Codex Ešnunna

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The Codex Ešnunna (often also written Codex Eschnunna or Codex Eshnunna ) is an ancient Babylonian collection of legal rulings that is somewhat older than the much better known Codex Ḫammurapi .

The Codex Ešnunna became known through two clay tablet fragments, which were found in 1945 and 1947 in Tell Ḥarmal in Iraq . This is the ancient city of Šaduppum , which was part of the kingdom of Ešnunna at the time these tablets were made , after which the legal collection was named. In the early 1980s a fragmentary student copy of parts of the Codex Ešnunna was found in Tell Haddad .

The exact dating of the legal clauses is unclear, but it can be assigned to one of the kings Narām-Sîn , Dāduša or Ibâl-pî-El II . This makes the Codex Ešnunna the oldest known Akkadian-language legal collection, which the Codex Ḫammurapi may have also served as a template. As with the other ancient oriental codices, the place in life of the Codex Ešnunna has not yet been finally clarified.

A length of 185 lines has been reconstructed for the text; its original has not yet been found. Since the clay tablets found, which complement each other, show many deviations in terms of spelling, grammar and content, it is assumed that these are school texts that are already based on a complex tradition.

Unlike other Mesopotamian codices, the text has no prologue. Instead, the text began with a Sumerian preamble with a data formula that is reminiscent of the justice decrees of ancient oriental rulers. It is immediately followed by the so-called legal part with 60 preserved paragraphs that concern collective bargaining law, tenancy law, criminal law, commercial law, family law, law of obligations / lien, sales law, jurisdiction, slave law and liability law. An epilogue has not survived either.

Unlike the Codex Ḫammurapi, the Codex Ešnunna contains not only casuistic but also apodictic provisions. The casuistic provisions are mostly conditionally stylized, with the word šumma (if) being used as an introduction . However, individual legal clauses are also formulated in relative terms and then introduced by the formula awīlum ša ... (A man who ...). Compared to the older Sumerian codices, the Codex Ešnunna is comparatively often threatened with the death penalty , which was primarily intended for offenses against the property and family of a muškēnum as well as for the rape of an engaged woman by a third party and for adultery.

literature

  • Albrecht Götze : The laws of Eshnunna (=  The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research . Volume 31 ). ASOR , New Haven 1956.
  • Reuven Yaron: The laws of Eshnunna. Magnes Press, Jerusalem 1969. 2. rev. Edition 1988. ISBN 90-04-08534-3

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Richard Haase: Introduction to the study of cuneiform legal sources . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1965, p. 22 .
  2. ^ Martha T. Roth : Law collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (=  Writings from the ancient world . Volume 6 ). 2nd Edition. Scholars Press, Atlanta 1997, pp. 58 .
  3. ^ Diez Otto Edzard: The "second intermediate time" of Babylonia . tape 1 . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1957, p. 166 (dissertation).
  4. ^ Viktor Korošek: Cuneiform writing law . In: Bertold Spuler (ed.): Orientalisches Recht (=  Handbook of Oriental Studies ). 1st section, supplementary volume 3. Brill, Leiden 1964, p. 86 .
  5. ↑ a b Burkhart Kienast: The ancient oriental codices between orality and written form . In: Hans-Joachim Gehrke (Hrsg.): Legal codification and social norms in an intercultural comparison . Gunter Narr, Tübingen 1994, p. 19 .
  6. ^ A b Hans Neumann: Law in ancient Mesopotamia . In: Ulrich Manthe (ed.): Legal cultures of antiquity: From the ancient Orient to the Roman Empire . CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 84 f .