Audiobook Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters

This volume explores the intricate fabric of ancient Mesopotamian civilization through the direct testimony of contemporary legal codes, business contracts, and private letters preserved in temple archives and family deed-chests. The author begins by examining the earliest Sumerian laws and the monumental Code of Hammurabi, discovered at Susa, which regulated every aspect of life from capital crimes to agricultural leases and surgeon's fees. The judicial machinery is laid bare through actual court decisions, illustrating how judges, elders, and scribes weighed evidence, administered oaths, and enforced multiple restitution or capital penalties for perjury and breach of contract. The study then details the social organization of the state, distinguishing between the patrician gentry, the common men, and the chattel slaves, while explaining the benefices held by royal levy-masters and warrant-officers for personal military service. Family organization forms a central pillar of the investigation, covering the strict legal requirements of marriage-contracts, the bride-price, the wife's marriage-portion, the rights of widows, adoption procedures, and the complex laws of inheritance that governed the division of property among heirs. Chronologically tracing developments from the early dynastic periods through the Kassite and Assyrian eras to the Second Babylonian Empire, the text demonstrates that the average Babylonian was a law-abiding citizen, a faithful husband, and an industrious man of business whose social institutions bear an uncanny resemblance to modern legal frameworks.