qa = 3600 nindan) explains why sales contracts were only drafted by a small circle
of specially qualified and privileged scribes who ratified the tablets with their seals
and who must have fulfilled a position like a notary.
This plan is an abstraction since the property is 30 times longer than wide. The
names of the neighbours are listed at the side. On the reverse is the description of
the portions: the left is ascribed to Nergal-e ̄t.ir, the right to his nephews. The lengthwise
partition results in rather narrow strips, but since the date plantations are alongside
the canal, both parties thereby receive an equal share of garden and arable land and
have unhindered access to the water course and hence to irrigation devices. Since
yields depended on artificial irrigation, this was a very important aspect. The plan
also records details rarely found in other texts: on the southern bank of the canal
(below) is an area with ca. 500 date palms on 2. 5 hectares, which means that the
density of the trees is one tree per 50 square metres or 200 trees per hectare. On the
other canal bank, land in the form of a strip parallel to the bank has two-thirds of
its surface cultivated with palms, while beyond is an area for barley. South of the
canal the arable field begins after 500 metres and extends for 1. 37 kilometres where
it ends in a sharp triangle in a drainage basin.
Date cultivation at this time covered about a quarter of the whole surface. From the
first mentioning of the property, 56 years before, the cultivation had expanded
enormously and probably reached the limits of irrigation potential. This is made clear
by a lease contract which allows a gardener to cultivate an additional plot of land which
had to be irrigated with buckets, and therefore must have been beyond reach of the
canal. This shows just how intensively fields in Babylon were cultivated at this time.
Seven years after the partition described above, the property features again in
another document. Nergal-e ̄t.ir had died without male heirs and his widow found
herself in financial difficulties. She exchanged Nergal-e ̄t.ir’s share with Marduk-na ̄s.ir-
apli, her nephew, against another, smaller field and a sum of compensation which
was paid to her husband’s creditors. This meant that those 12 kur which used to
belong to Nabû-ah
̆
h
̆e ̄-iddin, were once more in one hand, that of his grandson,
Marduk-na ̄s.ir-apli, who continued to direct business as the family head for another
four years, until his brothers insisted that he surrender their inheritance, which
initiated the next round of partition.
MARRIAGES AND DOWRIESIn well-to-do Babylonian families, marriage was a matter of prestige, income prospects
and business connections, arranged by the father or both parents for daughters,
sometimes when they were children. Grown sons could not marry without their
father’s consent and often did so only after his death. Neither daughters nor wives
could inherit since the dowry, which was handed over to the future husband or his
father, fulfilled the obligations of their own families. It was, however, up to the
husband or father to make donations or last wills in favour of wives or daughters.
There was no general norm as to the value of a dowry in relation to the expected
inheritance share of brothers. This meant that non-material aspects such as the family’s
status and the social connections played a decisive role in the initial negotiations and
the settlement of the dowry. The Egibi archive contains dowry contracts for women
of three generations (the third to the fifth). They show a noteworthy pattern; women
— Cornelia Wunsch —