record from Sumer to the Persian period, at which time it is also
to be found in Egypt, in Aramaic and Demotic contracts from
Elephantine.^18 The connections may be more complex than a sim-
ple surface transmission. Special contractual clauses change over time,
but some surprise us by reappearing in unconnected places, for exam-
ple, a penalty clause from mid-third millennium Sumer disappears,
only to resurface in mid-second millennium Nuzi.^19
A common legal culture is, however, also discernable at a deeper
level, that of structures and concepts. The judicial use of the oath
is the same for all societies of the region, at all periods. The struc-
ture of inheritance is essentially the same, despite a wide variety of
local customs on matters of detail. The Adoption Papyrus, which is
virtually the sole adoption document from New Kingdom Egypt,
reveals a conception of inheritance, family property, adoption, and
the use of legal fictions that is entirely in accord with that of its
counterpart systems in Mesopotamia. Doubtless certain similarities
may be dismissed as inevitable coincidences in agricultural societies
of a certain level of technology, comparable to developments else-
where, such as in China or South America. Yet the correlations are
too many and too specific to speak in terms of comparability rather
than continuity. At the deeper level, however, it is impossible to
identify any particular path of transmission, whether through trade
or similar contacts and whether in historical times or much earlier.
In conclusion, perhaps the best way to describe the common legal
culture of the ancient Near East is negatively. The different legal
systems were indeed different. They were independent; they had rules
peculiar to themselves and their own internal dynamic. Laws changed
and developed within individual systems, if not at the pace or in the
mode familiar to us from modern law. Nonetheless, it is impossible
to say of any legal system from any place or period within the para-
meters set by this history, that its laws come from a conceptual world
alien to the others. The same finding would not hold if we com-
pared its laws with a classical or modern legal system. The chapters
of this Historywill deal with each individual system on its own terms.
The remainder of the introduction will attempt to summarize those
aspects that, in my opinion, they have in common.(^18) Traced by Muffs, Studies...
(^19) See Hackett and Huehnergard, “On Breaking Teeth.”
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