Code of Ur-Nammu
Code of Ur-Nammu | |
---|---|
Created | c. 2100 BC–2050 BC |
Location | Istanbul Archaeology Museums (Ni.3191) (originally Nippur, Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq)) |
Author(s) | Ur-Nammu |
Purpose | Legal code |
The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest known
Discovery
The first copy of the code, in two fragments found at
In all probability I would have missed the Ur-Nammu tablet altogether had it not been for an opportune letter from F. R. Kraus, now Professor of
University of Leidenin Holland ... His letter said that some years ago, in the course of his duties as curator in the Istanbul Museum, he had come upon two fragments of a tablet inscribed with Sumerian laws, had made a "join" of the two pieces, and had catalogued the resulting tablet as No. 3191 of the Nippur collection of the Museum ... Since Sumerian law tablets are extremely rare, I had No. 3191 brought to my working table at once. There it lay, a sun-baked tablet, light brown in color, 20 by 10 centimeters in size. More than half of the writing was destroyed, and what was preserved seemed at first hopelessly unintelligible. But after several days of concentrated study, its contents began to become clear and take shape, and I realized with no little excitement that what I held in my hand was a copy of the oldest law code as yet known to man.
Further tablets were found in Ur and translated in 1965, allowing some 30 of the 57 laws to be reconstructed.[3] Another copy found in Sippar contains slight variants.[4]
Background
The preface directly credits the laws to king Ur-Nammu of Ur (2112–2095 BC). The author who had the laws written onto cuneiform tablets is still somewhat under dispute. Some scholars have attributed it to Ur-Nammu's son Shulgi.[5]
Although it is known that earlier law-codes existed, such as the Code of
The code reveals a glimpse at societal structure during Ur's Third Dynasty. Beneath the lugal ("great man" or king), all members of society belonged to one of two basic strata: the lu or free person, or the slave (male, arad; female geme). The son of a lu was called a dumu-nita until he married, becoming a "young man" (gurus). A woman (munus) went from being a daughter (dumu-mi) to a wife (dam), then if she outlived her husband, a widow (nu-ma-su), who could remarry.
Content
The prologue, typical of
... After
of silver in relation to one mina ... The orphan was not delivered up to the rich man; the widow was not delivered up to the mighty man; the man of one shekel was not delivered up to the man of one mina.
One mina (1⁄60 of a talent) was made equal to 60 shekels (1 shekel = 8.3 grams, or 0.3 oz).
Surviving laws
Among the surviving laws are these:[6]
- If a man commits a slave marries a slave, and that slave is set free, he does not leave the household.[1], he must pay fifteen shekels of silver. (25)
- If a slave marries a native [i.e. free] person, he/she is to hand the firstborn son over to his owner.
- If a man violates the right of another and deflowers the virgin wife of a young man, they shall kill that male.
- If the wife of a man followed after another man and he slept with her, they shall slay that woman, but that male shall be set free. [§4 in some translations]
- If a man proceeded by force, and deflowered the virgin female slave of another man, that man must pay five shekels of silver. (5)
- If a man divorces his first-time wife, he shall pay (her) one mina of silver. (6)
- If it is a (former) widow whom he divorces, he shall pay (her) half a mina of silver. (7)
- If the man had slept with the widow without there having been any marriage contract, he need not pay any silver. (8)
- If a man is accused of sorcery [translation disputed], he must undergo ordeal by water; if he is proven innocent, his accuser must pay 3 shekels. (10)[7][8]
- If a man accused the wife of a man of adultery, and the river ordeal proved her innocent, then the man who had accused her must pay one-third of a mina of silver. (11)
- If a prospective son-in-law enters the house of his prospective father-in-law, but his father-in-law later gives his daughter to another man, the father-in-law shall return to the rejected son-in-law twofold the amount of bridal presents he had brought. (12)
- If [text destroyed], he shall weigh and deliver to him 2 shekels of silver.
