Arts, Faculty of
Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Fraughton, Lindsay
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
In the early 20th century, excavations at the archaeological site of Yorghan Tepe in Northeastern Iraq revealed the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1450-1340 BCE) city of Nuzi. Over the course of four archaeological seasons, approximately 5000 cuneiform tablets were excavated from Nuzi and its surrounding areas. The tablets reveal that the people of Nuzi had many nuanced legal practices, including but not limited to lawsuits, land claims, marriages, hiring contracts, and many kinds of adoption. One adoption practice that has been the subject of scholarly inquiry for almost a century is known as âmarriage adoptionâ or âdaughtership adoption.â This practice involved young women being adopted before they were of marriageable age, to be married off to a future husband by their adopter rather than by their natal family. Although there is evidence for the adoption of young women for marriage across the ancient Near East, this practice is by far the most attested at Nuzi. Moreover, Nuzians had a unique approach to marriage adoption where the young women could be adopted in âdaughtership,â âdaughter-in-law-ship,â or âdaughter and daughter-in-law-shipâ by the adopter. Scholars have questioned how these three types of marriage adoption differ, and in addition, why this small, Hurrian town used the practice so frequently in its short 4-5 generations. This thesis seeks to answer these two questions. Toward this end, I rely not only on the content of the contracts, but also on the people who used them. Earlier scholarship has overlooked the archival contexts of the daughtership adoptions, in particular the fact that two wealthy households in Nuzi account for 40% of extant daughtership tablets. Through close reading of the daughtership contracts from private archives of Teḫip-tilla, Tulpun-naya and their respective households, I demonstrate that daughtership adoption at Nuzi is a flexible practice that had implications beyond finding a future spouse for the adoptee. Moreover, I argue that daughtership adoption varies not by âtypeâ of contract, âdaughtership,â âdaughter-in-law-ship,â or âdaughter and daughter-in-law-ship,â but by the different people involved in each adoption and their social/economic status.
A NEW APPROACH TO ANCIENT ARCHIVES: A RE-EVALUATION OF âDAUGHTERSHIPâ ADOPTION AT NUZI by Lindsay Fraughton B.A., University of Alberta, 2017 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Ancient Culture, Religion and Ethnicity) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2021 © Lindsay Fraughton, 2021 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, a thesis entitled: A New Approach to Ancient Archives: A Re-evaluation of âDaughtershipâ Adoption at Nuzi submitted by Lindsay Fraughton in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Ancient Culture, Religion and Ethnicity Examining Committee: Dr. Sara Milstein, Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, UBC Supervisor Dr. Katharine Huemoeller, Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, UBC Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract In the early 20th century, excavations at the archaeological site of Yorghan Tepe in Northeastern Iraq revealed the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1450-1340 BCE) city of Nuzi. Over the course of four archaeological seasons, approximately 5000 cuneiform tablets were excavated from Nuzi and its surrounding areas. The tablets reveal that the people of Nuzi had many nuanced legal practices, including but not limited to lawsuits, land claims, marriages, hiring contracts, and many kinds of adoption. One adoption practice that has been the subject of scholarly inquiry for almost a century is known as âmarriage adoptionâ or âdaughtership adoption.â This practice involved young women being adopted before they were of marriageable age, to be married off to a future husband by their adopter rather than by their natal family. Although there is evidence for the adoption of young women for marriage across the ancient Near East, this practice is by far the most attested at Nuzi. Moreover, Nuzians had a unique approach to marriage adoption where the young women could be adopted in âdaughtership,â âdaughter-in-law-ship,â or âdaughter and daughter-in-law-shipâ by the adopter. Scholars have questioned how these three types of marriage adoption differ, and in addition, why this small, Hurrian town used the practice so frequently in its short 4-5 generations. This thesis seeks to answer these two questions. Toward this end, I rely not only on the content of the contracts, but also on the people who used them. Earlier scholarship has overlooked the archival contexts of the daughtership adoptions, in particular the fact that two wealthy households in Nuzi account for 40% of extant daughtership tablets. Through close reading of the daughtership contracts from private archives of Teḫip-tilla, Tulpun-naya and their respective households, I demonstrate that daughtership adoption at Nuzi is a flexible practice that had implications beyond finding a future spouse for the adoptee. Moreover, I argue that iv daughtership adoption varies not by âtypeâ of contract, âdaughtership,â âdaughter-in-law-ship,â or âdaughter and daughter-in-law-ship,â but by the different people involved in each adoption and their social/economic status. v Lay Summary In the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nuzi, a young woman could be adopted âas a daughter,â âas a daughter-in-law,â or âas a daughter and daughter-in-law.â She was then married off by the person who adopted her, rather than by her natal family. This practice is referred to by scholars as âdaughtership adoptionâ or âmarriage adoption.â Earlier scholarship has focused on differentiating between the three âtypesâ of daughtership adoption by looking only at the content of the contracts. I bring a new approach to the study of the daughtership contracts at Nuzi by looking specifically at the contracts from the archives of two wealthy Nuzians. These households account for 40% of the extant daughtership contracts at Nuzi. Through my analysis, I demonstrate that daughtership adoption was varied, not based on the three âtypesâ of contracts, but rather on the people involved in the contracts and their socio-economic statuses. vi Preface This thesis is the original, unpublished, independent work by the author, Lindsay Fraughton. vii Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary .................................................................................................................................v Preface ........................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ vii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Evidence ......................................................................................................................5 2.1 The Nuzi Evidence for Daughtership Contracts ............................................................. 5 2.1.1 Context ........................................................................................................................ 5 2.1.2 Content ........................................................................................................................ 8 2.1.2.1 Daughtership (mârtûtu) Adoptions ................................................................... 12 2.1.2.2 Daughter-in-law-ship (kallatûtu) Adoptions..................................................... 15 2.1.2.3 Daughter and Daughter-in-law-ship (mârtûtu u kallatûtu) Adoptions ............. 17 2.1.3 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 18 2.2 Other Evidence for Daughtership Adoption in the Ancient Near East ......................... 19 2.2.1 Old Babylonian Sippar .............................................................................................. 19 2.2.2 Ugarit ........................................................................................................................ 23 2.2.3 Hebrew Bible ............................................................................................................ 