The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— Power, economy and social organisation in Babylonia —
for seventy (days per year), I obligated those in a household of dependent workers
to service for ten days per month.
(Roth 1995: 25f.)
An earlier contemporary of Hammurabi of Babylon, king Dadusha of Eshnuna,
dismisses any religious framework for his legal stipulations, known to us as the ‘Laws
of Eshnuna’. There is no prologue and no epilogue, and only a slight hint of the
religious sphere is given in the date formula at the beginning of the text. This formula,
unlike the rest of the text, is written in Sumerian. The main body of the text shows
us – quite similarly to the laws of Hammurabi – which matters were considered
important for the functioning of the social order, but the text was never intended to
be a law ‘code’ in the modern sense. Its first concern is the standardisation of prices
for various commodities, of wages and of certain exchange rates, an old royal prerogative
and duty. Other entries deal with different topics from the civil or criminal law,
among them such issues as rents and loans, pledges and deposits, theft and debt
servitude, various injuries, as well as property rights. In sum, these Laws of Eshnuna
may be considered a predecessor of the ‘edicts of justice’ of later Old Babylonian
kings (Roth 1995: 57–70).
SOCIAL GROUPS AND SOCIAL
ORGANISATION IN MESOPOTAMIA
Scholars have correctly remarked (see Sallaberger’s contribution in this volume) that
the well-known antagonism between the ‘palace’ and the ‘temple’ often conceals the
fact that both institutions display a similar organisational type, usually termed as
‘households’. Even if this is a rather rough characterisation, it points to their common
origin. In fact, there is good evidence to support the hypothesis that this antagonism
originated as a result of Old Akkadian policies, when the rulers formed an empire
chiefly based on family ties and personal loyalties. In doing so they restricted the
power and influence of other big institutions, especially of the large temple-households
in the ‘Sumerian’ south of Mesopotamia. Whereas the Dynasty of Ur III attempted
to reconcile the differing organisational principles, the increasing Amorite and Elamite
influence (Charpin 2004: esp. 213–227) changed the situation slowly but persistently.
The patrimonial estates, continuing a chiefly northern Babylonian tradition (see
Goddeeris in this volume), now achieved the significance they kept for the rest of
Babylonian history ( Jursa 2004: 58–65). As already remarked, we observe an accompanying
change in the royal ideology from the more traditional stress on function
towards the concept of heritable kingship. The role of tribes and families increased
and the ‘house of the father’ became an important term in the matters of law. The
duty to pay reverence to the spirits of the deceased was widely observed. Not all of
this was new: a state cult for the ancestors existed already in Old Sumerian times, as
can be demonstrated by the documents from the state of Lagash. Already, then, the
role of the family had started to increase. Slightly later, the Old Akkadian kings in
their curse formulas used to threaten the trespasser with the extinction of his ‘seed’
(Selz 2004: 168–173, 182f.).
By the end of the third millennium the major economic player was the state. It
organised the big institutions, e.g. the former ‘temple households’ from Southern
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