The Laws of Eshnunna (abrv. LE) are inscribed on two

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...

tablets discovered in Tell Abū Harmal,

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

. The Iraqi Directorate of Antiquities headed by

Taha Baqir Taha Baqir ( ar, طه باقر ') (born 1912 in Babylon, Ottoman Iraq – 28 February 1984) was an Iraqi Assyriologist, author, cuneiformist, linguist, historian, and former curator of the National Museum of Iraq. Baqir is considered one of Iraq' ...

unearthed two parallel sets of tablets in 1945 and 1947. The two tablets are separate copies of an older source and date back to ca. 1930 BC. An additional fragment was later found at

Me-Turan Me-Turan (also Mê-Turan) is an archaeological site in Diyala Governorate Iraq comprising the modern Tell Haddad and the two mounds of Tell al-Sib (also Tell as-Sib). In Neo-Assyrian times it was known as Me-Turnat. It was excavated as part of the ...

. The differences between the

Code of Hammurabi The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organised, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hamm ...

and the Laws of

Eshnunna Eshnunna (modern Tell Asmar in Diyala Governorate, Iraq) was an ancient Sumerian (and later Akkadian) city and city-state in central Mesopotamia 12.6 miles northwest of Tell Agrab and 15 miles northwest of Tell Ishchali. Although situated in th ...

significantly contributed to illuminating the development of ancient and

cuneiform law Cuneiform law refers to any of the legal codes written in cuneiform script, that were developed and used throughout the ancient Middle East among the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Elamites, Hurrians, Kassites, and Hittites. The Code of ...

was north of Ur on the

Tigris The Tigris () is the easternmost of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of the Armenian Highlands through the Syrian and Arabian Deserts, and empties into the ...

River and became politically important after the fall of the third dynasty of Ur, founded by

Ur-Nammu Ur-Nammu (or Ur-Namma, Ur-Engur, Ur-Gur, Sumerian: , ruled c. 2112 BC – 2094 BC middle chronology, or possibly c. 2048–2030 BC short chronology) founded the Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur, in southern Mesopotamia, following several centuries ...

. In distinction from the other

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...

n collections of law, this one got its name after the city where it had originated –

, located on the bank of the Diyala River, tributary to the

. This collection of laws is not a real systemized

codex The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...

; nearly sixty of its sections are preserved. The Laws are written in

Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...

and consist of two tablets which are marked with A and B. In 1948,

Albrecht Goetze Albrecht Ernst Rudolf Goetze (January 11, 1897 – August 15, 1971) was a German- American Hittitologist. Goetze was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1897. His father, Rudolf Goetze, was a psychiatrist. He began studies in Munich in 1915, but left t ...

of the

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

had translated and published them. In some sources the Laws of

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 Dadusha (reigned c. 1800–1779 BC) was one of the kings of the central Mesopotamian city Eshnunna, located in the Diyala Valley. He was the son of the Eshnunna king Ipiq-Adad II (reigned c. 1862–1818 BC). Although previously kings of Eshnunna h ...

. The text of the

prologue A prologue or prolog (from Greek πρόλογος ''prólogos'', from πρό ''pró'', "before" and λόγος ''lógos'', "word") is an opening to a story that establishes the context and gives background details, often some earlier story that ...

is broken at the point where the ruler who promulgated the laws was specified.

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 The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

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.”Reuven Yaron, ''The Laws of Eshnunna'', Brill, 1989 The conditional sentence (“If A then B” – as it also is the case with the other

n 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 Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). As ...

, mainly focussing on two different classes: the muškenum and awilum. The audience of the Laws of

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

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 Theft is the act of taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. The word ''theft'' is also used as a synonym or informal shorthand term for some ...

and related offences, 2. False

distraint Distraint or distress is "the seizure of someone’s property in order to obtain payment of rent or other money owed", especially in common law countries. Distraint is the act or process "whereby a person (the ''distrainor''), traditionally eve ...

, 3.

Sexual offences Sex and the law deals with the regulation by law of human sexual activity. Sex laws vary from one place or jurisdiction to another, and have varied over time. Unlawful sexual acts are called sex crimes. Some laws regarding sexual activity are ...

, 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 Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

was avoidable (in contrast to the

), because of the standard formulation: “It is a case of life … he shall die”.

References

External links

Laws of Eshnunna tablet at the Iraq National Museum
{{Authority control Legal codes Ancient Near East law Babylonia Codes of conduct

See also

References

Further reading

External links