25 2.2.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 26 Chapter 3: Scholarly Approaches ..............................................................................................27 3.1 Early Approaches .......................................................................................................... 27 viii 3.2 Guillaume Cardasciaâs Approach ................................................................................. 29 3.3 Recent Approaches ....................................................................................................... 34 3.4 A New Approach to the Nuzi Daughtership Contracts ................................................. 38 Chapter 4: Analysis......................................................................................................................38 4.1 Wealthy Nuzians Part 1: The Teḫip-tilla Family Archive ............................................ 42 4.1.1 Overview of Teḫip-Tilla ........................................................................................... 42 4.1.2 Teḫip-tilla in the Daughtership Contracts ................................................................. 44 4.1.3 Uzna in the Daughtership Contracts ......................................................................... 44 4.1.4 Takku in the Daughtership Contracts ....................................................................... 48 4.1.5 Tarmi-tilla in the Daughtership Contracts ................................................................ 49 4.1.6 Pai-tae, Slave of Teḫip-tilla, in the Daughtership Contracts .................................... 50 4.1.7 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 51 4.2 Wealthy Nuzians Part 2: The Tulpun-naya Archive ..................................................... 53 4.2.1 Overview of Tulpun-naya ......................................................................................... 53 4.2.2 Tulpun-naya in the Daughtership Contracts ............................................................. 54 4.2.3 Ḫanate, Slave of Tulpun-naya, in the Daughtership Contracts ................................. 56 4.3 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 58 Chapter 5: Conclusion .................................................................................................................63 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................66 Appendix .......................................................................................................................................69 ix Acknowledgements When I was applying to UBCâs CNERS Department, I did not reach out to any potential supervisors. I took a leap of faith that if I were accepted, my anticipated supervisor would be willing to take on a new student, be a good fit for my research, and that we could get along on a personal level. I am so lucky to have had a supervisor who checked all these boxes, and more. Despite my not initially reaching out, Dr. Sara Milstein became my thesis supervisor, mentor, and friend without hesitation. Her thoughtful feedback, breadth of knowledge, and overall support have been paramount to the completion of this thesis and my growth as a person over the past three years. Although I probably would have stalled my project even longer just to spend more time working with her, I am grateful she pushed me to finish. I am also grateful for the help of my second reader, Dr. Kat Huemoeller. Her questions and insights into the drafts of this thesis drove me to contemplate my work on a deeper level. I owe thanks to many other members of the CNERS Department at UBC for their encouragement throughout my degree. Dr. Lisa Cooper for her support as I got started in graduate school and many other endeavours; Dr. Gregg Gardner for all his teaching support; Dr. Tony Keddie for setting me up for success at my first conference; Dr. Matt McCarty for his friendship, for employing me, and for giving me the opportunity to go on my first archaeological dig; Dr. Kurtis Peters for homemade pizza, the chance to write my first published book review, and always giving me the encouragement I needed in translation and life; Odessa Cadieux-Rey for giving me clarity on all things administrative, financial, and environmental. I am grateful to the graduate and undergraduate students in the CNERS Department for their friendship, for expanding my horizons in classics, for teaching me how to use a trowel (and how to massage away the hand-cramp from using the trowel), and for many, many laughs. x Special thanks are also due to Drs. Shaya Golparian and Joseph Topornycky at the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology at UBC for being wonderful mentors, philosophers, and for supporting me in many incredible professional development opportunities. Also, to my undergraduate professors for their references and support in my pursuit of graduate school. I owe thanks in particular to Dr. Stephen Kent for letting me reference his unpublished work on very short notice so I could fine-tune my academic writing sample for my application. I am grateful to many friends who offered thoughts on my research, moral support when I was stuck, and encouraged me through the challenges of the past year. Most of all, I owe the world to my family. This project would not have been possible without my sister, Samantha, considering that I would not have even applied to graduate school without her help, and my partner Tony who is my number one editor and always makes me laugh. Finally, my parents Corinne and Paul have supported me in countless ways. I am eternally grateful for their financial support, patience, encouragement, and love. I am so incredibly lucky to have parents who have endlessly supported me in all my endeavours and never questioned my inexplicable drive to study ancient history.1 Chapter 1: Introduction In the Late Bronze Age, the Hurrian Empire reached its peak as it spread across northern Mesopotamia from Anatolia all the way to the Zagros mountains in modern-day Iraq.1 On the far eastern reaches of the empire, east of the Tigris and south of the Lower ZÄb river was the kingdom of Arrapḫe, named for its main city. Until the early 20th century, the history of this area in the Late Bronze Age was hardly known to scholars â only through cuneiform tablets that popped up at illicit antiquities markets. On a search to uncover the source of these tablets, Edward Chiera and the American Schools of Oriental Research set out to excavate the ancient city of Arrapḫe, located under the present-day city of Kirkuk. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, modern buildings prevented any excavation of the ancient settlement of Arrapḫe, and Chiera was directed to an area a few miles southwest of Kirkuk where local excavations in the 1890âs proved profitable.2 Thus began the excavation of Yorghan Tepe, known in the Late Bronze Age as Nuzi. Over the course of four archaeological seasons, almost 5000 cuneiform tablets were excavated from Nuzi.3 Besides the material from the Hurrian occupation (ca. 1450-1340 BCE), 227 Sumerian, Old Assyrian, and Old Akkadian tablets were also excavated from the site.4 1 This empire had many names: Hurrian, Mittani, and Ḫanigalbat. 2 Chiera, âReport of the Director,â 23. 3 Yorghan Tepe and Kirkuk, located in the modern-day Kirkuk Governate, is currently in a disputed zone between Iraq and Kurdistan. 4 Fincke, âThe Nuzi Collection of the Harvard Semitic Museum,â 15â16. For consistency, and following the standard in Assyriology, I use the term âNuziâ to refer to the excavations and material from Yorghan Tepe (Nuzi), Kirkuk (Arrapḫe), and Tell el-Fahhar, rather than solely Yorghan Tepe. The earlier tablets are likely from the older, Akkadian settlement called Gasur. 2 The discovery of the small town of Nuzi caused a âfeverish interest in the puzzling intricacies of the Nuzi records.