Middle Assyrian Laws

Historical source page 51

50 Morris Jastrow, Jr. 55 (The text — fourteen lines — is mutilated beyond certain recovery. The law continues the general subject of illicit intercourse, and at the close provides that if the suspected woman is 'released of her guilt,' the husband by a document gives his wife a quittance. 65 Apparently, it is added that if he had mutilated his wife's ear, 66 'there is no guilt attaching to him.') This completes Text No. 1 in Schroeder's publication. If the colophon had been preserved in full, we would be able to indicate the place of the tablet in the series. 67 All that is left of the colo- phon, however, is the date according to the custom of the Assyrian scribes, viz. : The month of Sarati (6th month) 2d day eponymate of Sa u Such dating prevents us from fixing the reign in which the tablet was drawn up, unless we happen to have a list of eponyms in which the name occurs. That is not the case in this instance. Text No. 2. 68 1 (Beginning mutilated. The subject of the first six laws [covering Col. II and III] is the division of an estate among brothers.) ground 69 [the oldest son] sets aside 70 and takes two parts 71 [as his share], 72 64 i-ba-ka-an, as above, § 43. M vz-\ni-sd\ H-jap-pa, as above, § 43. *' See the remarks above, p. 4. •• Schroeder, No. 2 (PI. 14-18) is likewise a tablet of four columns each on obverse and reverse, belonging to the same series as No. 1. It is badly broken. The 1st and 8th columns are entirely gone, and of the other six columns none is complete. Assuming that it contained as many as 55 laws (like Text No. 1), the 18 laws preserved would represent not more than one-third of the tablet. 69 ka-ki- j ri=kakkaru, 'ground', as Col. 5, 19 (§ 13). 70 i-na-sa-ku. The elder brother has the first claim, for which in Sumero- Babylonian legal phraseology there is a special term Sib-t& = elitum (Schorr, AUbabylonische Rechtsurkunden, s.v., p. 573) as against ffa-la = zittu, the general term for 'portion' or 'share'. 71 ka^a-la, 'hands', i. e., two shares. Cf. above, Text No. 1, § 27, ki-i ka-ti-Sii, 'his share'. 72 To be supplied as in Text No. 2, § 2 (line 21) a-na zitti-H.