Early Mesopotamian Law

Early Mesopotamian Law

Author: Russ VerSteeg

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13:

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This book synthesizes law in ancient Mesopotamia from its beginnings (roughly 3000 BC) to about 1600 BC. Author Russ VerSteeg explains Mesopotamian law using modern legal categories as points of reference in order to make the subject more accessible to the reader. Early Mesopotamian Law is the first book of its kind, filling a void of information left by most ancient law books, which discuss the law of Ancient Greece and Rome. It brings together information from many books on Mesopotamian history; translations of ancient law collections and documents; as well as monographs, journal articles, and unpublished papers dealing with specialized aspects of Mesopotamian law. This book will be of interest to scholars of Near Eastern studies who wish to have a single volume covering the basics of early Mesopotamian law as well as to law students and lawyers who are interested in legal history. Topics covered include: Part 1: Overview, Justice, Organization and Procedure -- the law collections ("codes"); justice and jurisprudence (the role of law); legal organization and personnel and legal procedure; Part 2: Substantive Law -- personal status; the family; inheritance and succession; criminal law; torts; property; and trade, contracts and business law.


The Code of Hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi

Author: Hammurabi

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2017-07-20

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 9781973773627

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The Code of Hammurabi (Codex Hammurabi) is a well-preserved ancient law code, created ca. 1790 BC (middle chronology) in ancient Babylon. It was enacted by the sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi. One nearly complete example of the Code survives today, inscribed on a seven foot, four inch tall basalt stele in the Akkadian language in the cuneiform script. One of the first written codes of law in recorded history. These laws were written on a stone tablet standing over eight feet tall (2.4 meters) that was found in 1901.


The Authority of Law in the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism

The Authority of Law in the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism

Author: Jonathan Vroom

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-09-11

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 9004381643

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In The Authority of Law in the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism, Vroom identifies a development in the authority of written law that took place in early Judaism. Ever since Assyriologists began to recognize that the Mesopotamian law collections did not function as law codes do today—as a source of binding obligation—scholars have grappled with the question of when the Pentateuchal legal corpora came to be treated as legally binding. Vroom draws from legal theory to provide a theoretical framework for understanding the nature of legal authority, and develops a methodology for identifying instances in which legal texts were treated as binding law by ancient interpreters. This method is applied to a selection of legal-interpretive texts: Ezra-Nehemiah, Temple Scroll, the Qumran rule texts, and the Samaritan Pentateuch.


Law and Trade in Ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia

Law and Trade in Ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia

Author: N. J. C. Kouwenberg

Publisher:

Published: 2020-10-15

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9789088909153

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This book contains a selection of nineteen articles published by K.R. Veenhof, focusing on his main field of study: law and trade in the Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian society of the early second millennium B.C. They were originally published in journals, conference proceedings and collective volumes over the past fifty years. Their reissue here is motivated by their lasting value and their fundamental importance to the study of these subjects.It includes both "broad" articles, which give an introduction to or an overview of a specific subject, e.g. Old Assyrian trade and the practice of justice in Babylonia in the early second millennium B.C., and "narrow" ones that give an in-depth study of a single issue or a single text, such as a problematic paragraph of Hammurabi's law code or the meaning of the noun iṣurtum. The first two articles provide a general introduction to the subject; the next nine focus on Old Assyrian society, and the final eight concern Old Babylonian.The inclusion of "broad" and "narrow" articles makes this publication of interest both to the well-informed general reader interested in the Ancient Near East and to the specialist working on Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian society.Prof. dr. Klaas R. Veenhof (1935) was a teacher at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, professor at the Free University of Amsterdam and from 1982 until his retirement in 2000 professor at the University of Leiden. Key publications are his dissertation "Aspects of Old Assyrian Trade and its Terminology" (1972), "The Old Assyrian list of year eponyms from Karum Kanish and its chronological implications" (2003), and several editions of Old Assyrian texts, especially "Altassyrische Tontafeln aus Kültepe" (1992) and Kültepe Tabletleri 5 and 8 (2005 and 2010).


Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia

Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia

Author: Dominique Charpin

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-11-15

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 0226101592

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Ancient Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now western Iraq and eastern Syria, is considered to be the cradle of civilization—home of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, as well as the great Code of Hammurabi. The Code was only part of a rich juridical culture from 2200–1600 BCE that saw the invention of writing and the development of its relationship to law, among other remarkable firsts. Though ancient history offers inexhaustible riches, Dominique Charpin focuses here on the legal systems of Old Babylonian Mesopotamia and offers considerable insight into how writing and the law evolved together to forge the principles of authority, precedent, and documentation that dominate us to this day. As legal codes throughout the region evolved through advances in cuneiform writing, kings and governments were able to stabilize their control over distant realms and impose a common language—which gave rise to complex social systems overseen by magistrates, judges, and scribes that eventually became the vast empires of history books. Sure to attract any reader with an interest in the ancient Near East, as well as rhetoric, legal history, and classical studies, this book is an innovative account of the intertwined histories of law and language.


A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law (2 vols)

A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law (2 vols)

Author: Raymond Westbrook

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2003-08-01

Total Pages: 1235

ISBN-13: 904740209X

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The first comprehensive survey of the world's oldest known legal systems, this collaborative work of twenty-two scholars covers over 3,000 years of legal history of the Ancient Near East. Each of the book's chapters represents a review of the law of a particular period and region, e.g. the Egyptian Old Kingdom, by a specialist in that area. Within each chapter, the material is organized under standardized legal categories (e.g. constitutional law, family law) that make for easy cross-referencing. The chapters are arranged chronologically by millennium and within each millennium by the three major politico-cultural spheres of the region: Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia and the Levant. An introduction by the editor discusses the general character of Ancient Near Eastern Law.


Law in the Ancient World

Law in the Ancient World

Author: Russ VerSteeg

Publisher:

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13:

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Law in the Ancient World examines the legal philosophy, legal institutions, and laws of the ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Ancient documents, accounts, and literature provide the basis for a wide perspective of law and the procedural features of these ancient legal systems. VerSteeg delineates and analyzes the elements of ancient laws, explaining how social, religious, cultural, and political forces shaped both procedure and substance. The book is comprised of four units: I. Early Mesopotamian Law; II. Law in Ancient Egypt; III. Law in Classical Athens; and IV. Roman Law. Each unit has three chapters, and the first chapter in each unit begins with an overview which provides essential historial background. Next, each initial chapter considers the role of law in society, exploring law in the abstract, the theoretical bases of justice. The middle chapters in each unit trace the development of the ancient judicial systems, distinguishing the various types of judges, courts, and procedures that were employed to make justice available to both citizens and foreigners. The third chapter in each unit reconstructs the substantive laws, including sections detailing Personal Status, Property, Family Law, Inheritance & Succession, Torts, Criminal Law, and Contracts & Commercial Law. A variety of sources, such as early law collections, land records, wills, sales documents, court chronicles, works of ancient literature, accounts of ancient trials, and great codes such as Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis illustrate the sophisticated, often subtle, and complex nature of law in the ancient world.


Ancient Legal Thought

Ancient Legal Thought

Author: Larry May

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-07-31

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781108484107

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"Nearly four thousand years ago, kings in various ancient societies, especially in Mesopotamia (contemporary Iraq), faced a crisis of major proportions. Large portions of the population were horribly in debt, many being forced to sell themselves or their children into slavery to pay off their debts. The laws and customs seemed to support the commercial practices that allowed lenders to charge 20%-30% interest, and the law protected the lenders and gave no recourse for the indebted. Strict justice called for the creditors to receive what they were due. But another legal concept, the emerging idea of equity, seemed to call for a different result - the use of law as a vehicle to free people from economic oppression. Debt relief edicts were instituted - "clean-slate laws" as they were known - and are of obvious relevance today as well where crushing debt is a major issue underlying social inequality"--


Women, Crime and Punishment in Ancient Law and Society

Women, Crime and Punishment in Ancient Law and Society

Author: Elisabeth Meier Tetlow

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2004-12-28

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 9780826416285

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Crime and punishment, criminal law and its administration, are areas of ancient history that have been explored less than many other aspects of ancient civilizations. Throughout history women have been affected by crime both as victims and as offenders. Yet, in the ancient world customary laws were created by men, formal laws were written by men, and both were interpreted and enforced by men.


Ancient Mesopotamia

Ancient Mesopotamia

Author: A. Leo Oppenheim

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-01-31

Total Pages: 494

ISBN-13: 022617767X

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"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria."—Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book Review Ancient Mesopotamia—the area now called Iraq—has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East. Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun. "To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written."—Leonard Cottrell, Book Week "Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research."—Samuel Noah Kramer, Archaeology A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.