â5 Although this interest originally focused on finding parallels between Nuzi tablets and the Hebrew Bible, the Nuzi material also emerged into a field of study all its own. The field has focused on legal texts, as the written record from Nuzi is dominated by public and private legal documents. Nuzians had many nuanced legal practices, as demonstrated by the variety of legal material from the town, including but not limited to lawsuits, land claims, marriages, hiring contracts, and many kinds of adoption.6 To the modern reader, adoption most commonly refers to the process in which a parent or set of parents adopt a child. This type of adoption existed at Nuzi but was predominantly used to adopt boys and young men.7 Young women, on the other hand, were adopted in a practice referred to as âmarriage adoptionâ or âdaughtership adoptionâ by scholars. This practice involved young women being adopted and eventually married off by their adopter when they reached marriageable age.8 There are a few major differences between marriage, traditional adoption used for young men, and the daughtership contracts.9 Typically, marriage tablets are written at the time of the marriage, recording the transaction between the brideâs guardian and the groom. Daughtership adoptions at Nuzi differ from marriage tablets as they were written before a marriage took place, and often before the marriage had even been arranged. Daughtership adoptions are most often 5 Zaccagnini, âNuzi,â 567, n. 6. 6 For a Late Bronze Age lawsuit comparable to that of Donald Trump, see the case of the corrupt mayor of Nuzi in Maidman 2010, âCorruption in City Hall.â 7 There may be one example of a young woman being adopted by a new mother according to Josué Justel, âA New Expression,â 8, but the tablet is broken, making it difficult to conclude one way or another if this is an adoption or a daughtership adoption. 8 There are a few cases of young men being adopted and promised a future wife by the adopter. See Stohlman âReal Adoption at Nuzi,â 1972, pgs. 151-176. 9 Although a traditional adoption of a child by a new parent does not appear to have been used to adopt young women at Nuzi, it is helpful to use this type of adoption to distinguish daughtership adoptions from regular adoption and marriage. 3 made between the young womanâs former guardian and the adopter, rather than a future husband and her guardian like in marriage contracts. Similar to marriages and the adoption of young men, there is often an exchange of money or goods in a daughtership adoption; in some cases, an additional payment is exchanged between the adopter and the seller at the time of the young womanâs marriage. In contrast to âregularâ adoptions, where a new parent or set of parents adopt a child, daughtership adoptions are not focused on the care of the new âparent,â as is common in the adoption of young men at Nuzi. Beyond just the difference between marriage and adoption, there is another twist to the phenomenon of daughtership adoption. The daughtership contracts at Nuzi refer to three different kinds of marriage adoption, where young women enter âdaughtership,â âdaughter-in-law-ship,â or âdaughter and daughter-in-law-ship.â10 For close to a century, scholars have questioned how these three types of adoption differ, and in addition, why this small, Hurrian town used the practice so frequently in its short 4-5 generations. This thesis seeks to answer these two questions. Toward this end, I rely not only on the content of the contracts, but also on the people who used them. Earlier scholarship has overlooked the archival contexts of the daughtership adoptions, in particular the fact that two wealthy households in Nuzi account for 40% of extant daughtership tablets. Through close reading of the daughtership contracts from the private archives of Teḫip-tilla, Tulpun-naya and their respective households, I demonstrate that daughtership adoption at Nuzi was a flexible practice that had greater implications beyond finding a future spouse for the adoptee. Moreover, I argue that daughtership adoption varies not 10 The term âdaughtershipâ adoption can refer to cases where a young woman is adopted âas a daughterâ rather than as a daughter-in-law or both a daughter and daughter-in-law. I also use âdaughtership adoptionâ as an umbrella term to refer to all three types. 4 by âtypeâ of contract, âdaughtership,â âdaughter-in-law-ship,â or âdaughter and daughter-in-law-ship,â but due to the people involved in the adoption and their social/economic status. 5 Chapter 2: Evidence 2.1 The Nuzi Evidence for Daughtership Contracts 2.1.1 Context Archaeological finds from Nuzi are now spread across the world. Tablets and artifacts from Nuzi that filtered through illicit antiquities markets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are now found in private collections as well as in the museum collections of the Louvre, the British Museum, the Hermitage State Museum in Russia, and another un-identified Russian museum.11 The tablets from these collections have not been extensively published.12 The rest of the Nuzi material comes from official excavations, and is held at Harvard at the Semitic Museum (HSM), in Chicago at the Oriental Institute (OIC), and some material is at the Iraq Museum. Due to the challenges of sorting through disorganized excavation and post-excavation notes, as well as the great case of the disappearing box of tablet catalogues, more scholarly attention has been given to tracing the modern contexts of the tablets than verifying their archaeological provenance.13 It is worth briefly surveying the challenges for provenance at Nuzi. The material from the HSM has been more thoroughly published and catalogued than the material at the OIC. This is due to the work of Ernest Lacheman, who spent much of his life in Boston and was able to publish the HSM material extensively.14 Lacheman died in 1982 while 11 Maidman, âA Socioeconomic Analysis,â 56. Maidman lists, âtwo Russian museumsâ without specifying which ones. Besides the Hermitage State Museum, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts also has a cuneiform collection, but if they have anything from Nuzi, it is not listed as such online. 12 One collation of the British Museumâs Nuzi tablets, Gerfrid Müllerâs 1998 Londoner Nuzi-Texte, was reviewed by Maynard Maidman as a âseverely defective,â and âfrequently unreliable, sometimes painfully soâ work of translation (2004, 305). 13 In Joint Expedition with the Iraq Museum at Nuzi VII: Miscellaneous Texts, Maynard Maidman notes that he was working through a catalogue box created by Edward Chiera, the original director of the Nuzi excavations, until sometime between 1978 and 1982, when in Maidmanâs absence, the box disappeared (1989, 20). 14 Lacheman and Maidman, Joint Expedition, 2â3. 6 working on the OIC material. A number of Lachemanâs former colleagues and students committed to publishing his unfinished work to help shed light on the OIC texts. In one of these publications, Joint Expedition with the Iraq Museum at Nuzi VII: Miscellaneous Texts (JEN VII), Maynard Maidman describes four possible sources for identifying the provenance of the OIC tablets: labels on the boxes of each individual tablet, a collection of paper forming a 1920âs catalogue written by Edward Chiera (from the box that disappeared), the unpublished work of Lacheman, and the research notes of the late Edith Porada, who collated Nuzi seal impressions for her doctoral research.15 JEN VII contains translations of just over 200 tablets, not all of which can be reliably traced to a specific excavation location. By highlighting the work of Lacheman and his colleagues, I hope to make clear that connecting the Nuzi tablets, more specifically the Nuzi daughtership adoption contracts, to their archaeological provenance is a herculean task. Some excellent work has been done, like that of Jeanette Fincke, whose 1999 article outlines the history of the Harvard Semitic Museum tablets, describes the sub-collections of tablets, and provides a full bibliography where all the HSM material has been published. Yet, the work of bringing just the HSM material together from over 70 different sources would require another thesis. There is one semi-reliable clue for archaeological provenance within the tablets themselves: the people. One wealthy man named Teḫip-tilla and his extended family are behind the âlargest private archive ever to have been discovered in Mesopotamia,â which boasts over 1000 texts.16 The extravagance of this archive likely mirrors its size in the Late Bronze Age, 15 Lacheman and Maidman, 19â20. 