A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law

737

ANATOLIA AND THE LEVANT

CANAAN

Ignacio Márquez Rowe

S L

To date, the whole of the second millennium is represented by two

isolated legal texts found at two Canaanite sites, Hazor and Shechem.

Of these, the latter preserves no more than the names of some wit-

nesses to a lost transaction.^1 The two documents belong to the end

of the Middle Bronze Age or, in other words, to the late Old

Babylonian period. The number of Old Babylonian inscriptions found

in the region is altogether very small.

Evidence from the Late Bronze Age consists almost exclusively of

letters. In Canaan proper, only a handful of texts have been dis-

covered. To these belong the few Akkadian letters unearthed at

Taanach dating to the middle of the fifteenth century and at Kàmid

el-Lòz dating to the following century. The latter are related to the

undoubtedly more important collection of Akkadian letters from

Canaan, namely those found at Akhetaten, modern Amarna, the

capital of ancient Egypt founded by Amenophis IV/Akhenaten.

These texts or groups of texts will be dealt with separately according

to their historical context. The Hazor tablet will be treated individually.

THT^2

The tablet found out of context at Hazor is not fully preserved and

records in Akkadian a dispute between three men and a woman. The

document is not sealed; the text is phrased in objective style and in

the past. The editors of the text observed certain affinities with the

Old Babylonian litigation documents from Alalakh. Indeed, the struc-

ture and vocabulary are similar. First, the claim and subject matter

(^1) Böhl, “Keilschrifttafeln,” 322ff. A similar fragment is also all the legal mater-
ial we have from neighboring Qatna; see Virolleaud, “L’ancienne Qatna,” 293f.
(^2) Hallo and Tadmor, “A Lawsuit from Hazor.”
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