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Pre-trial negotiations: The Case of the run-away slave in Dar. 53

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

F. Rachel Magdalene ,
Bruce Wells  and
Cornelia Wunsch
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Extract

The study of ancient Near Eastern trial procedure has a long history, and the judicial systems of several periods have been investigated in detail. What remains lacking is a thorough and systematic treatment of the trial law and procedure from the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods, though numerous legal texts have been studied. Recently two dissertations by F. R. Magdalene and S. E. Holtz have described the adjudicative process from the bringing of charges by an accuser through various stages and actions, including the taking of witness statements, interrogation, the examination of physical evidence, courts' demands for further evidence, summonses, and the issuing of conditional and final verdicts. Both also provide a basis for further investigation of this southern Mesopotamian legal system, which seems to have followed longstanding traditions but also contains indications of new developments.

While both studies examine several hundred trial-related documents, one particular text that has been the subject of interpretation since the late nineteenth century receives scant attention. The document in question is Dar. 53. A close analysis of its text raises significant questions with regard to a particular aspect of trial procedure during the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods. The text has never been satisfactorily treated, and recent references to it in scholarly literature in fact have led to erroneous conclusions about what it reveals in general, and regarding law and procedure in particular. Despite a consistent belief that the text records a trial, Dar. 53 actually arises from pre-trial demands and the resulting negotiations.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 70 , 2008 , pp. 205 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2008

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