave Ein neuer assyrischer Kontrakt, V. Scheil in the same journal for 1904, col. 70, and in the Recueil de Travaux, xxiv, note lxii, p. 24, pointed out others, while in Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler, vol. i, nos. 84-111, A. Ungnad published several more from Kannu’ and Kerkûk. S. Schiffer discussed many of these as Keilschriftliche Spuren der in der zweiten Hälfte des 8. Jahrhunderts von den Assyrern nach Mesopotamien deportierten Samarier, a Beiheft to Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung (Berlin, W. Peiser, 1907), with which may be compared an article in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1908, pp. 107-15, 137-41, on The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, by C. H. W. Johns. In an article Aus dem Louvre, F. E. Peiser published in the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, 1903, cols. 192-200, a new collation of no. 1,141 in my Deeds and Documents, which had been formerly treated by Place, Oppert, and Strassmaier; and an edition of another text of this class. The new Supplement to the Catalogue of the Tablets in the Kouyunjik Collection in the British Museum, by L. W. King (London, British Museum, 1914), shows that many more such texts await publication, and there are others in the Museums in England and America.
This class of document was early known for the times of the Neo-babylonian Empire, and thousands of the so-called contracts have been published down to the century before the Christian era.
J. Oppert began the task of publishing and deciphering contracts, for which his legal training as well as his philological learning especially fitted him. His work may be gathered from the bibliography in the second volume of the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, pp. 523-56. His great effort was Documents juridiques de l’Assyrie et de la Chaldée (Paris, Maisonneuve, 1877), but he continued to deal with contracts up to his death. Here as elsewhere comparison of fresh material continually brought new light.
A number of such tablets were copied by T. G. Pinches(?) for the fifth volume of Inscriptions of Western Asia (London, British Museum, 1909, plates lxvii, lxviii), on which Oppert built his determination of Babylonian measures. J. N. Strassmaier, in 1855, published Die babylonischen Inschriften im Museum zu Liverpool nebst anderen aus der Zeit von Nebukadnezar bis Darius (Leiden, J. Brill).
The tablets in the British Museum from Sippara, Babylon, Borsippa, &c., dated in the reigns of Nebuchadrezzar, Nabopolassar, Evil-Merodach, Neriglissar, Nabonidus, Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius, were also edited by J. N. Strassmaier as Babylonische Texte, Inschriften von den Thontafeln des British Museums copiert und autographiert, in twelve volumes (Leipzig, 1887-1897). On the mass of material thus rendered available to scholars were based a very large number of memoirs and monographs which may be arranged here. K. L. Tallqvist, in 1890, published Die Sprache der Contracte Nabû-nâ’id’s (Helsingfors, J. C. Frenckell), in which he collected all the words and phrases occurring in these texts, with useful indexes. R. Zehnpfund gave Babylonische Weberrechnungen in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, i, pp. 492ff. (1890): L. Demuth, Fünfzig Rechts-und Verwaltungsurkunden aus der Zeit des Königs Kyros, in the same journal, vol. iii, pp. 393-444 (1898); E. Ziemer, Fünfzig Rechts-und Verwaltungsurkunden aus der Zeit des Königs Kambyses, same volume, pp. 445-92; V. Marx, Die Stellung der Frauen in Babylonien gemäss den Kontrakten aus der Zeit von Nebukadnezar bis Darius, same journal, vol. iv, pp. 1-77, 1902; and E. Kotalla, Fünfzig babylonische Rechts-und Verwaltungsurkunden aus der Zeit des Königs Artaxerxes I, same volume, pp. 551-74. Fr. Delitzsch contributed Notizen zu den neubabylonischen Kontrakttafeln, same journal, vol. iii, pp. 385-92 (1898), and J. Kohler, Ein Beitrag zum neubabylonischen Recht, vol. iv, pp. 423-30. F. E. Peiser, in 1889, published Keilinschriftliche Actenstücke aus babylonischen Städten (Berlin, W. Peiser), and, in 1890, Babylonische Verträge des Berliner Museums (Berlin, W. Peiser). This marked great advances on Oppert’s work, owing to Strassmaier’s new material and the Berlin collections. He next contributed a selection of transliterations and translations to the fourth volume of Schrader’s Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek (1896), p. 81, above. Then from 1890-1898 appeared Aus dem babylonischen Rechtsleben (Leipzig, Pfeiffer), in conjunction with J. Kohler, containing many new texts. A. B. Moldenke, in 1893, published for the Metropolitan Museum at New York a volume of Cuneiform Texts, all of this period. In 1890 appeared Recherches sur quelques contrats babyloniens, by A. Boissier (Paris, E. Leroux).
