Trials are inherent to human nature and to all epochs. Pleading took place in Nineveh, Assyria, and Chaldea. On this subject the following axiom used by the judges and the pleaders, holds perfectly to-day:
“He who listeneth not to his conscience, the judge will not listen to his right.”
There must have been a fairly complicated code of procedure, for traces are found of an appellative jurisdiction in which the sovereign was the final judge.
The Sumerian laws likewise fixed the form of individual contracts. The signature, “qatatu,” was the essential feature of the contract.
Signature took place by affixing the seal. One fragment of these tablets bears witness to this custom so perpetuated in the East from remotest times to the present. Herodotus mentions the existence of seals as a peculiarity of the Babylonians.
“Every Babylonian,” said he, “had his seal for his personal use.” The Assyrian “kunuk” answers, like our word “seal,” both to the instrument and the mark it left on the plastic earth.
A large number of contracts of private business concerning all the ordinary transactions of life, between individuals, on which figures the mark of a seal, has been found: contracts of sale or exchange; contracts of loan or hire; acknowledgments of debts, carrying the guaranty of a mortgage or of chattels. They read like the records of a notary’s office. These contracts, like all the documents of the palace library, are written on the traditional bricks. These are easily distinguished from other documents by their outer appearance. After a few lines given up to the names of the contracting parties, we see the imprints of their seals, or sometimes the imprint of three finger nails.
The general drift of their contracts is easy to understand; the clauses are worded in formal language which proceeds from the nature of the relations of the two parties according to the object of their agreement. As a usual thing, these contracts are very simply drawn. They begin by stating the names and qualifications of the parties who are going to enter into agreement by the affixment of their seal or by the nail mark, its substitute.
All contracting parties are not called upon to fulfil this formality; it is only those who have the title of “dominus negotii” the vendor, the lessor, the lender, those who “hold the pen” as the modern expression is.
A place reserved in the text for the fixing of seal or imprint reveals to us that their seals had different shapes. As many of these jewels have descended to us, and as there are a great number in our public and private collections, it is not without interest to describe them in more detail.