these were resettled people originally from Akkadian territory or set-
tlers on the payroll of the royal Akkadian administration. King
Urnamma claims to have abolished the privileges they enjoyed.^1004.1.5 Citizens of the capital Agade could not be condemned to
death by a provincial authority (see 2.1.4.1 above). If citizens of
Nippur were party to a lawsuit, it had to take place under the author-
ity of the governor of Nippur (see 3.2.3 above). The possibility of
selling Nippurians into slavery may also have been restricted.^1014.2 Class
The Sumerian word for “free citizen” (dumu-gi 7 .r) qualifies a group
of men in a Sargonic text. Whether the legal status of the people
employed in the great estates differed in principle from that of free
persons is questionable. Nothing certain is known about a possible
class of serfs called ma“ka"en, well known from later periods.^1024.3 Gender
The head of household was, as a rule, a man, but from the begin-
ning of the documentation women also appear in this function. A
married woman could make contracts independently^103 or together
with her husband.^104 Irikagina’s reforms seemingly attempt to reduce
the legal status of women in threatening severe punishment for utter-
ing a curse against a man and in denying them the right to a sec-
ond marriage.^105(^100) Wilcke, “Der Kodex Urnamma.. .,” 306f. and n. 54.
(^101) SRU 54 (from Isin). The document was obviously written for the buyer of
the slave in question, who is not mentioned in the text. (Edzard assumes the mer-
chant Ur-dun [i 2] to be the buyer, but he is also one of the witnesses [iii 9 = 33]).
The mother’s right to sell her son must have been contested because “when A¢ù“uni
had come because of the status of citizen of Nippur, Ur-Gilgame“.k was the judge.”
(^102) See Edzard, “Sumerer und Semiten.. .,” 246f.; Kienast, “Zu mu“kènum...”;
also MVN 3 102:3.
(^103) See the list of women as buyers and sellers in sales contracts and as a party
in other legal contexts in third millennium documents before Ur III, in Wilcke,
“Vom Verhältnis.. .,” 362–64.
(^104) E.g., SRU 53 (l. 11 read: “u-ne-ne ab-si!); Krecher, “Neue sumerische...,”
no. 5(?); 19.
(^105) Reading in FAOS 5/1 Ukg. 6 iii 14–17: munus-e nita-ra, ¢á“¢ul?Ürib-ba
ì-ni-du 11 , munus-ba ka-ka-ni ¢ì-“u 4 “if a woman utters a terriblecurse against
a man, that woman’s mouth will be closed with a brick”; see further 5.1.1 below.
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