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thousands of clay tablets are extant, both legal and administrative
documents. The documentation is especially rich in the sixth and
the early fifth centuries, making that period one of the best known
in Mesopotamian history. Thereafter (beginning with the reign of the
Achaemenid king Xerxes), the number of cuneiform tablets diminishes,
but the corpus has recently increased thanks to new discoveries, often
in museums. By the time the documentation becomes widespread,
in the late eighth century, a number of phenomena characteristic
for cuneiform law in the first millennium seem to be fully developed.^4
Besides cuneiform writing, Aramaic script and language were in
use in first millennium Babylonia. As these were written mostly on
parchment or papyrus, which has vanished into the soil of southern
Mesopotamia, practically no documents of this kind are preserved.
Sometimes Aramaic dockets were added to clay tablets written in
Akkadian. A number of clay bullae with seal impressions, mostly
from Hellenistic Uruk and from the contemporary settlement of
Seleucia on the Tigris, have come down to us as what remains of
Aramaic (and later Greek) deeds and letters.1.1 Law Codes
There is one tablet, probably a school tablet containing an excerpt
from a larger text,^5 with a number of regulations regarding claims
for compensation (in the wider sense) as well as provisions regard-
ing marriage and inheritance. In Achaemenid and Seleucid times
documents sometimes mention a dàtu “a “arri “law (of the king)”
(Persian loan word), but nothing thereof is preserved (see 2.1.2 below).
In the Achaemenid period there was also a judicial official called
dàtabarruor “a mu¢¢i dàti.1.2 Edicts and Administrative Orders
It is possible that the above-mentioned dàtu was not legislation in
the strict sense but a kind of “decree” or “royal command.” In the(^4) According to Koschaker (“Law: Cuneiform,” 212), nothing is known of the ori-
gin of the Neo-Babylonian model of legal documents. Some characteristics, how-
ever, may now be traced back to the late Kassite period, although many questions
remain unanswered due to the chronological gap in the documentation.
(^5) See Oelsner, “Erwägungen.. .”; Petschow, “... Gesetzesfragment”; Szlechter,
“Les lois néo-babyloniennes.” Recent translations: R. Borger, “Die neubabylonische
Gesetze”; Roth, Law Collections.. ., 143–49.
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