A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law

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individual treaty provisions in SAA 2 6 systematically cover all pos-

sible forms of threat against the ruling house, starting from the

definition of loyal conduct and gradually proceeding to the eventu-

ality of open rebellion and murder of the king.

3.3.2 Relative Status of the Parties

With the possible exception of treaties with major powers, of which

only one fragmentary example is available, all extant Assyrian treaties

were formulated exclusively from the Assyrian point of view and to

the advantage of the Empire. Throughout the treaties, first person

forms and suffixes refer to the Assyrian king, while second person

forms refer to the other party. In the list of divine witnesses, Assyrian

gods precede those of the other party; in the preamble, the name

of the Assyrian king precedes that of the other party. The oath to

keep the treaty terms was taken by the other party only, while the

punishments resulting from broken treaties were to be effected by

the Assyrian “great gods.”^39 The actual treaty terms were formulated

as oath-bound pledges and complemented by a solemn vow, again

to be made by the other party only. The seals impressed on the treaty

documents turned them into “tablets of destinies” sealed by the

Assyrian king as the earthly representative of the imperial god, Ashur.^40

3.3.3 In practice, this kind of formulation shifted the responsibility

for keeping the treaty totally to the other party, while it gave the

Assyrian king (acting as the representative of the gods witnessing the

treaty) the unconditional right to punish the other party in the event

of a broken treaty.^41

3.4 Terms

While the actual treaty terms naturally varied from case to case, cer-

tain provisions evidently of crucial interest to the Empire recur in

several treaties of the corpus:

(^39) Interestingly, both the adjuration and pledge/vow formulae recur in Assyrian
exorcistic texts, there applied to evil demons. This suggests that the other treaty
party was (subconsciously?) envisaged as a demonical force to be “bound” by mag-
ical means. See SAA 2, xxxvii, and Haas, “Dämonisierung...”
(^40) See George, “Sennacherib.. .,” 140–41.
(^41) The responsibility of the other party to abide by the treaty terms is explicitly
pointed out in SAA 2 6: 292.
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