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Inheritance in Seleucid Babylonia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

G. J. P. McEwan
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Extract

The normal method of settling questions of inheritance in Babylonia was not by testament but according to a division among the male heirs. In legal terms, then, inheritance was normally ab intestato in Babylonia. The regulation of the size of the portions of the various heirs in a family varied according to local custom and regulation. Testaments are known sporadically from Old Assyrian and Middle Assyrian sources but are not found among the documents from Babylonian proper. In place of testaments we find posthumous regulations of inheritance among the heirs and parental regulation of inheritance by means of gift, i.e. donatio mortis causa. Such documents are infrequent, and we must assume, not only that normal inheritance was ab intestato, but also that frequently, and perhaps as a general rule, the parental estate was administered jointly by the heirs.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 211 - 227
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1984

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References

1 cf, Wilcke, Cl., ZA, 66, 1976, 196 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 cf. RLA, II, 458 ff. s.v. Erbe, Erbrecht, Enterbung.

3 Wilcke, loc. cit.

4 For a refutation of the earlier view of the existence of OB testaments or parental divisions see Kraus, F. R., Aror, 17/1, 1949, 406 ff.Google Scholar

5 e. g. BR, 8/7, No. 2, and BR, 6, Nos. 6 and 7.

6 NRV, 17 f.

7 ibid., 18.

8 e.g. NRV, No. 21 (adopted son) and No. 12 (daughter).

9 Transliterated and translated by Doty, L. T. in ‘Cuneiform Archives from Seleucid Uruk’ (1977 Yale Ph.D. thesis [University Microfilms 1981]), 193 ff.Google Scholar

10 Literally ‘which are among (birĪt) them’.

11 AHw. s. v. šakānu 17c (p. 1137a).

12 ‘His’ refers to Anu-ahhi-iddin rather than Dannat-Belti. There is not known Nana-iddin, son of Dannat-Balti in this generation, but there is a Nana-iddin, son of Anu-aba-uter, who was the cousin of Anu-ahhi-iddin, cf. Doty, op. cit., p. 222, fig. 6. In this case, then, aẖu is used loosely

13 LIŠ is probably a dittography of the last element of the UŠ sign.

14 Read either 10! or 11!.

15 cf. number 5 discussed below and note the use of a takpur/štu ‘equalization payment’ when necessary, e. g. No. 43.

16 Klima, Untersuchungen zum Altbabylonischen Erbrecht, 1940, 27 ff.

17 Transliterated and translated in Doty, op. cit., 251 ff.

18 The normal construction of this clause is ina (thing to be divided) ⃛ izūzū—hence the restoration of amēlūti.

19 The name Nahishṭtabu is also found in the Murashu archive, BE, X, 144, 16, U. E. and Dar. 274, 5.

20 This is a mistake for Kidin-Anu, since it is stated in the next section that Anu-ahhi-iddin and Shamash-ittannu gave Kidin-Anu 2 shekels and in the third section that Shamash-ittannu gave Kidin-Anu an equalization payment.

21 The normal practice when acquiring a slave was to write (tatoo ?) the owner's name on the back of the right hand. Since these slaves were born in the household, their hands were still uninscribed.

22 For NB instances of joint administration of the dowry see Marx, ‘Die Stellung der Frau in Babylonien’, BA, 4, 43–7.

23 ša birĪtšunu is the normal phrase indicating joint ownership or administration.

24 The Durnu canal is also mentioned in Sarkisian, G., VDI, VI, 1955, p1. 6, text V 3.Google Scholar

25 The text mistakenly has imSI.SÁ ‘North’.

26 iš-te is presumably phonetic for TA, for which one would expect ištu/ultu, rather than representing ište/išti, which is a relatively rare parallel of itti in some dialects of Akkadian.

27 For the various suggested interpretations of the name see Rollig, , OrNs,29, 1960, p. 382, n. 4, and Sarkisian, DV, 2, p. 186.Google Scholar

28 e. g. OECT, IX, 8, 6 and passim.Google Scholar

29 e.g. OECT, IX, 10, 6; VS, 27, 7; 50, 15. 22.Google Scholar

30 Vs, XV, 12.7 Boissier, , Babylonica, 8, 28, 7.Google Scholar

31 e. g. OECT, IX, 49Google Scholar, where three brothers are joint sellers and OECT, IX, 7, where two brothers buy property together.Google Scholar