In the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie (Weimar, E. Felber, 1894) Y. le Gac published Quelques inscriptions assyro-babyloniennes du Musée Lycklama à Cannes, pp. 385-90, and in Babyloniaca (Paris, P. Geuthner, 1910), Textes babyloniens de la Collection Lycklama à Cannes, pp. 33-72. In 1902 T. G. Pinches contributed to the Verhandlungen des XIII. Orientalistischen Congresses some Notes on a Small Collection of Tablets from the Birs Nimroud belonging to Lord Amherst of Hackney.
In vols. III-VI of the Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler (1907-1908), A. Ungnad published many texts of this period, and gave later some valuable Untersuchungen on the same, Aus der altbabylonischen Kontrakt-literatur, to the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, 1912, cols. 106-8.
A new source for this material was the finds at Nippur, printed in The Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Series A. Cuneiform Texts, vol. viii, part 1 contained Legal and Commercial Transactions from the Neo-babylonian Empire to Darius II, by A. T. Clay, 1908; vols. ix and x, by the same author, contained Business Documents of Murashû Sons of Nippur in the reign of Artaxerxes I (1898), and Business Documents in the reign of Darius II (1904). A new series has since been commenced.
The Museum Publications of the Babylonian Section of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia Museum), vol. ii, no. 1, gives Business Documents of Murashû Sons of Nippur, by A. T. Clay (1912), and vol. ii, no. 2, Documents from the Temple Archives at Nippur, by the same author (1912).
Selected Business Documents of the Neo-Babylonian Period in the Semitic Study Series, by A. Ungnad (Leiden, Brill, 1908), forms a useful introduction to the subject.
In 1911 appeared Hundert ausgewählte Rechtsurkunden aus der Spätzeit des babylonischen Schrifltums von Xerxes bis Mithridates, 485-93 v. Chr., by A. Ungnad and J. Kohler (Leipzig, Pfeiffer), and I. L. Holt contributed to the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures a study of some Tablets from the R. C. Thompson Collection in Haskell Oriental Museum, The University of Chicago.
Of considerable interest as in some senses a link between Babylonia and Palestine are the Cappadocian Tablets. The first notice of them was given by T. G. Pinches in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Nov. 1, 1881, pp. 11-18. Some tablets in the British Museum were acquired from a dealer who said they had been found in Cappadocia. The script was then quite unfamiliar, and they were supposed at first to be written in a language neither Sumerian nor Semitic. Golenischeff published in 1891 the text of twenty-four tablets of the same class which he had acquired at Kaisareyeh. He made out that many words were Assyrian and read many names. Fr. Delitzsch made a most valuable study of them in the Abhandlungen der philos.-hist. Classe der K. Sächs. Gesellschaft d. Wissenschaften, 1893, no. 11. In 1894 P. Jensen in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, vol. ix, pp. 62-81, made many corrections and additions. F. E. Peiser then discussed them in his introduction to the fourth volume of Schrader’s Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, and gave the transcription and translation of the texts of nine, pp. 50-56. A considerable number more were discovered at Boghaz Köi, Kara Eyuk, and elsewhere, and published by V. Scheil in the Mémoires de la Mission en Cappadoce, and commented upon by A. Boissier in the Proceedings of the Society for Biblical Archaeology, 1900, pp. 106 ff. Four Cappadocian tablets were published by Thureau-Dangin among his Lettres et Contrats, see p. 82, above.
In Babyloniaca, 1908, pp. 1-45, A. H. Sayce translated the Golenischeff texts, and others published by Chantre, or found by Ramsay, &c.
T. G. Pinches with A. H. Sayce published and discussed The Cappadocian Tablet from Yuzghat in the Liverpool Institute of Archaeology, 1906.
