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parties, the claims, significant evidence, and the verdict. They serve
practical purposes, private or official.
The majority of cuneiform trial records were of civil disputes.
They were drafted for the benefit of the successful litigant, to provide
documentation of rights acquired as a result of the case. In most
cases, the document was kept by the litigant. Sometimes only an
interim record is made, of the claims and evidence, without the out-
come. Their purpose is not certain but may be linked to ongoing
litigation or to litigation that has been suspended, for some reason.
The hieratic ostraca from the tomb workmen’s village at Deir al
Medinah in Thebes (New Kingdom) contain many trial records.
Scholars do not agree on whether they were official documents or
memoranda for litigants.
Trial records from the Neo-Sumerian period, known as di-til-la
(“case completed”), after the notation with which they typically end,
differ slightly from later records in that they appear to have been
an official record kept in official archives. Nonetheless, they concern
mostly civil disputes and contain essentially the same information as
later private litigation documents, which suggests that they were also
designed to document private rights.1.1.2.4 Law Codes
The “law codes” are a particular genre of literature, consisting of
collections of legal rules. Although few in number, examples are
found in various parts of the region and from all three millennia.^6
They are recognizable by similarities of style and content, although
as physical records they are preserved in a number of different forms.- The Laws of Ur-Namma (LU), from Ur in southern Mesopotamia,
in Sumerian and dating to around 2100. - The Laws of Lipit-Ishtar (LL), from Isin in southern Mesopotamia,
in Sumerian and dating to around 1900. - The Laws of Eshnunna (LE), from a city of that name in north-
ern Mesopotamia, in Akkadian and dating to around 1770. - The Laws of Hammurabi, from Babylon (LH), in Akkadian and
dating to around 1750. - The Middle Assyrian Laws (MAL), from Assur, in Akkadian and
dating to the fourteenth century.
(^6) The major exception is Egypt, where no law code has been found. On the
other hand, the late Demotic “Legal Code of Hermopolis” (= P. Mattha) has fea-
tures which suggest that the same literary tradition existed (see 1.1.2.5 below).
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