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of Alalakh or Yamkhad regularly appear as contracting parties. The
formulation is one-sided: the transferor conveys (nadànum) a town to
the transferee in exchange for (ana pù¢àt/pù¢) another town. Interest-
ingly, the transfer is here also “paid in full” (ana “ìm gamrim).7.3 Gift
AT 86 and AT 96 are deeds of gift concerned with the transfer of
“shares,” that is, part of the paternal property. The donor is the
ruler of Alalakh, and the donees are presumably to be identified as
his son and his daughter.^20 In both documents the conveyed prop-
erty is a town, and in AT 96 it is fully exempted from services.7.4 Loan^21
7.4.1 Loan documents represent more than a third of our legal cor-
pus. Formally, they are of two types. A few (AT 27, AT 33, AT
39, and cf. the document without witnesses, AT 34) state that the
borrower has received (leqû) the loan from the creditor. The rest use
the formula “such and such belonging to the creditor is to the debit
(ana mu¢¢i/ugu) of the debtor.” The provisions concerning interest,
repayment, and eventual seizure of pledges are common to both
types of documents. Additional information on the system of credit
may be gleaned from administrative texts and especially debt notes
(such as AT 45, AT 319, and AT 322).7.4.2 Loans are almost always quantities of silver; amounts of grain
are also attested (e.g., AT 36).7.4.3 Interest is rarely prescribed explicitly. The few extant rates
vary: in AT 40, for example, it is fixed at 25 percent; in AT 35
one half bears 33 1/3 percent interest and the other 25 percent,
and in AT 39 one half bears a rate of 25 percent and the other 16
2/3 percent. The verb used to express the accrual of interest is
waßàbu. Interest-free loans may be expressly stipulated with the clause
“the principal (lit., the silver) bears no interest” (kaspum ul ußßab),(^20) These two texts must be connected with the testament AT 6 and the litiga-
tion document AT 95, in which reference is made to the hereditary transmission
of royal inheritance shares.
(^21) See Zeeb, “Studien... I–III.”
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