A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law

MESOPOTAMIA

MIDDLE ASSYRIAN PERIOD

Sophie Lafont

1. S L

1.1 Law Codes

No code of laws in the modern sense has been discovered for the

Middle Assyrian period. There is, however, a collection of fourteen

tablets, the so-called Middle Assyrian Laws (MAL), some of them

very fragmentary, compiled in the manner of modern “restatements,”

which organize laws broadly by subject matter. Thus, Tablet A, the

best preserved, sets out laws relating to women (“Frauenspiegel”); Tablet

B deals principally with landed property, and Tablet C+G with mov-

able property. Most of these documents are copies from Assur from

the eleventh century, based on fourteenth-century originals.^1

1.2 Palace Regulations

The so-called “Harem Edicts” are a collection of twenty-three reg-

ulations on nine fragmentary tablets. Composed in the reign of Tiglat-

Pileser I (1114–1076), it comprises the decrees (riksù) of nine kings

over three centuries, between 1363 and 1076. They concern the

internal running of the palace and the royal harem.^2

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(^1) Translation and/or commentary: Driver and Miles, Assyrian Laws.. .; Cardascia,
Lois.. .; Saporetti, Leggi.. .; Borger, “Gesetze.. .” (Tablet A only); Roth, Law
Collections.. ., 153–94.
(^2) Editio princeps, cf. Weidner, Hof.. .; supplemented by Cardascia, Gesetze...,
286–88 and Roth, Law Collections.. ., 195–209. Citation follows the numbering in
Roth.
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