- If a slave escapes from the city limits, and someone returns him, the owner shall pay two shekels to the one who returned him. (14)
- If a man knocks out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out half a mina of silver. (15)
- If a man has cut off another man's foot, he is to pay ten shekels. (16)
- If a man, in the course of a scuffle, smashed the limb of another man with a club, he shall pay one mina of silver. (17)
- If someone severed the nose of another man with a copper knife, he must pay two-thirds of a mina of silver. (18)
- If a man knocks out a tooth of another man, he shall pay two shekels of silver. (19)
- [text destroyed] If he does not have a slave, he is to pay 10 shekels of silver. If he does not have silver, he is to give another thing that belongs to him. (21)[2]
- If a man's slave-woman, comparing herself to her mistress, speaks insolently to her, her mouth shall be scoured with 1 quart of salt. (22)
- If a slave woman strikes someone acting with the authority of her mistress, [text destroyed]
- If a man appeared as a witness, and was shown to be a perjurer
- If a man appears as a witness, but withdraws his oath, he must make payment, to the extent of the value in litigation of the case. (26)
- If a man stealthily cultivates the field of another man and he raises a complaint, this is however to be rejected, and this man will lose his expenses. (27)
- If a man flooded the field of a man with water, he shall measure out three kur of barley per iku of field. (28)
- If a man had let an arable field to a(nother) man for cultivation, but he did not cultivate it, turning it into wasteland, he shall measure out three kur of barley per iku of field. (29)
See also
- Cuneiform law
- Hammurabi Code
- List of ancient legal codes
- List of artifacts in biblical archaeology
- Ancient Mesopotamian units of measurement
Notes
- 1.^ A slave who has married (and presumably will soon have children) cannot be set free and forced to leave the household so that the owner can save themselves the expense of supporting the slave's family. Slaves needed the consent of their masters to marry, so this ensured they were not just turned out: even if they were now a freedman, they were still members of the household and they and their family had to be supported by it.[9]
- 2.^ This presumably relates to a freeman killing another man's slave, as a slave is the preferred fine above a simple payment in silver, building on the trend in laws 31 and 32 for payment in kind for certain offences. The fact that the fine in silver is equivalent to cutting off a free man's foot also seems to suggest this.
References
- ^ Cos II:409 Laws of Ur-Namma
- ^ a b Kramer, History begins at Sumer, pp. 52–55.
- ^ Gurney and Kramer, "Two Fragments of Sumerian Laws", 16 Assyriological Studies, pp. 13–19
- ^ Frayne, Ur III Period (2112–2004 BC), University of Toronto Press, 1997 – Foreign Language Study – 489 pages
- ISBN 9780521564960.
- ^ Roth, Martha. Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, pp. 13–22.
- ^ S. N. Kramer. (1954). "Ur-Nammu Law Code". Orientalia, 23 (1), 40.
- ^ Differing interpretations of this trial avail in Finkelstein 1969 Yildiz 1981 Sauren 1990
- JSTOR 528363.
Further reading
- Civil, Miguel (2011). "The Law Collection of Ur-Namma". In ISBN 9781934309339.
- Kramer, S. N. (1954). "Ur-Nammu Law Code". Orientalia. 23 (1): 40–51. JSTOR 43073169.
- Roth, Martha T. (1995). Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Writings from the Ancient World. Vol. 6. ISBN 9780788503788.
- Wilcke, Claus (2002). "Der Kodex Urnamma (CU): Versuch einer Rekonstruktion". In Abusch, Tzvi (ed.). Riches Hidden in Secret Places: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen (in German). Penn State University Press. JSTOR 10.5325/j.ctv1bxh4wn.
- Wilcke, Claus (2014). "Gesetze in sumerischer Sprache". In Koslova, Natalia; Vizirova, E.; Zólyomi, Gabor (eds.). Studies in Sumerian Language and Literature: Festschrift Joachim Krecher. Babel und Bibel (in German). Vol. 8. Penn State University Press. pp. 455–616. JSTOR 10.5325/j.ctv1bxh3kh.