The ancient Near East |
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Regions and States |
Mesopotamia • Akkadian Empire • Assyria • Babylonia • Neo-Assyrian Empire • Neo-Babylonian Empire • Sumer Egypt • Ancient Egypt |
Archaeological Periods |
Chronology • Bronze Age • Bronze Age collapse • Iron Age |
Languages |
Akkadian • Aramaic • Assyriology • Cuneiform script • Elamite • Hebrew • Hittite • Hurrian • Phoenician • Sumerian • Urartian |
Literature |
Babylonian literature • Hittite texts • Sumerian literature |
Mythology |
Babylonian mythology • Hittite mythology • Mesopotamian mythology • Egyptian mythology |
Other topics |
Assyrian law • Babylonian astronomy • Babylonian law • Babylonian mathematics • Cuneiform law |
Egypt • Ancient Egypt
Persia • Achaemenid Empire • Elam • Medes
Anatolia • Hittites • Hurrians • Neo-Hittite states • Urartu
The Levant • Ancient Israel • Phoenicia
Babylonian law is a subset of cuneiform law that has received particular study, owing to the singular extent of the associated archaeological material that has been found for it. So-called "contracts" exist in the thousands, including a great variety of deeds, conveyances, bonds, receipts, accounts, and most important of all, actual legal decisions given by the judges in the law courts. Historical inscriptions, royal charters and rescripts, dispatches, private letters and the general literature afford welcome supplementary information. Even grammatical and lexicographical texts contain many extracts or short sentences bearing on law and custom. The so-called "Sumerian Family Laws" are preserved in this way.
Other cultures involved with ancient Mesopotamia shared the same common laws and precedents, extending to the form of contacts that Kenneth Kitchen has studied and compared to the form of contracts in the Bible with particular note to the sequence of blessings and curses that bind the deal. The Maxims of Ptahhotep and Sharia Law, also include certifications for professionals like doctors, lawyers and skilled craftsmen which prescribe penalties for malpractice very similar to the code of Hammurabi.