Search

[German version] I. Ancient Near East The Sumerian-Akkadian terminology regarding punishment and criminal law implies that in Mesopotamia, this was already understood to be a consequence of mischief [1. 77 with note 35], directed either against the divine order [2] or the (state-sanctioned) political and social structures [3]. The same is true of Egypt [4. 68]. There was no distinction between civil and criminal law in the modern sense. The relationship between private law and so-called public law (an…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient Since the second half of the 3rd millennium BC [1. 63-98; 2. 345-365], a distinction was made in Mesopotamia between promissory (assuring) oaths in contract law and assertory (confirming) oaths taking effect in lawsuits. A promissory oath served as an absolute assurance of a renunciation or intended action and was performed by invoking the king or a god, or both. An assertory oath had probative force as an oath for witnesses or parties, e.g. an oath of purification …

[German version] A. Definition Bilingual inscriptions (or ‘bilingues’) are inscriptions that present the same text in two languages so as to be comprehensible to different readerships. Thus, bilingual inscriptions (BI), with closely corresponding texts, are distinguished from others in which one of the texts only summarizes the other. -- ‘Quasi-BI’ do indeed differ in their text format but treat the same subject matter or the same personalities. BI are only such texts as are composed contemporaneou…

[German version] [1] The Ancient Near East Work in the Ancient Near East was normally identified with physical labour in the agricultural and craft sectors, as well as in construction and haulage. Free labour was the province of self-employed producers and wage workers in institutional households (palace and temple). In the latter contexts, unfree labour was performed by dependents of many kinds, and also existed in the form of a state-decreed obligation of service. Slave labour was present to a varyin…

[German version] I. General Neither the states of the ancient Near East nor those of classical antiquity had a word corresponding to the modern, impersonal concept of the state. There was no abstract idea of state separate from the ruler or distinguished by law. In particular, the state did not appear as a perpetrator of action. The use of the term 'state' for these pre-modern societies is none the less justified, because, on the one hand, they did fulfil the minimum formal criteria: permanent state…

[German version] (‘the extremely wise one’). Protagonist of an Akkadian mythic poem from the ancient Babylonian era (early 2nd millennium BC), of which there were two or three diverging versions. The myth was carried forward in Babylonia and Assyria until the first millennium BC. A newer version arose in the New Assyrian era (7th cent. BC). Texts from  Ugarit and  Hattuša attest to the spread of the myth in the 2nd millennium BC, even beyond Mesopotamia. It treats the creation of human beings from…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient Banks as institutions whose specific task consists of arranging payment transactions, accepting deposits and granting credits, did not exist in the Ancient Orient. There is evidence of deposit and credit operations in ancient oriental societies of differing quantity and intensity, both in the domain of palace and temple economy and in individual private legal and economic transactions, but they were always subordinate to the respectively dominating redistributive an…

[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…

[German version] A. Ancient Near East There is evidence of personal (corporal) liability through surety (especially standing surety for another, rarely for oneself) as a means of guaranteeing a contract in Mesopotamian cuneiform texts from the mid-3rd millennium BC [2. 253] into the Hellenistic period [3. 64-69], using different terminologies and in different forms. The Gestellungsbürgschaft ('surety of appearance') was common (promise of the guarantor to deliver the debtor to the creditor for enforcement). In the late Babylonian (6th-4th cents. BC) Stillesitzbürgschaft ('s…

[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 …

The term aristocracy, when used for ancient societies, must be distinguished from the term aristocracy used in the Middle Ages and in modern times. The aristocracy of antiquity is lacking lordly property as the basis of rule over people who work the land, and also, in principle, an authority that can justify aristocratic status. Heredity and exclusive class thinking are especially weakly pronounced in the Greek areas, even if often through the handing down of property and personal connections, e…

[German version] Main location of a northern Babylonian city state which ruled northern Babylonia around the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. Located opposite  Seleucia on the Tigris. More recent sources identify it with Upī (Greek:  Opis) [1. 111, n. 608; 2. 46-48], but this identification is debated. Neumann, Hans (Berlin) Bibliography 1 J. A. Brinkman, A Political History of Post-Kassite Babylonia. 1158-722 B.C, 1968 2 D. R. Frayne, The Early Dynastic List of Geographical Names, 1992.