A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law

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empire by Cyrus II, the former empire (including Syria and Palestine)

was made into a satrapy called “Babylon and Beyond the River” (Bàbilu

u ebir nàri); later the territory was divided into sub-units. Henceforth,

Babylonia was no longer the seat of the central administration but

only an administrative unit (satrapy) of larger empires. Within Babylonia

a satrap acted as representative of the king.

2.1.3.2 Provincial Administration

The Babylonian kingdom was divided into provinces (pì¢àtu), named

according to a previously existing country or tribe, or the principal

city of the region. That term continued into later practice. For the

title of its chief official, different terms were used (bèl pì¢àtior later

pì/à¢àti, “aknu,“akin †èmi and others; the governor of Nippur was

called “andabakku).^21 By order of the king the governors could per-

form legal acts such as making land grants. Tribes are headed by

sheikhs (Aramean nasìku, Chaldean ra"su/rà“u, Kassite bèl bìti). In the

Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods, beside the Akkadian titles,

Persian^22 and Greek ones were sometimes used.^23

2.1.3.3 Local Government

As many of the provinces are named after the central settlement of

the region, a strict differentiation between provincial and local admin-

istration is not always possible. The “governors” (see above) are often

responsible for local affairs too. Persons called qìpi àli, “(royal) com-

missioner,” are attested as the administrators of regions or cities, but

also of temples. The ¢azannu(“mayor, headman”) acted on behalf

of the local administration also in the villages surrounding the cities

and towns. The bàbtu(“ward”) of Old Babylonian times occurs only

in the phrase dekû “a bàbti, a kind of tax. Mention is made in the

texts of numerous minor settlements (villages and hamlets), princi-

pally as places of agricultural production.

There was an assembly of the freeborn persons (pu¢ru), acting

mainly as a legal institution (see 2.1.4.3 below).^24 Close connections

(^21) Attested up until the first century: Sachs-Hunger Diaries 3 72:10? (see also
Zadok, “Notes.. .”).
(^22) E.g., “satrap”; see Dandamaev, “a¢“adrapànu.. .,” (at Nippur; also attested once
in Hellenistic Uruk: BRM 2 56:19), and Stolper, “Bèl“unu.. .” For further Persian
titles, see Eilers, Iranische Beamtennamen...
(^23) E.g., dioiketes(“major-domo”): BRM 2 31:8.
(^24) In the Hellenistic period, the determinative LÚ is added to the logogram
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