16 Maidman, âA Socioeconomic Analysis,â 5â6. Emphasis original. Maidman acknowledged this in his 1976 dissertation and reiterated it in a 1995 article titled âNuzi: Portrait of an ancient Mesopotamian provincial town.â 7 considering that at a certain point, the family converted a fully functional bathroom into a tablet storage room.17 Unlike other well-to-do Nuzians, Teḫip-tilla and his family kept their own, private archives. Moreover, members of the family lived in the same household for at least three generations.18 Therefore, texts that feature Teḫip-tilla, or his sons, daughters-in-law, or grandsons, can be reliably connected to archaeological contexts. There are two main houses in the Teḫip-tilla family complex, located in the western suburbs of Nuzi. The âwestern house,â the first to be excavated at Nuzi, has been identified as Teá¸«ip-tillaâs house. Teá¸«ip-tillaâs first son Enna-mati also appears to have lived in this house. An adjoining house, referred to by Maidman as the âcentral houseâ has been linked with Teá¸«ip-tillaâs grandson, Tarmi-tilla. The largest number of tablets were found in rooms 15-22 in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs house, with more found in rooms 12-13 in Tarmi-tillaâs house.19 A few more tablets from the central archive of the town mention members of the Teḫip-tilla family âin passing.â20 Of course, there are tablets from both official and unofficial excavations that do not have traceable archaeological provenance. Maidman notes that there may have been a third corpus outside the houses of Teḫip-tilla and Tarmi-tilla that ilicit excavations drew from. He makes this case based on the fact that many of the Teḫip-tilla family tablets held in museums bear similar onomasticon and are in similarly poor states of preservation.21 Besides Teḫip-tilla and his family, a few other well-known individuals are traceable through the Nuzi tablet records. Of these individuals, the most important one to this study is 17 Maidman, âNuzi,â 938. 18 Maidman, âThe Teḫip-Tilla Family of Nuzi,â 129. 19 Maidman, 129. 20 Maidman, 129. 21 Maidman, 130â31, n. 13. 8 Tulpun-naya, a very active businesswoman at Nuzi. Tulpun-nayaâs archive, or at least a portion of it was found in an archival room in the main Nuzi government building, sometimes referred to as the palace.22 I will return to both Tulpun-naya and Teḫip-tilla below. For now, it is worth noting that for all of the barriers and untraceable finds, there are a few key individuals who can lead us to (semi) reliable archaeological provenance, enhancing our understanding of the daughtership contracts, as both Tulpun-Naya and Teḫip-tilla figure prominently in these particular contracts. 2.1.2 Content Turning now to the content of the tablets, I open with the caveat that there is no single work that brings together the whole corpus of daughtership adoptions. The most comprehensive collection of translated daughtership contracts to date is J. Mervin Brenemanâs 1971 PhD dissertation titled âNuzi Marriage Tablets.â23 Breneman gives transliterations and translations for 40 daughtership adoptions. In the most recent analysis of the contracts, Jeanette Fincke (2012) builds on Brenemanâs corpus, adding 10 tablets and removing 6, including some broken tablets and some anomalies that do not quite fit with the other contracts.24 However, as Finckeâs intention is not to 22 Lion, âQuestions of Identity in Nuzi,â 295. She notes that 600 administrative tablets were found in Room N120, including a cluster of 37 texts for Tulpun-naya, one of Teá¸«ip-tillaâs contemporaries. Although the building is occasionally referred to as a âpalace,â there was no official king at Nuzi, as the mayor of Nuzi answered to the nearby king of Arrapḫe. 23 The majority of the daughtership contracts (37/40) are translated by Breneman. Jen 686 is translated by Maynard Maidman, BM 104811 + 104813 by Jeanette Fincke, and BM 26222 by Gerfrid Müller. Fincke and Müller each translated into German, so the English renderings are my own. 24 One of these anomalies is HSS 5 17, a text where a young woman is given âana mârtûtiâ to a man who is acting on behalf of her father in court. If the man wins the case, he gets to keep the daughter and marry her to whom he pleases. There are no other contracts like this one, and although Fincke does not include it in her main analysis, she acknowledges that it is indeed a unique case (123, n. 37). 9 collate the material, she does not provide any translations for the 10 additional contracts.25 For my research, I use Brenemanâs corpus excluding 2 broken texts.26 Unlike Fincke, I keep one of the anomalous contracts, which will be discussed below. I include 3 contracts from Finckeâs collection, bringing the total to 40 daughtership adoptions. Before attending to each of the three types of contracts more specifically, a few general comments are warranted about key words and clauses found in the contracts. The tablets vary in length between 11-35 lines, averaging around 22 lines without including the lists of witnesses. Not one of the three types of daughtership adoption is consistently longer or shorter than any other. Regarding the content, it is important to discuss the Hurro-Akkadian words that have come to define the corpus. There are three main terms that describe how a woman could be adopted to be married: as a daughter (ana mârtûti), as a daughter-in-law (ana kallatûti), or a combination as a daughter and daughter-in-law (ana mârtûti u kallatûti). The terms are constructed from the base words for daughter (mÄrtu) and daughter-in-law/bride (kallatu) with the abstract suffix -ūt added. In this case, the noun + abstract suffix construction has been translated in a number of different ways. The most common translations include âas a daughter(in-law),â âin daughter(-in-law)ship,â or âin daughter(in-law)hood.â27 The unique construction of these words is due in part to the written language at Nuzi. It has been described as a dialect of Akkadian with Hurrian, 25 And unfortunately, the 2020-2021 global pandemic exacerbated the already inaccessible nature of many Assyriology publications, making them inaccessible for my research as well. 26 Due to the length of this project, I have excluded one case of Sammelurkunde, or a single tablet recording multiple transactions, in this case an inheritance tablet with a daughtership adoption embedded in it. Although Brenemanâs corpus only includes the one Sammelurkunde, there are plenty more Sammelurkunde that include a daughtership adoption. This group of tablets deserves a separate research project. 27 In A Grammar of Akkadian, John Huehnergard notes that the -ūt corresponds to the English suffixes â-ness, -ship, -hood, -ity, -eryâ (2011, 124). When the nouns for daughter and daughter-in-law are combined with the preposition ana, meaning âtoâ or âfor,â they become genitive, ending in an i. I use both the nominative and genitive forms of the terms throughout this paper. 10 Assyrian, and Babylonian influences.28 An example of the unique features of this language is found in the construction of the individual words mârtûtu and kallatûtu, which vary slightly by scribe, sometimes within the same tablet. This discrepancy is not limited to the daughtership contracts, as variations to the same word are found consistently in Nuzi tablets.29 However, the variations are small and do not affect the meaning of the terms.30 The daughtership tablets have three commonly used opening statements and two infrequently used ones. The most common one is the statement announcing the type of tablet, and a personal name (PN): ṭuppi mârtûti [PN], ṭuppi kallatûti [PN] or ṭuppi mârtûti u kallatûti [PN], translated as âtablet of daughter/in-law-ship of [PN].â31 The personal name associated with this opening differs in each case; most of the time the name listed is the guardian giving a woman away, which could be a biological or adoptive mother, father, brother, or set of parents. On two occasions the tablet is âofâ the adoptee, and three times the tablet is âofâ the adopter. However, there is no significant connection between the person that the tablet is âofâ and the 28 Negri Scafa, âThe Scribes of Nuzi,â 70. 