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[German version] I. Ancient Orient As a contractual service, in which the recipient of money or other negotiable items undertakes to return them and/or provide a service in recompence, lending is attested in Mesopotamia [4. 189-203] from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC [1. 141-145] into the Hellenistic period [2. 43-45; 3. 119]. As well as private individuals, (representatives of) institutions (temple, palace) are recorded as creditors. The loans involved comprised for the most part silver and ba…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient Certainly there is evidence of the emergence and activity of joint representatives of specific branches of the professions in the Ancient Orient, such as merchants, craftsmen and priests, but there is no proof of PA in the sense of voluntary federations for the protection and defence of political and economic interests [1. 79-82; 2. 161f.]. Neumann, Hans (Berlin) Bibliography 1 A.L. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 1964 2 H.M. Kümmel, Familie, Beruf und Amt im spätbabylonischen Uruk, 1979. [German version] II. Greece and Rome Three different …

[German version] A. Types of letter In addition to the few texts on letter theory and letter writers ( Epistolography), the ancient genre of ‘letters’ comprises the following: 1. official letters (edicts) comparable to laws, 2. everyday official correspondence, 3. ‘open’ letters akin to oratory a) with one or several senders and multiple addressees (e.g. letters to the Christian community) or b) letters sent to a specific addressee that had a potentially broad public, and finally 4. letters of a priva…

[German version] I. General In antiquity homicide is often not yet differentiated from other crimes of killing ( Killing, crimes of). In many ancient laws the special reprehensibility or danger of a behaviour that resulted in the death of another human being was not yet considered a reason for a respective sanction. Thus, in the case of ancient Oriental laws, it would be inappropriate both with regard to the term and the matter to speak of particular offences amounting to homicide within the framework of crimes of killing. Neumann, Hans (Berlin) [German version] II. Greece In archaic Gre…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient In the ancient Orient, beer was a well-known and popular drink that had been brewed in Mesopotamia and Egypt since the end of the 4th millennium BC at the latest. The basic ingredient in manufacture was above all barley malt [1. 322-329], other ingredients were emmer and sesame. In the 1st millennium BC a type of date beer became important in Babylon [2.155-183]. In Egypt texts from the older period mention not just date beer but also carob tree beer and poppy beer.…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient The death penalty as a sanction for capital offences is attested in the ancient Near East from the latter part of the 3rd millennium BC as a penalty in varying frequency in the respective statute books and (less often) as a sentence in  documents of  procedural law. Capital offences were, in particular, homicide/killing ( Killing, crimes involving),  robbery, abduction, adultery, various cases of sodomy and incest and other statutory definitions of offences, princip…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient and Egypt The dowry in old Mesopotamia was given with the bride generally by her father (more rarely also by the mother or other family members) into the marriage, that (together with the means of the husband) served to secure the economic position of the wife if the man died first or in the event of a divorce. As a widow or a divorced (by the man) wife, she was entitled to the dowry, which in the event of her death went to her children, if childless went back to the …

[German version] I. Ancient Near East Mesopotamian cuneiform texts attest to slavery in the ancient Near East from the early 3rd millennium BC [1]. However, at no time were slaves the essential producers in the structure of the total economy [2]. From the 3rd-1st millennia BC, slaves were primarily deployed in private households, and to a lesser extent in institutional households (Palace, Temple). The main sources thus mostly come from the field of private law and governmental legislation [3]. Some of…

[German version] (Narām-Sîn). Fourth king (2260-2223 BC) of the dynasty of Akkad in Mesopotamia, grandson of the founder of the dynasty, Sargon. Under N. the state of Akkad flourished once again. He is recorded on numerous campaigns that served to increase his power, both through the pillaging of foreign regions and the territorial expansion of the state, the latter primarily pertaining to the upper Mesopotamian region from northern Syria to the eastern Tigris region. In addition N. deployed inten…

[German version] I. Ancient Near East There is evidence of wages as recompense for work done by labourers hired for limited periods in Mesopotamia from the mid 3rd millennium BC to the late Babylonian period (2nd half of 1st millennium BC), in Hittite Anatolia (2nd half of 2nd millennium BC) and in Egypt (from the Old Kingdom on). In Mesopotamia, the institutional households (Palace; Temple) of the Ur III period in particular (21st cent. BC) supplemented their own labour force (which received rations …

