Ashmolean Museum: 23 (2023-06-29)

Created by: Wagensonner, Klaus

Old Babylonian legal document; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Ashm 1926-378.

This tablet in the Ashmolean Museum belongs to the Old Babylonian archive of Mannum-mešu-lissur in Nippur and was published by G. R. Hunter in the eighth volume of the Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts. Texts such as this one deal with agreements for adoption. Besides documents that deal with the adoption of children in order to fulfil the social need to provide parents to orphans or heirs for childless couples other texts attest to the economic aspects of adoption. They may declare properties to be shared by the inheritors or assignments of custodianships for specific gates and so forth. This particular document is dated to the reign of Sin-iqišam. It contains the shares of two sons. The individual shares contain properties (houses and fields) including their various locations (in relation to adjacent plots) as well as temple offices (or prebends), which are given for specific periods. The document ends with the phrase: Together they have agreed to the division. In future each will not make a claim against the other. Thus have they sworn in the name of the king. A parallel of this document is provided by OECT 8, 17. Edition: E. C. Stone and D. I. Owen, Adoption in Old Babylonian Nippur and the Archive of Mannum-mešu-lissur (= Mesopotamian Civilizations vol. 3) no. 53. CDLI entry: P283645

credit: Wagensonner, Klaus