29 Negri Scafa, 69. 30 When translating cuneiform texts into English, three steps are required. First, the text is transliterated, and each individual syllable (cuneiform is a syllabic script) is written in Latin characters. In step 2, the syllables are turned into full words in a process called ânormalization,â and the final step is translation. In Brenemanâs dissertation, he largely provides transliterations of the cuneiform, with the occasional normalized word added in, which is likely the translation of Sumerian logograms (logograms arenât built from syllables). To demonstrate the small variations that occur in the texts, I looked at 25 texts where Breneman transliterates the term mârtûti (some of these are cases of both daughter and daughter-in-law adoptions, but I focused on one word). Twenty-two of these texts are transliterated as ma-ar-tu-ti, with variation in the -tu syllable, sometimes within the same contract. In Akkadian, scribes can use any of four different characters, know in English as tu, tu2, tu3, or tu4, making no difference to the meaning of the word. One contract (AASOR 16 52) misses the tu syllable altogether (likely a scribal error), one (JEN 596) uses ma-ru-ut (likely another error), and one (JEN 218) is partially normalized by Breneman to say mârti-šu. Breneman speculates that JEN 218, the one using mârti-šu âdoes not follow the normal pattern; it may be closer to a true adoptionâ (80). Perhaps there is a linguistic difference here between marriage adoptions (noun + abstract suffix = in daughtership) and regular adoptions (noun + 3rd person possessive suffix = as his daughter). 31 HSS 19 90, HSS 9 119, HSS 19 88, HSS 13 15, TCL 9 7, HSS 19 86, JEN 428, HSS 19 92, HSS 19 94, HSS 19 100, HSS 19 87, HSS 9 145, HSS 5 79, JEN 50, and JEN 26. 11 contents of the contract.32 The second opening line used for the contracts is âumma [PN],â or âthus says [PN].â33 A third common way to begin the contract is with a personal name, either of the daughter being given in adoption or the guardian giving her up, followed by the clause transferring her to a new guardian. An example of this is JEN 218, which literally reads, âZike daughter of Å aš-niaḫe [young woman], Našwa [guardian] to Å aš-kiaše [adopter] has given as her daughter.â34 Two more rare contract openings, not across all Nuzi documents, but just in the daughtership corpus, are âliÅ¡ân-Å¡u [PN],â translated as âdeclaration of [PN]â and the title âá¹­uppi rÄ«kÅ¡i,â or tablet of marriage.35 In marriage contracts at Nuzi, the titles ṭuppi rīkši, lišân-šu [PN], and umma [PN] are all very common. Only one out of the 40 daughtership contracts does not have a readable opening line. Three trial records involving daughter(-in-law)-ship contracts show that claims could be raised over guardianship of the woman adopted and bride-price payment.36 A phrase dictating that the adoptee will be cleared of claims and returned to the adopter is included in almost all the daughtership contracts. It is identical to one used in Nuzi marriage contracts, where the bride must be cleared of claims before she is delivered to her husband.37 There is also usually a penalty recorded for any party who breaks the contract. Finally, there are a wide variety of payments in the daughtership contracts, varying depending on the target husband of the adoptee, and the circumstances surrounding the adoption. Scholars have gleaned that the standard bride-price at 32 At least not one that is traceable from the contents of the contract. There were likely situation-specific factors at the time of the contract that affected who the tablet was âof.â 33 Texts HSS 19 91, HSS 19 89, HSS 19 75, AASOR 16 52, Gadd 42. 34 Other tablets include HSS 19 145, JEN 437, JEN 430, and JEN 465. 35 HSS 14 543 and BM 26222 respectively. 36 On guardianship, see Gadd 35 and HSS 5 53; on bride-price, see HSS 19 72. 37 Some marriage contracts with the claim-clearing clause are: HSS 19 144, HSS 5 80, AASOR 16 55, TCL 6, HSS 19 76, JEN 441, JEN 120, JEN 638 + 440, JEN 637, JEN 434. 12 Nuzi is 40 shekels, and the daughtership adoptions range from 45 shekels to no money exchanging hands, perhaps due to a debt owed or the daughter herself acting as a payment.38 Finally, the tablets contain different phrases regarding to whom the âdaughter(in-law)â could be married. The young woman could be married to someone in the family of the adopter, like a son, or to someone within the household but not in the natal family, like a slave. There are also several contracts that state the adoptee can be married to a free person, insinuating someone outside both the natal family and the household. In two instances, the young woman can even be married to the adopter.39 These various target husbands demonstrate that although the adoptee is referred to âlike a daughterâ or âlike a daughter-in-lawâ of the adopter, the subsequent marriage of the adoptee is not bound to the familial connotations of being either a âdaughterâ or âdaughter-in-law.â While there is definitive evidence that some young women adopted in these contracts lived in their adopterâs household after the adoption contract was written, it is nearly impossible to say whether the adoptees developed a familial relationship with their adoptive household, particularly in cases when they were destined to marry slaves. 2.1.2.1 Daughtership (mârtûtu) Adoptions Contracts where young women are given up as daughters to their adopters are currently the most common type of daughtership contract found at Nuzi. Twenty-one out of the 40-contract corpus are mârtûtu transactions.40 The adopters in these contracts can be both men and women but are 38 For a thorough treatment of the money exchanged in these contracts, see Fincke, âThe Adoption of Daughters at Nuzi,â 2012. 39 JEN 432 and JEN 433. 40 HSS 19 90, HSS 9 119, HSS 19 88, HSS 13 15, TCL 9 7, HSS 19 145, HSS 14 543, HSS 19 86, HSS 19 91, HSS 19 92, HSS 19 94, HSS 19 100, HSS 19 82, AASOR 16 23, AASOR 16 52, JEN 465, HSS 19 89, HSS 5 17, JEN 218. 13 predominantly men. Out of the daughtership contracts, 17 provide stipulations regarding how the young woman will be married off, and 3 do not mention marriage at all; one is too broken to know one way or the other.41 It is possible, as Breneman notes in his translations, that the daughtership contracts without clauses concerning marriage are just adoptions or slave-purchasing contracts, rather than daughtership adoptions.42 The 17 contracts that deal with marriage have a variety of options for how the daughter is to be married. The most common phrase, found on 7 contracts, states that the adopter will marry the young woman off âto whomever they please.â43 The second most common phrase, found on 4 contracts, is a variation on the first. The contracts only say that the adopter will give the young woman âaway as a wife.â44 Only one contract states that the woman can be married to a slave, a taluḫu (meaning unknown), or she may become a prostitute.45 Two contracts specifically state that the woman will be married to someone in the adopterâs household, with one specifying that it will be a man whom the adopter adopts as a son.46 It is possible that the general statement about the woman being married within the household could apply to a slave, but there is no concrete evidence to support this. Three other contracts have miscellaneous clauses pertaining to marriage. One states that the adoptee will be married âto one man,â another requests payment once the adopted daughter has âlain with a man,â and another when the young woman âacquires 41 The broken text (with title preserved) is HSS 9 100, and the two that do not mention marriage are AASOR 16 52 and JEN 218. 42 Breneman, âNuzi Marriage Tabletsâ, 124 (for a regular adoption), 144 (for a slave-purchasing contract). 43 HSS 19 92, HSS 19 145, TCL 9 7, HSS 9 119, HSS 19 90, JEN 686, and BM 1004811 + 104813. 44 HSS 19 86, HSS 14 543, HSS 18 88, HSS 19 91. 45 AASOR 16 23. 