Description
Book SynopsisMesopotamia 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.
Trade Review“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
Table of ContentsPreface
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
