62 dagmar kühn
is the role of the gods as guarantors of agreements. the gods were believed
to impose curses upon those guilty of violating the agreements, and these
curses were set down in the inscriptions.
From the neo-assyrian period, we have numerous aramaic obligation
contracts from the Syrian area, which detail the institution of lending.174
the clay tablets or dockets were found at tell halaf, tell Šeḫ Ḥamad, tell
aḥmar, tell Shioukh Fawqani, and ma ʾallanate in the Baliḫ region. they
bore a short aramaic comment in addition to the assyrian text or were
completely written in aramaic.175 in most of these contracts, a loan is
drafted and then witnessed by one or several witnesses.176
all aramaic contracts date from the assyrian annexation and their
wording strongly resembles the formulaic wording of neo–assyrian con-
tracts; nevertheless, they are important because they partly preserved a
repertoire of legal terms of west Semitic origin, which were also used in
the later elephantine papyri.177 a. Lemaire has recently drawn attention
to the fact that the aramaic wording has also influenced the neo-assyrian
wording: “La symbiose était si forte et si durable (plus de deux siècles!)
que les influences réciproques étaient inévitables et qu’il est même par-
fois difficile de préciser le sens de cette influence.”178
in the economic sector, we have the already mentioned aramaic con-
tracts dealing with ownership transfer or purchase of land and persons.179
- economy180
4.1 Sources of Information about Economic ConditionsFrom aramaic inscriptions we have only a limited idea about the econ-
omy in the aramaean kingdoms of Syria. the inscriptions from Samʾal
174 Lipiński 2000a: 581–586; id. 2010; Fales 2000; Lemaire 2010b. we have evidence of
loans of grain, silver, straw, and other materials.
175 Fales 2000: 104–114 for an overview on the places. the aramaic letters were written
in clay or were painted on it. For a general classification, see Fales 1986: 1–4, following post-
gate 1976. cf. Lipiński 1975a: 114–142 for the legal documents from tell halaf and id. 2010
for the legal documents from ma ʾallanate (aram. maʿlānā); Fales – radner – pappi – attardo
2005 for the tablets from tell Shioukh Fawqani; Lemaire 2010b gives a bibliographical
overview on the published tablets and presents new tablets with loan contracts.
176 Fales 1986; id. 1996; id. 2000; Lemaire 2010b; Lipiński 1975a; id. 2010: 245–273 with
a legal commentary.
177 Fales 2000: 104–114.
178 Lemaire 2010b: 219.
179 See section 1.6.1, above.
180 the following economic overview owes much to the thorough expositions of dion
1997: 325–366 and Lipiński 2000a: 515–556. Both refer to the older work of Jankowska 1969.