46 For marriage to a man who dwells in the adopterâs house: JEN 465; for marriage to a man the adopter adopts as a son: HSS 19 82. 14 a man.â47 Based on the available evidence, mârtûtu contracts stand out for their open-ended marriage clauses. There are a variety of payments associated with the mârtûtu contracts. In some cases, there is no money exchanged at the time of the adoption, with the agreement that the adopter will pay the parents the young womanâs bride-price when she gets married.48 In other cases, a payment is given to the original guardian of the girl both when she is adopted, and then again when she is married. For example, in HSS 14 543, Kelke and Arik-kapaia, the brothers of Pizatu, give her as a daughter to Å ukriia. Å ukriia gives a set of garments, 3 shekels of silver, and 5 sheep to the brothers as a âgift.â The contract stipulates that when Å ukriia gives Pizatu away as a wife, he will keep the bride price, and pay one donkey and one sheep to her brothers. In another case, the daughter being adopted appears to have kept a part of the bride-price for herself.49 There is no one way or consistent amount of money exchanged in the mârtûtu contracts. Each case seems to be context specific, a lot of which we may have lost, or was not recorded in the contracts themselves. While on the topic of context specific contracts, I now turn to an anomalous contract that Jeanette Fincke excludes from her analysis. This mârtûtu contract demonstrates a certain creativity on the part of a man from Nuzi. In HSS 5 17, Ar-tilla gives his daughter, Ummi-tûra to Kase ana mârtûti. However, there is a catch. Ar-tilla has designated Kase as his substitute in court, and he may only take Ummi-tûra as a daughter and marry her off if he wins the case. The tablet is broken, but it appears that if he does not win, he will get 10 shekels of silver instead of 47 Respectively, HSS 13 15, HSS 19 89, HSS 19 94. 48 HSS 19 90. 49 HSS 19 86. 15 Ummi-tûra. This is the only contract that appears to use a mârtûtu transaction as a reward, or rather as an incentive for Kase to succeed in court. This contract gives us a clue that the mârtûtu contracts were valuable to the adopters. It is fair to assume that Kase would make more than 10 shekels if he were to adopt Ummi-tûra ana mârtûti. 2.1.2.2 Daughter-in-law-ship (kallatûtu) Adoptions The kallatûtu adoptions are the least attested in the archaeological record at Nuzi, with only 5 contracts extant in the 40-contract corpus. There are two clauses used to determine the future marriage of the daughter-in-law, and one case where the situation is less clear. Two contracts state that the daughter-in-law must be married to the adopterâs son and with one of these contracts specifically naming the son, and two state that the daughter-in-law will be married to a slave in the adopterâs household.50 One tablet is inconsistent with the rest of the corpus, as it does not mention marriage. In the contract, a certain Å ukr-apu states that a palace-servant brought up his daughter, whom he now gave ana kallatûti to Å eḫel-tešub. It reads that since the palace-servant brought up Å ukr-apuâs daughter, Å eḫel-tešub will give Å ukr-apu 10 shekels for the daughterâs bride-price, and 30 shekels were bound in the hem of the daughter.51 This phrase âbound in her hemâ refers to the daughter getting to keep part of her bride-price as her dowry, and the extent to which the phrase is literal or figurative is contested among scholars. In some contracts, the money that is supposed to be bound in the daughterâs hem will be exchanged in the future as the daughter is married, leading Breneman to conclude that the phrase does not literally 50 Marriage to a son is stated in HSS 19 75 AND HSS 5 79; marriage to a slave is stated in JEN 437 and JEN 430. 51 Gadd 42. 16 refer to the money being sewn into the brideâs garment.52 The contract with Å eḫel-tešub and Å ukr-apu is difficult because marriages at Nuzi did not use the term kallatûtu to refer to the bride. It is not clear if the daughter is the bride or daughter-in-law of Å eḫel-tešub. Breneman argues that the young woman may be marrying Å eḫel-tešub since nothing else is written about the young womanâs marriage.53 It is difficult to determine whether this is a marriage contract or a daughtership adoption, particularly because scribes at Nuzi use the future and past tense interchangeably when referring to money exchanged during a marriage.54 Since kallatûtu does not come up as a term in the marriage contracts at Nuzi, I categorize it among the adoptions. Like the payments in the mârtûtu contracts, there is little consistency in the amount of money exchanged in the kallatûtu contracts. In the two cases where the young women will be married to slaves, one is corrupted where the payment is listed, and the other says that the adopter paid 20 shekels for the daughter-in-law. Where the son is explicitly named as a future spouse for the adopted daughter-in-law, the adopter pays 15 shekels to the young womanâs father, with 15 more promised when she begins to live with her future husband. The adoptee also receives 20 shekels and property inheritance that the adopter cannot take from her.55 In the other case of the adoptee being married to a son of the adopter, her brother who gives her away receives 40 shekels as the bride-price from the adopter, with no more owed at the time of the marriage. However, there is an additional clause noting that the adoptee is âin sistershipâ with the brother who gave her away, and he owes her 5 shekels of silver per year.56 In this case, the 52 Breneman, âNuzi Marriage Tablets,â 28-29. 53 Breneman, 118. 54 See Gadd 12 for an example of future-tense bride-price exchange, and HSS 19 144 for past tense bride-price exchange in regular marriage contracts. 55 HSS 19 75. 56 HSS 5 79. 17 âbrotherâ is probably a legal guardian rather than a biological brother, as women could enter âsistershipâ or âsisterhoodâ the same way they entered âdaughtershipâ at Nuzi; a womanâs âbrotherâ could either marry her or give her away in marriage.57 The final case, as mentioned above, sees 10 shekels go to the father, and 30 shekels remain in the hem of the daughter. Once again, there seem to be situational factors affecting the payments exchanged in the kallatûtu adoptions. 2.1.2.3 Daughter and Daughter-in-law-ship (mârtûtu u kallatûtu) Adoptions The mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts are the second most common type of daughtership adoption after the mârtûtu contracts. There are 13 mârtûtu u kallatûtu documents in my corpus.58 In terms of the target husband of the young woman, the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts vary quite substantially. One contract states that she will be married to an adopted son, one states that she will be married to a son of Arrapḫe and prohibits marriage to a slave, and one text is broken.59 Five contracts state that she will be married to a slave, with two cases specifically naming the future husband.60 Five other contracts offer two or more options to the adopter: to a slave or the adopter himself; to a slave or whomever the adopter chooses (without returning the adoptee herself to slave status); to a slave or a free man; to a son of the adopter or as a wife at the city gate, but not to a slave; and as a wife at the city gate or to a slave.61 Notably, all but 3 of the 13 57 On the Nuzi sistership contracts, see Barry Eichler, âAnother Look at the Nuzi Sistership Contracts,â Essays on the Ancient Near East in Memory of J. J. Finkelstein (Hamden, Connecticut), 1977, 45-59. 58 Fincke (2012) identifies at least four more mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts, however, one of them (EN 9/3 271) appears to be mislabelled, because David Owens translates this as a regular marriage contract in SCCNH 9/2, p. 115. 59 Respectively: JEN 428, HSS 19 87, and JEN 429. 60 Respectively: AASOR 16 87, JEN 431, BM 26222, JEN 50 (future husband named), and JEN 26 (future husband named). 