Laws of Eshnunna

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The Laws of Eshnunna (abrv. LE) are inscribed on two broken tablets
found in Tall Abū Harmal, near Baghdad, Iraq. The two tablets are separate
copies of an older source and date back to ca. 1930 BC. The Iraq Directorate of
Antiquities found two parallel sets of tablets in 1945 and 1947. The differences
between the Code of Hammurabi and
the Laws of Eshnunna significantly
contributed to illuminating the development of ancient and cuneiform law. Eshnunna was
north of Ur on the Tigris River and
became politically important after the fall of the third dynasty of Ur, founded
by Ur-Nammu.

In distinction from the other Mesopotamian collections of
law, this one got its name after the city where it had originated – Eshnunna,
located on the bank of the Diyala River, tributary to
the Tigris. This
collection of laws is not a real systemized codex; nearly sixty of its
sections are preserved. The Laws are written in Akkadian and consist
of two tablets which are marked with A and B. In 1948, Albrecht Goetze of the
Yale University had
translated and published them. In some sources the Laws of Eshnunna are mentioned as the
Laws of Bilalama
due to the belief that the Eshnunnian ruler probably was their originator, but
Goetze maintained that tablet B was originated under the reign of Dadusha.
The text of the prologue is broken at the point
where the ruler who promulgated the laws was specified.

Albrecht Goetze has
noticed the specific style of expression. The laws were composed in a mode that
facilitated memorizing. A distinguished Israeli scientist and one of the
foremost experts on this collection of laws, Reuven
Yaron of the University of
Jerusalem concerning this matter stated: “What matters to me – and might
have mattered to those who fashioned them almost 4000 years ago – is the ease of
remembering the text.”

The conditional sentence (“If A then B” – as it also is the case with the
other Mesopotamian laws) is an
attribute of this codification. In 23 paragraphs, it appears in the form šumma
awilum – “If a man…” After the disposition, a precise sanction follows, e.g.
LU42(A): “If a man bit and severed the nose of a man, one mina silver he shall
weigh out.”

The Laws clearly show signs of social
stratification, mainly focussing on two different classes: the muškenum
and awilum.
The audience of the Laws of Eshnunna is more extensive than
in the case of the earlier cuneiform codifications: awilum – free men and women
(mar awilim and marat awilim), muškenum, wife (aššatum), son (maru), slaves of
both sexes – male (wardum) and female (amtum) – which are not only objects of
law as in classical slavery, and delicts where the victims were slaves have been
sanctioned, and other class designations as ubarum, apþarum, mudum that are not
ascertained.

Reuven
Yaron has divided the offences of the Laws of Eshnunna into five groups. The
articles of the first group had to be collected from all over the Laws and the
articles of the other four were roughly ordered one after the other:

1. Theft and
related offences,

2. False distress,

3. Sexual offences,

4. Bodily
injuries,

5. Damages caused by a goring ox and comparable cases.

The majority of these offences were penalized with pecuniary fines (an amount
of silver), but some serious offences such as burglary, murder, and sexual
offences were penalized with death. It seems that the capital punishment
was avoidable (in contrast to the Code of Hammurabi),
because of the standard formulation: “It is a case of life … he shall die”.

[edit]
References

Reuven Yaron, The laws of Eshnunna, Brill (1988)

B.L. Eichler, Literary Structure in the Laws of Eshnunna, in Language,
Literature and History (1987)

J.J. Finkelstein, On Some Recent Studies in Cuneiform Law, 90
Journal of the American Oriental Society 243 (1970)

E.A. Speiser, Cuneiform Law and the History of Civilization, 107
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 536 (1963)

Albrecht Goetze. The Laws of Eshnunna, The Annual of the American
Schools of Oriental Research, Vol. 31, The Laws of Eshnunna (1951 - 1952), pp.
v-197

[edit]
See also

Akkadian Empire

Eshnunna

Cuneiform law

Code of Hammurabi

Code of Ur-Nammu

Code of Lipit-Ishtar

List of
ancient legal codes

[edit]
External links

Laws of Eshnunna tablet at the Iraq National Museum

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_Eshnunna"

Categories: Legal codes
| Ancient Near
East law | Babylonia |
Manuscripts
| Code of
conduct | History of
Iraq

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This page was last modified on 18 August 2009 at 13:51.

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