described as a virgin, though he is unmarried (Cooper 2002 : 103 ); thus, in accordance
with Mesopotamian sexual convention more generally, young men appear to have
been less scrutinized than young women in this respect.
Marriages between free men and women were, in cases involving the propertied
class or manumitted slaves, enforced by legal contracts made between the groom (and
his family) and those who were responsible for the bride, usually her male relatives
(Roth 1989 : 26 ). The mother of the bride, however, could exercise considerable control
over her daughters’ marriages (Westenholz 1990 : 517 – 518 ), particularly in fatherless
households (Roth 1988 b: 132 ). Brides clearly are objects rather than agents of most
transactions, though independent women, e.g. divorcées and widows, could make
contracts on their own behalf (Westbrook 1988 : 61 – 62 ; Roth 1989 : 20 ).^5 There has
been a great deal of debate regarding the nature of the marriage contract and of the
terhatum(often translated as “bride-price”): the primary legal issue in marriage certainly
was one of transfer of responsibility for, and control of, the bride, but it has been
argued that marriage was formulated quite differently from the sale of property
(Westbrook 1988 : 58 – 60 ; but see Leemans 1991 : 140 ). The following outline of the
legal and social framework of marriage is based largely upon the general legal codes
(Roth 1997 ) and upon records of individual contracts and court cases.
In the Old Babylonian period, the act of marriage – in the usual case of a young
woman leaving her parents’ house for the first time – appears to have involved several
stages: a groom (or, if he were still a minor, his parents) first would make an oral,
promissory contract with the bride’s representative(s) and then would offer a terhatum
payment that would confirm his intent and accord him certain rights (Westbrook
1988 : 59 – 60 ). At this point, the couple were protected to a certain extent in an
institution that scholars term “inchoate marriage,” in which the inchoate wife was
responsible for her sexual behavior. A prospective groom accuses his inchoate wife of
infidelity in a legal deposition from the time of Hammurabi (FLP 1340 ), demanding
both that his terhatumpayment be returned and that the authorities “tie her up and
throw her into the river!” (Owen and Westbrook 1992 ). This case may be associated
with one of the laws of Hammurabi (hereafter LH) § 143 , which stipulates that an
unfaithful (inchoate?) wife who refuses her husband should be punished by drowning
(see Malul 1991 : 282 contraWestbrook 1988 : 45 – 47 ). Because the bride-to-be
sometimes moved into her father-in-law’s house before completion of the marriage,
however, the groom’s father might have sexual access to her in some cases before the
consummation of the marriage (Westbrook 1988 : 36 – 39 ).^6
Eventually, an Old Babylonian inchoate marriage would be finalized when the
groom “took” the bride (ahazum). There is much debate regarding the mechanism(s)
used to “seal the deal” of marriage; the sources suggest some combination of official
vows (verba solemnia), the bride’s habitation in the groom’s home (in domum deductio),
and sexual consummation (copula carnalis) (Westbrook 1988 : 48 – 53 ).^7 The latter is
occasionally described as “opening the pin of virginity” (Malul 1991 – 1992 ; see also
Cooper 2002 ). In any event, upon the completion of the marriage, the bride’s familial
dowry (nudunnûm, sˇeriktumin LH) was transferred to her new husband, who would
safeguard it for his wife and future children, and who might add to it some gifts of
his own (Westbrook 1991 ). In the Neo-Babylonian period, private documents dealing
with marriage focus almost exclusively on the substance of the dowry and therefore
can be said to be “dowry agreements” rather than marriage agreements in the Old
— Women and gender in Babylonia —