Women certainly were scribes. Out of a total of ninety names of scribes known, at least ten were women. Here a difficulty arises from the way in which women's names occur. At this period proper names are usually written without the determinative which marks sex. Nor do the names decide, for both men and women bore the same name. Thus Taribatum is the name of two men and also of two women. Only when the title tupšarru is given, is the feminine determinative prefixed to that. We have, however, ten clear examples.
In the later times the scribe usually was a man, but female scribes are known.[90] The Aramaic scribe is often named, also the Egyptian. The scribe usually “held” the agreement, which probably means that the parties were willing to leave it in his safe-keeping.
The scribe not a judge
The scribe was not a judge. It may be true that he sometimes acted as judge or became one, but then the higher office overshadowed the lower. He was no longer scribe but judge. A judge may sometimes have written down his legal decision and so acted as scribe, but we have no evidence of such a case. The judge seems never to have dispensed with the services of the scribe.
The scribe not a priest
The scribe was not a priest. There is no evidence whatever that either priests were all scribes, or could all write, [pg 085] or that scribes were necessarily priests. As a matter of fact, the same man may have acted both as scribe and priest. But the offices are distinct and no one man ever bears both titles. That in later times the amêlu RID, whose title can be read šangû, usually acts as scribe is due to the peculiar nature of the documents. These concern transactions in which the property of the temple, or of its officials, was in question, and one of the college of priests attached to that temple was charged with the duty of notary where temple interests were concerned. One might as well say that every clerk in the Middle Ages was a priest, because all the deeds of the monastery with which we were dealing were drawn up by Brother A, whose name was entered in some monastery list of the brethren as a priest. Whether the scribes were clerics, and always attached to some temple, in minor orders, is not clear. On the whole, the evidence is against this conclusion.
The witnesses
3. Witnesses.—The word used to designate a witness is šîbu, which denotes those who are “gray-headed,” but it is not certain that it can have no other meaning. It may mean those who were “present.” In actual use we can distinguish three classes of persons to whom the term “witness” can be applied.
The elders of a city
First we have the elders, the šîbu, of a city.[91] Possibly the Kar-sippar, by which some men swore, or in presence of which a contract was drawn up, were these elders of Sippar. They formed the puḫru, or “assembly,” in whose presence a man was scourged,[92] from which a prevaricating judge was expelled.[93] They may have been nominated, or at least approved, by the king; for we read of šîbê šarri. They were not exclusively men, for we have šîbê û šîbatu.[94] The recurrence of the same names, at the same dates, indicates that a body of official witnesses were held in readiness [pg 086] to act on such occasions. Many of them were temple officials, or members of the guild of Shamash votaries.