The Relations between the Laws of Babylonia and the Laws of the Hebrew Peoples / The Schweich Lectures

by C. H. W. Johns

The tablets in the British Museum from Sippara, Babylon, Borsippa, &c., dated in the reigns of Nebuchadrezzar, Nabopolassar, Evil-Merodach, Neriglissar, Nabonidus, Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius, were also edited by J. N. Strassmaier as Babylonische Texte, Inschriften von den Thontafeln des British Museums copiert und autographiert, in twelve volumes (Leipzig, 1887-1897). On the mass of material thus rendered available to scholars were based a very large number of memoirs and monographs which may be arranged here. K. L. Tallqvist, in 1890, published Die Sprache der Contracte Nabû-nâ’id’s (Helsingfors, J. C. Frenckell), in which he collected all the words and phrases occurring in these texts, with useful indexes. R. Zehnpfund gave Babylonische Weberrechnungen in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, i, pp. 492ff. (1890): L. Demuth, Fünfzig Rechts-und Verwaltungsurkunden aus der Zeit des Königs Kyros, in the same journal, vol. iii, pp. 393-444 (1898); E. Ziemer, Fünfzig Rechts-und Verwaltungsurkunden aus der Zeit des Königs Kambyses, same volume, pp. 445-92; V. Marx, Die Stellung der Frauen in Babylonien gemäss den Kontrakten aus der Zeit von Nebukadnezar bis Darius, same journal, vol. iv, pp. 1-77, 1902; and E. Kotalla, Fünfzig babylonische Rechts-und Verwaltungsurkunden aus der Zeit des Königs Artaxerxes I, same volume, pp. 551-74. Fr. Delitzsch contributed Notizen zu den neubabylonischen Kontrakttafeln, same journal, vol. iii, pp. 385-92 (1898), and J. Kohler, Ein Beitrag zum neubabylonischen Recht, vol. iv, pp. 423-30. F. E. Peiser, in 1889, published Keilinschriftliche Actenstücke aus babylonischen Städten (Berlin, W. Peiser), and, in 1890, Babylonische Verträge des Berliner Museums (Berlin, W. Peiser). This marked great advances on Oppert’s work, owing to Strassmaier’s new material and the Berlin collections. He next contributed a selection of transliterations and translations to the fourth volume of Schrader’s Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek (1896), p. 81, above. Then from 1890-1898 appeared Aus dem babylonischen Rechtsleben (Leipzig, Pfeiffer), in conjunction with J. Kohler, containing many new texts. A. B. Moldenke, in 1893, published for the Metropolitan Museum at New York a volume of Cuneiform Texts, all of this period. In 1890 appeared Recherches sur quelques contrats babyloniens, by A. Boissier (Paris, E. Leroux).

In the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie (Weimar, E. Felber, 1894) Y. le Gac published Quelques inscriptions assyro-babyloniennes du Musée Lycklama à Cannes, pp. 385-90, and in Babyloniaca (Paris, P. Geuthner, 1910), Textes babyloniens de la Collection Lycklama à Cannes, pp. 33-72. In 1902 T. G. Pinches contributed to the Verhandlungen des XIII. Orientalistischen Congresses some Notes on a Small Collection of Tablets from the Birs Nimroud belonging to Lord Amherst of Hackney.

In vols. III-VI of the Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler (1907-1908), A. Ungnad published many texts of this period, and gave later some valuable Untersuchungen on the same, Aus der altbabylonischen Kontrakt-literatur, to the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, 1912, cols. 106-8.

A new source for this material was the finds at Nippur, printed in The Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Series A. Cuneiform Texts, vol. viii, part 1 contained Legal and Commercial Transactions from the Neo-babylonian Empire to Darius II, by A. T. Clay, 1908; vols. ix and x, by the same author, contained Business Documents of Murashû Sons of Nippur in the reign of Artaxerxes I (1898), and Business Documents in the reign of Darius II (1904). A new series has since been commenced.

The Museum Publications of the Babylonian Section of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia Museum), vol. ii, no. 1, gives Business Documents of Murashû Sons of Nippur, by A. T. Clay (1912), and vol. ii, no. 2, Documents from the Temple Archives at Nippur, by the same author (1912).

Selected Business Documents of the Neo-Babylonian Period in the Semitic Study Series, by A. Ungnad (Leiden, Brill, 1908), forms a useful introduction to the subject.

In 1911 appeared Hundert ausgewählte Rechtsurkunden aus der Spätzeit des babylonischen Schrifltums von Xerxes bis Mithridates, 485-93 v. Chr., by A. Ungnad and J. Kohler (Leipzig, Pfeiffer), and I. L. Holt contributed to the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures a study of some Tablets from the R. C. Thompson Collection in Haskell Oriental Museum, The University of Chicago.

Of considerable interest as in some senses a link between Babylonia and Palestine are the Cappadocian Tablets. The first notice of them was given by T. G. Pinches in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Nov. 1, 1881, pp. 11-18. Some tablets in the British Museum were acquired from a dealer who said they had been found in Cappadocia. The script was then quite unfamiliar, and they were supposed at first to be written in a language neither Sumerian nor Semitic. Golenischeff published in 1891 the text of twenty-four tablets of the same class which he had acquired at Kaisareyeh. He made out that many words were Assyrian and read many names. Fr. Delitzsch made a most valuable study of them in the Abhandlungen der philos.-hist. Classe der K. Sächs. Gesellschaft d. Wissenschaften, 1893, no. 11. In 1894 P. Jensen in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, vol. ix, pp. 62-81, made many corrections and additions. F. E. Peiser then discussed them in his introduction to the fourth volume of Schrader’s Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, and gave the transcription and translation of the texts of nine, pp. 50-56. A considerable number more were discovered at Boghaz Köi, Kara Eyuk, and elsewhere, and published by V. Scheil in the Mémoires de la Mission en Cappadoce, and commented upon by A. Boissier in the Proceedings of the Society for Biblical Archaeology, 1900, pp. 106 ff. Four Cappadocian tablets were published by Thureau-Dangin among his Lettres et Contrats, see p. [82], above.

In Babyloniaca, 1908, pp. 1-45, A. H. Sayce translated the Golenischeff texts, and others published by Chantre, or found by Ramsay, &c.

T. G. Pinches with A. H. Sayce published and discussed The Cappadocian Tablet from Yuzghat in the Liverpool Institute of Archaeology, 1906.