[German version] I. Ancient Orient In judging crimes involving killing, no distinction was made in the ancient Middle East between homicide and manslaughter. Killing, inciting a killing, and having knowledge of a killing were all treated as capital offences and punishable with capital punishment ( Death penalty). In addition, the perpetrator's property and (enslaved) family members could, along with other forms of compensation, be handed over to the victim's family. As the collections of laws show, …

[German version] I. Ancient Near East The convention in ancient oriental studies is to maintain a distinction between epic and myth in so far as the protagonists of each genre are concerned, even though, in respect of genre theory and style, this remains difficult and contentious [1. 145-153; 2. 1-24]: in epic the actors are (heroicized) people, whereas myths inhabit the realm of the divine. Sumerian epic literature is woven around the legendary kings of the 1st dynasty of Uruk: Enmerkar, Lugalbanda a…

[German version] This item can be found on the following maps: Mesopotamia (Sumerian Nibru; Akkadian Nippur[ u]; Arabic Nuffar). City in Babylonia c. 140 km to the southeast of modern Baghdad, for which habitation in varying intensity can be demonstrated from the 6th millennium BC until about AD 800, to some extent even into the 14th cent. AD. During the first half of the 3rd millennium BC, without ever having played a power-political dynastic role, N. - and its city god Enlil - experienced elevated significance in the course of a development which re…

[German version] I. General Renting and hiring today are contracts concerning transfer of the use of a property or an object in return for payment and hence an enduring relationship of continuing obligation. The objects of the contract can be physical, non-consumable objects as well as rights. Such contracts are equally suited to the transfer for payment of movable and unmovable objects. Forgó, Nikolaus (Vienna) [German version] II. Ancient Orient and Egypt There is evidence of hiring, i.e. temporary use of persons and of movable objects (primarily ship and animal h…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient In the ancient Orient, oral and written messages ( Letter) were transmitted by messengers. Messengers handled the supra-regional diplomatic traffic (e.g. the  Amarna letters between Egypt and Palaestine, Cyprus ( Alaschia), Syria, the Hittite kingdom, Mittani, Assyria, Babylonia and Elam), forwarded political or military news (at times gained through espionage), handled interior administrative communication, and transmitted (private) information in the area of comme…

[German version] I. General International treaties (IT) are official and binding agreements under international law between two or more subjects of international law, which are legally binding for the entire citizenship in question. They were stipulated orally or in writing; they took the form of unilateral, bi- or multilateral agreements, and always implied the recognition of the other party under international law. IT were often the result of preliminary negotiations; they required ratification by…

[German version] I. Introduction After the supersession of the concept that the ideal economic form was an autarkic entity of production and consumption not depending upon trade (e.g. the Homeric oîkos), and after the invention of means of payment - whether in the form of unstamped precious metals or coins - purchase, i.e. the exchange of goods for money, was a self-evident element of ancient societies. In spite of its presumably general distribution, however, purchase was underdeveloped in terms of legal provision. Laws and…

[German version] In Mesopotamia, from the 3rd millennium BC, the gates of temples, cities and other locations (e.g. palaces) could serve as venues for jurisdiction [1. 140 f.; 2. 66 with n. 6; 3. 321-325]. The same was true in Egypt [4. 782]. This was associated with the role of gates as foci of public and economic life in cities, and in the case of temple doors it was also linked to the temple's function as a venue for the taking of oaths of testimony and purification. Door Neumann, Hans (Berlin) Bibliography 1 A. Falkenstein (ed.), Die Inschriften Gudeas von Lagaš, vol. 1: Intro…

[German version] (Agade). There is documentary evidence of this city in northern Babylon that dates up to the second half of the 1st millennium BC, however, no archaeological evidence of its existence has been found. It achieved particular significance as the king's residence and capital city of the Akkadian kingdom, the first large territorial state in  Mesopotamia.  Akkadian Neumann, Hans (Berlin) Bibliography B. R. Foster, Select Bibliography of the Sargonic Period, in: History of the Ancient Near East. Stud. 5, 1993, 171-182 Répertoire géographique des textes cunéiforme…

[German version] I. Mesopotamia, Egypt Leasehold in the sense of the limited taking over of the use of land used for agricultural or gardening purposes against payment of a rent, was attested in Mesopotamia from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. Both institutional households ( Palace; Temple) as well as private individuals could function as lessors. The rent was set either at an absolute value in kind or silver, or as a part of the harvest. The one third leasehold, which meant that the lessor received 1/3 of the harvest and the leaseholder received 2/3, was typical above all for the ea…