A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law

672    

5.3 Adoption^31

5.3.1 Formation

Adoption was created by a formal declaration: “He is my son” (Emar

185; possibly Emar 32, 93).

5.3.2 Capacity

Men or women could adopt. Filiation was not created by marriage;

a separate adoption was required. For example, in Emar 30 a woman

married and gave her existing son to her new husband in adoption.

5.3.3 Typology

5.3.3.1 Children

Unilateral adoption occurs in Emar 256, where the adopter takes

abandoned orphan children from the street. Their grandfather appar-

ently has renounced all claims on them and the only other poten-

tial claimant, their uncle, is deterred by a redemption price set at a

thousand shekels. Bilateral adoptions are recorded in a family set-

ting but may have been to deal with the offspring of slaves. In TBR

77, a woman gives her son and daughter to her sister in adoption,

but the possibility is envisaged of a claimant emerging who could

take the children by providing slaves as substitutes. In Emar 91, a

man gives children, probably by his slave concubine, in adoption to

his wife.^32

5.3.3.2 Adults

The rest of the recorded adoptions were contractual arrangements

involving adults. They were basically intended to secure support in

old age in return for various benefits—a wife immediately, release

from debts, an inheritance, or manumission on the adopter’s death.^33

5.3.3.2.1 Support arrangements might be made in a family con-

text, for example, a husband gives his wife a son in adoption for

support during widowhood (ASJ 16, pp. 231–38).

(^31) Beckman, “Family Values.. .,” 61–68, 76–79.
(^32) Ibid., 67.
(^33) In Ekalte 38, a man “establishes his mother as his father” (umma“u abi i“kun“i)
for unknown reasons. Adoption as a father is known from Alalakh (AT 16).
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