We are uncertain about the relative authority of witnesses and contracts. Hammurabi’s
laws repeatedly place witnesses and contracts on the same level (paragraphs 7 , 122 – 123 )
and that seems already to have been the case in the earlier Ur III period (Falkenstein
1956 : I 73 ). Witnesses could tell untruths – as the Laws of Ur-Namma acknowledge
(LU § 28 ) – and people could swear false oaths – as a baffled litigant learned when
trying to recover a loan from a repeat perjurer before the gods (Foster 2005 : 215 – 216 ).
Although there are some (but remarkably few) accusations of false documentation, the
written contract did not lie.THE PEOPLE AND THE STATE
Adjudication was just one of the ways in which state authorities interacted with the
people. It is clear from the Ur III period that the power to pronounce judgments lay
in the hands of the king and that he delegated it to locals who judged on his behalf.
Although the king may have been directly involved in some high-profile cases, he did
not appear regularly as a judge. In Ur III times the provincial governors (Sumerian
ensik) sometimes acted for him but most often cases were judged by groups of men, the
di-ku 5 in Sumerian, up to seven in one case. We know nothing about how they were
selected, trained, and rewarded. The same group could hear various cases in one day,
but the judges did not constitute a standing body with rotating or permanent
membership. Judges appear with other professional titles and they seem to have been
called up on an ad hocbasis, with those holding socially prominent professions judging
high-profile cases. For example, in the Ur III period, the vizier and the governor heard
a case of embezzlement from the temple (Lafont 2000 : 49 no 9 ). Probably the same
happened earlier in the third millennium. To be a judge was not a profession, but a
responsibility. An authorized representative (Sumerian maåkim) was in charge of
preparing the case and recording its outcome. The job was not permanent and men
with various professions, such as singer and messenger, appear in the role (Sallaberger
1999 : 225 ). They must have been literate to perform the duties involved.
It seems that in other areas of life as well a similar structure existed: the ultimate
authority was the ruler, who needed the cooperation of the people to ensure the proper
functioning of the state. In war he needed troops, for economic development he
needed labor, for the cult he needed donations, etc. In essence, the third millennium
Mesopotamian state was a city-state: it encompassed an urban center and its surround-
ings with villages, farmsteads, and open steppe areas. In most cases, one could walk
from the urban center to the outer boundary of the territory in one day. In the southern
part of the region some twenty city-states abutted one another in a territory some 200
by 100 kilometers in size. Despite moments of political unification incorporating
multiple city-states – most successfully in the Sargonic and Ur III periods when the
entirety of Sumer and Akkad was under one ruler – the city-state did not disappear.
When the kings of Akkad and Ur had hegemony, local dynasts became governors
subject to them, but the relationship between populations and the state did not change
fundamentally. The ultimate destination of their contributions may have been the elite
in a distant capital, but the people still provided them to the local authorities.
The social structure of Sumerian cities is far from clear to us. Many people were part
of what modern scholars of Mesopotamia call “the great organizations” (Oppenheim
1977 ), that is, various temples and the local palace, which employed men, women, and
–– Democracy and the rule of law ––