In 1908 T. G. Pinches published twenty more in the Annals of Archaeology of the Liverpool University, vol. i, pp. 49-80. In the Florilegium de Vogüé, pp. 591-k, Thureau-Dangin discussed Un acte de répudiation sur une tablette cappadocienne, 1909, and in the Revue d’Assyriologie, 1911, pp. 142-51, gave more texts fixing La date des tablettes cappadociennes as contemporary with the Dynasty of Ur in Babylonia, thus proving cuneiform to have been widely used in that region to write a Semitic language long before the time of Hammurabi. In Babyloniaca, 1911, pp. 65-80, A. H. Sayce gave some Cappadocian Cuneiform Tablets from Kara Eyuk, affiliating them with early Assyrian rulers. In the same journal, 1911, pp. 216-28, A. Boissier gave more texts under the title Nouveaux documents de Boghaz Köi. In the same journal, 1912, pp. 182-93, A. H. Sayce wrote upon The Cappadocian Cuneiform Tablets of the University of Pennsylvania.
All these works have contributed comments of more or less value, and the whole point to a close connexion with Babylonia and Assyria, and the extended use of cuneiform in Cappadocia from very early times, whence it was doubtless taken over by the later Hittites.
Babylonian and Assyrian Letters.
A very large number of letters have been preserved to us from all periods of Babylonian and Assyrian history. Many of them are addressed to private correspondents, and concern matters of everyday life. They are often most obscure, as they assume so much knowledge on the part of the recipient which is withheld from us. Where we can grasp their reference they furnish considerable light upon social conditions.
A large number, however, are royal letters or dispatches from the king and his officers to subordinates, or vice versa. These more often concern public affairs.
As yet few letters have come down to us which we can date before the First Dynasty of Babylon, but some will be found in the Inventaire des tablettes de Tello (see p. 80), and among the various publications of Temple accounts and contracts, as early as the times of Sargon of Akkad.
In the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vol. ii, pp. 557-64, 572-9, Meissner published Altbabylonische Briefe (1893), with discussions.
In the times of Hammurabi, or the First Dynasty of Babylon, our sources for epistolary correspondence become very ample. L. W. King in his magnificent work, The Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi, King of Babylon, about B. C. 2200; to which is added a series of letters of other Kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon (vol. i, Introduction and Babylonian Texts; vol. ii, Babylonian Texts, continued; vol. iii, English Translation, Commentary, Vocabularies, Introduction, etc., London, Luzac & Co., 1898), gave a complete edition of these letters. The materials for history and social life were epoch-making. In the Beiträge zur Assyriologie G. Nagel translated a number of these texts, Briefe Hammurabi’s an Sin-iddinam, vol. iv, pp. 434-83, to which Fr. Delitzsch added Zusatzbemerkungen, pp. 483-500. He, with J. A. Knudtzon, wrote on the same subject, vol. iv, pp. 88-100. M. W. Montgomery took Briefe aus der Zeit des babylonischen Königs Hammurabi as subject for her doctor’s dissertation (Leipzig, Pries, 1901). A. Klostermann published Ein diplomatischer Briefwechsel aus dem 2. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Leipzig, Deichert, 1903). C. V. Gelderen contributed Ausgewählte babylonisch-assyrische Briefe to the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, iv, 1902, pp. 501-45. Another great collection was published by Thureau-Dangin in Lettres et contrats de l’époque de la première dynastie babylonienne (Paris, P. Geuthner, 1910). The author transliterated, translated, and commented upon three of these texts as Lettres de l’époque de la première dynastie babylonienne in The Hilprecht Anniversary Volume, pp. 156-63.
Les Lettres de Hammurapi à Sin-idinnam, transcription, traduction et commentaire, précédées d’une étude sur deux caractères du style assyro-babylonien, by F. C. Jean (Paris, J. Gabalda, 1913), gives an idea of the subject.
P. S. Landersdorfer, in 1908, had edited Altbabylonische Privatbriefe, transkribiert, übersetzt und kommentiert, nebst einer Einleitung und 4 Registern (Paderborn, Schöningh), and G. A. Barton gave an article On an old Babylonian Letter addressed to Lushtamar in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, pp. 220-22.
A. Schollmeyer wrote on Altbabylonische Privatbriefe in Babyloniaca, vi, pp. 57-64, 1912, and in 1911 published Neuveröffentlichte altbabylonische Briefe und ihre Bedeutung für die Kultur des Orients: Sechs Vorträge vor der Hildesheimer Generalversammlung (Köln, P. Bachem).
