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4.1 Citizenship
4.1.1 The official status of “citizen”—“man/woman/son/daughter/
wife of the country of Arraphe” in the wording of the texts—is at
times explicitly stated in private documents of various kinds.^43 To all
appearances, such a qualification implies a special (and privileged)
status of the persons, as concerns the safeguarding of their civil rights.
This is especially made clear in a number of transactions whose
object is the giving of women in adoption or marriage: the various
conditions that are laid down as between alienor and alienee are
designed to limit the latter’s freedom to deal with the woman as he
pleases. See, for example, the case recorded in AASOR 16 43, where
a girl is given in adoption by her parents to a woman, who will
marry her offto whomever she pleases. The adopter, however, “shall
treat the girl as a free citizen (lit., “daughter”) of Arraphe and must
not make her a slave” (ll. 20–21). A similar case is illustrated by
Gadd 12, a marriage contract concerning an “Arraphean daughter”:
among the various conditions set out in meticulous detail in the doc-
ument, it is provided that the husband can divorce the woman but
shall not drive away (from his house) any children whom she might
have given birth to, nor sell them as slaves (ll. 26'–32'). See further
YBC 5134, a matrimonial adoption: a girl is handed over by her par-
ents to a man (against payment of a sum of gold); the adopter shall
marry her offto “a free citizen (lit. “man”) of Arraphe” (ll. 7–8).^444.1.2 It is by no means clear why, out of the hundreds of identi-
cal or similar transactions recovered from Nuzi private archives, only
a negligible number of documents make explicit mention of the
Arraphean citizenship of (young) people who are the object of trans-
fers agreed upon by third parties holding full legal title over them.
Be that as it may, present evidence shows that the basic prerogative
attached to the personal status of Arraphean citizenship—derived
from being a freeborn person from any city, district or village of the
kingdom of Arraphe, including the homonymous capital city àl-ilàni
(= Arraphe)—was protection against the risk of being reduced to(^43) Cf. the textual references gathered by Fincke, RGTC 10, 35.
(^44) Lacheman and Owen, “Texts.. .,” no. 22, pp. 403, 430.
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