A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law

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6.2.4 Performance of the corvée that accompanied the land was

incumbent upon its owners, whether they were single individuals or

joint owners of an undivided estate. In the latter case, it is not known

if and how the ilku obligations were shared among the co-owners.

Needless to say, with land belonging to peasant families—however

extended—the title holders were in actual possession of the land that

they personally farmed.

6.2.5 In principle, one would expect that transfer of land auto-

matically implied transfer of ilkuduties to the new owners. This is

not the case, however. A comprehensive examination of the docu-

mentation shows that purchasers were almost invariably engaged in

expanding their holdings and consequently were not personally involved

in the management of their scattered estates. Agricultural labor on

the estates of absentee landlords was ensured by the former peasant

owners, deprived of their title and now acting as tenants. It is there-

fore no surprise that in the great majority of cases, the ilkuduties

accompanying fields that had been sold remained with the former

title holder and were not transferred to the purchaser.^118

6.3 Real-estate transfer

Real estate was transferred either through inheritance mechanisms

or by deeds of conveyance: as will be seen (6.5 below), the latters’

legal form represents one of the foremost peculiarities of the Nuzi

documentation. The two alternative sources of real estate ownership

are mentioned at the end of a detailed list of fields belonging to

Tehip-tilla: these fields had either been obtained “from outsiders”

(“a bàbi: lit., “(purchased with a deed of sale drafted) at the (city)

gate”) or “belong to the paternal estate” (atta““i¢u).^119

The latter derived from inheritance, either through the custom-

ary lineage of intestate succession or in accordance with the testa-

tor’s explicit instruction recorded in a will. Adoption of outsiders

into sonship had the same legal effect as a testament insofar as it

(^118) Significant but isolated exceptions have been analyzed by Zaccagnini, “Proprietà
fondiaria.. .,” 720–22.
(^119) JEN 641: 28–29; cf. Maidman, A Socio-Economic Analysis.. ., 174–80; cf.
the adoption HSS 19 44 where the same opposition occurs, i.e. between “fields and
houses which I [scil.: the adopter] received from the estate of my father” and “fields
and houses which I bought” (ll. 5–7, 9–10).
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