E. Ebeling contributed to the Revue d’Assyriologie, 1913, pp. 15 ff., 105-56, articles on Altbabylonische Briefe. The First Letter of Rîm-Sin, King of Larsa, was published by St. Langdon in the Proceedings of the Society for Biblical Archaeology, 1911, pp. 221-2.
The period of the Third or Kassite Dynasty has not yet yielded much.
H. Radau made as much as possible out of a number of fragments found at Nippur in vol. xvii, 1 of Series A of The Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania called Letters to Cassite Kings from the Temple Archives of Nippur (1908).
Very little more is known of Epistolary Literature till we reach the Sargonide Dynasty in Assyria. With the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh were found a large number of letters and dispatches, alike royal, public and private, Assyrian and Neo-babylonian, which early attracted notice. S. A. Smith published a number from the collections in the British Museum in his Assyrian Letters from the Royal Library at Nineveh, transcribed, translated, and explained (Leipzig, Pfeiffer, 1887-1888), and in Miscellaneous Assyrian Texts of the British Museum with Textual Notes (Leipzig, Pfeiffer, 1887), besides a series of articles in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology for 1887-1888 called Assyrian Letters.
The present writer dealt with Sennacherib’s Letters to his Father Sargon, in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1895, pp. 220-39. Fr. Delitzsch in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vol. i, pp. 185-248, 613-31, and vol. ii, pp. 19-62, under the title Zur assyrisch-babylonischen Briefliteratur, laid deep the foundations of the study of letters, editing many fresh texts (1890-1894). H. Winckler published a large number of letters in his Sammlung von Keilschrifttexten (Leipzig, Pfeiffer, 1894). T. G. Pinches published Zwei assyrische Briefe (Leipzig, Pfeiffer, 1887).
R. F. Harper has continued to edit the Assyrian and Babylonian Letters belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum, vol. i, 1892; vol. ii, 1893; vol. iii, 1896; vol. iv, 1896; vol. v, 1900; vol. vi, 1902; vol. vii, 1902; vol. viii, 1902; vol. ix, 1909; vol. x, 1911; vol. xi, 1911; vol. xii, 1913; vol. xiii, 1913 (Chicago University Press; Luzac & Co., London), which will contain all the British Museum collections from Nineveh. These copies have been made with the greatest care, and constitute the chief source of this material up to the present time. Numerous works have been built upon them as foundation. Christopher Johnston wrote on The Epistolary Literature of the Assyrians and Babylonians (Baltimore, 1898), reprinted from Journal of the American Oriental Society. E. Behrens published in 1906 his Assyrisch-babylonische Briefe kultischen Inhalts aus der Sargonidenzeit (Leipzig, Pries, 1905). Lehmann-Haupt gave Zwei unveröffentlichte Keilschrifttexte in Hilprecht Anniversary Volume (1909), pp. 256-8.
In 1910 came M. Zeitlin’s Le style administratif chez les Assyriens; choix de lettres assyriennes et babyloniennes, transcrites, traduites et accompagnées de notes (Paris, Geuthner). In the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie C. Bezold gave Zwei assyrische Berichte (vol. xxvi, 1912, p. 114-25).
In 1911, E. G. Klauber wrote Zur babylonisch-assyrischen Briefliteratur in Babyloniaca, iv, pp. 180-86; and in 1912 Zur Politik und Kultur der Sargonidenzeit: Untersuchungen auf Grand der Brieftexte in the January and July numbers of vol. xxviii of the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures. In the January number of this volume also appeared L. Waterman’s Textual Notes on the Letters of the Sargon Period. A most valuable contribution to an obscure period of Ashurbanipal’s reign was made by H. H. Figulla, Der Briefwechsel Bêlibni’s: Historische Urkunden aus der Zeit Asurbanipals, in Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft (Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1912). E. G. Klauber, in 1910, published Assyrisches Beamtentum nach Briefen aus der Sargonidenzeit (Leipzig, Hinrichs), and in Der alte Orient, xii, Heft 2, Keilschriftbriefe: Staat und Gesellschaft in der babylonisch-assyrischen Briefliteratur (Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1911). V. Scheil under the title Diplomatica dealt with similar texts in the Hilprecht Anniversary Volume, pp. 873 ff.