61 Respectively: JEN 432, AASOR 16 42, JEN 596, HSS 9 145, JEN 433. The phrase âat the gateâ is hard to interpret. Breneman suggests that it may be to a free man in the case of JEN 433 (pg. 309, n. 177, Breneman lists 18 contracts offer marriage to a slave, either exclusively or in as an alternative to another future husband, which is more than either of the other contract types. In terms of payment exchanged both during and after the contracts, it is impossible to attach one specific amount or process to mârtûtu u kallatûtu documents. Four texts record the full Nuzi bride-price being exchanged in various capacities. In two of these cases, 40 shekels are exchanged at the time of the adoption; in another the adopter gives 30 shekels to the guardian of the girl and will deliver the other 10 upon her marriage; and in the last case, 10 shekels went to the guardian of the girl and 30 shekels were sewn in her hem as an inheritance.62 Two transactions state that the âfull amountâ has been paid by the adopter to the guardian, presumably 40 shekels, and one lucky father received 45 shekels for his daughter.63 The final four contracts are either broken in unfortunate spots, or do not mention the payment at all, leaving us to question whether the guardian or the daughter received anything from the adopter.64 2.1.3 Conclusion Surveying the three separate categories of daughtership contracts brings to light the main question: why are there three different terms for these contracts? What does each one mean specifically at Nuzi? The biggest differences, besides the use of mârtûtu, kallatûtu, or mârtûtu u kallatûtu, appear to be in the phrases regarding whom the young woman could marry. The mârtûtu contracts most commonly state that the woman will be married to whomever the adopter pleases, and the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts most frequently designate a slave as a potential text 52 but likely meant text 62). 62 Respectively: JEN 429, JEN 432, HSS 19 87, and HSS 9 145. 63 Respectively: AASOR 16 30, JEN 433, and JEN 26. 64 JEN 428, JEN 431, and AASOR 16 42 do not list payment, and JEN 50 is broken. 19 future husband for the adoptee. There are no apparent differences in the amount of money gained or exchanged in each type of contract. The question of how the three types of contracts differ persists. What can be said for certain is that the sheer number of these contracts is due to specific conditions of Nuzian society. To help uncover what these conditions may be, I now turn outside of Nuzi. 2.2 Other Evidence for Daughtership Adoption in the Ancient Near East Evidence of daughtership contracts, or contracts using similar terminology to those at Nuzi, have been found in three places in the ancient Near East. This section surveys the evidence found in the Old Babylonian city of Sippar, the Late Bronze Age city of Ugarit, and the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible. I am not insinuating that Nuzi copied any of these groups directly. Looking through this evidence may help to shed light on what the three contract types at Nuzi mean, and why Nuzi so fervently adopted the practice. 2.2.1 Old Babylonian Sippar The first example of non-Nuzian daughtership adoption is from the Old Babylonian (ca. 2000-1600 BCE) city of Sippar. Three contracts, written at different times over almost 100 years, describe young women being adopted as both daughters and daughters-in-law.65 In contrast to 65 CT 33 34, CT 47 40, and Waterman, Business Documents 72. There may be other evidence for the practice of adopting daughters for marriage, but it is not as conclusive as the three mentioned here. In CT 8 7b, the same man who adopts Narubtum in CT 33 34 and his wife âhave chosen as daughter-in-law, for their son Ipqu-Annunitum, Elmeshum daughter of Ammiyaâ (Westbrook 1989, 119). Westbrookâs translation as âdaughter-in-lawâ may point to a phenomenon similar to a kallatûtu contract at Nuzi. On the one hand, the same family engages in a mârtûtu u kallatûtu contract. On the other, CT 8 7b ends with the marriage of Ipqu-Annunitum and Elmeshum, perhaps meaning that âdaughter-in-lawâ would be better translated as âbride.â One tentative example of a mârtûtu contract is VAS 18 114, where a woman insists on giving her daughter away in marriage rather than leaving it to her husband. 20 Nuzi, the Old Babylonian tablets have a well-known dating system to the years of the Babylonian kings, allowing the texts to be dated to the approximate reigns of Hammurabi, Ammi-ditana, and Samsu-iluna. The young women are given up for adoption by different people in each contract - a set of parents, a mother alone, and a father alone. In CT 47 40, the young woman is adopted as daughter and daughter-in-law by a nadītum, a well-known type of priestess in Sippar. In CT 33 34, the young woman is adopted by a man and in Waterman 72, the young woman is adopted by a woman. The amount of money exchanged in these contracts is five shekels in two cases, and three shekels in the third, substantially less than at Nuzi.66 Only CT 47 40 mentions the future marriage of the adoptee; the tablets states, according to Raymond Westbrookâs translation, that the adopter will âfit her out and give her to a husband.â67 The other two tablets do not specify that the newly adopted daughter will be married. For context, the Old Babylonian period has yielded hundreds of contracts of all types, including contracts dealing with manumission, hiring, rentals, marriage, and adoption. As such, it is notable that there is not more evidence for the daughtership adoption practice in Babylonia. There are a few potential explanations for this. The first is the loss of the tablets to ancient or modern destruction, a lack of modern access or publication, or perhaps due to the use of both oral and written contracts in the ancient world, and an inability to access the former.68 Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, societal conditions may not have given way to the There is one example from Nuzi where a woman adopts a daughter, unclear if it is her own child, from her husband, to marry the young woman off (HSS 19 91). 66 Respectively: CT 33 34, CT 47 40, and Waterman 72. 67 Westbrook, Old Babylonian Marriage Law, 121. 68 Samuel Greengus's 1969 article, âThe Old Babylonian Marriage Contractâ argues for the Akkadian term riksÄtum as a term for both oral and written contracts. He posits that the writing of contracts for Old Babylonian marriages was based on the need to protect the rights of the vulnerable (pp. 511â12). Greengus makes a convincing case, and his work has been influential in the field. I agree with his argument to the extent that not all contracts were written down or needed to be written down. 21 common use of daughtership contracts to the same extent we see at Nuzi. The temple complexes in Sippar and Nippur were known for female priestesses, the nadītū.69 Many nadītū worked as scribes, exchanged property, and adopted heirs.70 Depending on the city, some nadītū could get married but not bear children, having to bring a second wife into the marriage to have children; in other cities, it appears that they could not get married at all, but could adopt children. A royal directive states that fathers are not allowed to drop their daughters off at the temple to become nadītū without providing subsistence or a âwritten tablet.â71 This may hint that too many people were dropping their daughters off at the temple, expecting them to be cared for. The main point in bringing up the tribulations of the temple is that young women in the Old Babylonian period were perhaps given up to the temple, as a nadītum or one of a few other types of priestesses, meaning that fewer women needed to be adopted in daughtership for marriage. This is one explanation as to why the Old Babylonians did not use the daughtership contracts more extensively. Another explanation, this time based on the phrases in the contracts themselves, shows that the rarity of daughtership contracts in the Old Babylonian period is not merely due to destruction or excavation. The ways that scribes wrote out the phrase âas daughter and daughter-in-lawâ in the three daughtership contracts is quite varied, and the order of the words changes as well. This variation in terms contrasts with the fact that contracts across the Near East, including those from the Old Babylonian period, are known for their formulaic nature. Three sources demonstrate the use of formulae in Old Babylonian contracts. First, we know that scribal training 69 Singular, nadītum. 