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All of the documents are royal deeds and concern real estate, so
that we find again the same clauses of guarantee and service attested
in royal gifts and sales. (Note in RS 16.158 the transfer of a bride-
price in exchange (kìmù) for the paternal house.) As in sale docu-
ments, the king sometimes appears as definitively transferring own-
ership in the property to the new holders. One should finally note
here that recipients of royal grants are often found as contracting
parties to “royal” sales and barters.7.4 Suretyship^39
Seven records are concerned with suretyship. The sureties (Ug. 'rbnm
in RS 15.128 = KTU 3.3, spelled lú.me“ú-ru-ba-nuin RS 16.287)
are said to undertake to be answerable for the obligation (presum-
ably a debt) of another. (The verbal expression in Ug. is 'rb b, and
in Akk. qàtàti ßabàtu.) Only in one text is there mention of the loan
and the creditor (RS 16.287); in the others, it is reasonable to assume
that the king was the creditor.^40 As for the sureties, they appear to
be related either by family or place of origin with the debtors, thus
showing the principle of collective responsibility present in this kind
of contracts.
The usual contingency provided for is the flight of the debtor(s)
to a foreign country, in which case the surety (or sureties) is liable
to pay a sum of silver. Note that in one case (RS 19.66 = KTU
3.8), the sureties are also liable to be sold into Egypt (cf. 7.2.3 above:
redemption of people from abroad).- C D
Both Akkadian terms designating “crime” or “delict,” arnuand ¢ì†u,
are attested in our sources. The former appears only once in the
expression bèl arni, “criminal,” to qualify the man whose estate the(^39) See Boyer, “La place des textes d’Ugarit.. .,” 305ff.; Milano, “Osservazioni.. .,”
186–90; and Hoftijzer and van Soldt, “Texts from Ugarit.. .,” 189–99. The Ugaritic
expression bunu“u malki, taken to designate one of the “social classes” of Ugarit,
probably referred to “antichretic pledges”; see Márquez Rowe, “The King’s Men.. .”
(^40) On the basis of the find-spot of the texts, viz. the royal archives, and the recip-
ient of the fine, viz. the king himself. See Hoftijzer and van Soldt, “Texts from
Ugarit.. .,” 199, who also refer to the absence of witnesses in most of these con-
tracts as a possible further argument in favor thereof.
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