70 Harris, âThe Organization and Administration of the Cloister in Ancient Babylonia,â 124â25; 138. 71 Charpin, âLettres et procès paléo-babyloniens,â 87â88. 22 included copying out legal phrases often found in adoption contracts and law collections, as evidenced by the Sumerian Laws Exercise Tablet (ca. 1800 BCE).72 Another stage of scribal training involved copying out âmodel contracts,â or contracts stripped of the date and list of witnesses dealing with everyday legal scenarios.73 Finally, beyond scribal training, a prism dated to the Old Babylonian period lists many common legal phrases, like âif there is a claim, he shall satisfy the claim,â and âhe promised himâ that would have been used by scribes writing up real legal tablets.74 The existence of these exercises demonstrates that there was a certain level of consistency among Old Babylonian contracts. Yet, for the three daughtership contracts, the construction and order of the words âas daughter and daughter-in-lawâ are starkly different: a-na ka-al-lu-t u3 ma-ra-at (CT 33 34), a-na ma-ru-tum u3 ka-lu-tum (CT 47 40), and a-na ka-al-la-t u3 DUMU.MUNUS (Waterman 72).75 While the contracts on the whole are similar, I posit that the discrepancy between the three phrases reflects how infrequently daughtership tablets were written in Babylonia. So, what does the Old Babylonian evidence tell us about Nuzi? Due to the proliferation of scribal schools, tablets, and legal practices during the Old Babylonian period, the people of Nuzi most likely âadoptedâ the practice of adopting young women as daughters and daughters-in-law from the Babylonians. It also becomes clear that people at Nuzi had a penchant for the mârtûtu contracts, which do not appear in the Old Babylonian record. The fact that so many young women were adopted as daughters at Nuzi may also point to a lack of other opportunities for young women, like the temples in the Old Babylonian period. Conversely, there may have been 72 Roth, Law Collections, 42. 73 Spada, âTwo Old Babylonian Model Contracts,â 1. 74 Roth, Law Collections, 48. 75 I am particularly happy to note that these transliterations are my own. 23 fewer places at Nuzi than in Sippar where guardians could, without responsibility, drop off their daughters intending to leave them. 2.2.2 Ugarit The Late Bronze Age (ca. 1400-1200 BCE) city of Ugarit is located on the Mediterranean Sea in modern-day Syria and has a number of legal parallels to Nuzi in addition to the use of the daughter-in-law-ship terminology.76 The contemporaneous sites each used the cuneiform script, although Nuzians used a local dialect of Akkadian in their writing, while Ugaritic people used Ugaritic (with plenty of Akkadian loanwords). As well, both sites are considered âupstreamâ from the culture found in southern Mesopotamia.77 One key difference between the two cities is that Ugarit was a royal centre with a mid-sized population, known for its palace and palatial records, whereas Nuzi was much smaller and answered to the king of the nearby city of Arrapḫe. This proves an interesting comparison for Nuzi, as it may shed light on the specific parts of Nuzi society that gave way to the use of daughtership contracts. There are a few texts where the term kallatūtu is used in a similar context to Nuzi, meaning that it may refer to the woman as a daughter-in-law rather than a bride.78 Anson Rainey identifies a text from the royal archives where a woman is given ana kallūtīšu, and comments that âit would appear that the kallatu was not exactly a âbrideâ in the sense of a fiancée but a 76 Another legal practice that Ugarit has in common with Nuzi is brothership (aḫûti) contracts. Stephen Stohlman notes that the Ugaritic contracts have âno clauses in common with these texts from Nuziâ (1972, 208). Perhaps commonalities lie in concept rather than clause in this case. 77 Other âupstreamâ sites from Mesopotamia include the Late Bronze Age city of Emar, located south of Aleppo, Syria, on the Euphrates River, and Elephantine, an island in the Nile River that has yielded large archives from a 5th century BCE Jewish community. 78 Rainey, âThe Social Stratification of Ugarit,â 217â18. 24 daughter-in-law or a woman for whom a man had the right to make a marriage agreement, either by marrying her to one of his servants or to an outsider.â79 The interesting thing about this potential daughter-in-law-ship contract is that the young woman had some power in the contract; the tablet (16:141) states that if the woman âdoes not agree to the brideship of [the adopter], then he shall pay the money of the betrothal gift, and she shall go free into the streets.â The woman in this contract was given by the king Niqmadu of Ugarit, to a man who had paid off a financial hold on his property.80 Since the woman would not be returned to the kingâs household in case of a dispute, perhaps this woman was of marriageable age, or did not have a family/guardian to return to in the kingâs house. Another tablet, 17:129, records a dispute between a man and kallatīšu over property, where the kallatīšu conceded her âitemsâ to the man and he took them without having to take an oath. No more is discussed of the fate of the woman.81 Likely, this case was about the man and the kallatīšu going their separate ways and having to settle the assets that the woman accumulated while living with the man. Yet, we do not have a record of whether or not the woman was leaving the household. The final piece of evidence for daughter-in-law-ship is a census record that lists two men, each with a klth, which Rainey translates as bride.82 Any conclusion about the adoption of women as daughters-in-law at Ugarit would be bolstered by corresponding marriage contracts, or contracts with stipulations regarding the womanâs future marriage, which we unfortunately do not have. However, the few instances of daughters-in-law are intriguing since the women appear to be more active players in the contracts and consequences of the transaction than at Nuzi. At Nuzi, daughtership contracts were likely 79 Rainey, 218. 80 Rainey, 217. 81 Rainey, 218. 82 Rainey, 218. 25 used for young women who were too young to be married,83 and the Ugaritic material may represent women who are of marriageable age, and/or who lack formal guardians. Another key part of the Ugaritic contracts is that in contract 16:141, the man who receives a kallatīšu from the king has paid off a financial hold of some kind. This may show that men with financial assets or property used kallatûtu-type adoptions, a scenario that is paralleled at Nuzi. 2.2.3 Hebrew Bible Finally, the Hebrew Bible offers another perspective on daughtership adoption. In the Book of Exodus, there is a section (21:1-22:16) of legal statements called the Mišpatîm covering everything from family and slaves to animals and injuries.84 Part of this collection is a set of verses stipulating what should happen if âa man sells his daughter as a slaveâ (21:7-11).85 The text mentions that the man who purchases the young woman may designate her for himself or his son, and in neither case may he mistreat the adoptee. If she is designated for his son, he must âdeal with her as is the practice with free maidensâ (21:9). Like the Ugaritic material, there is a statement that the woman may go free in the case of the adopter mistreating her (21:11). This unit reveals a few key things. First, a woman could be sold as a slave to be married to the man who bought her, or to his son.86 In at least two daughtership adoptions at Nuzi, the contract states that the young woman could be married to the adopter or to someone in his household. The biblical text lends itself to a protective interpretation; verses 8-10 require the 83 Fincke, "Adoption of Women at Nuzi," 121; Lewy, "Gleanings from a New Volume of Nuzi Texts," 216, note 2. 84 The word Mišpatîm translates from Hebrew into âjudgementsâ or âordinancesâ. 85 See Appendix, #1. 86 There is trouble with using the term âmarriageâ here, as it is ambiguous in the Hebrew Bible whether or not sexual intercourse alone was enough to consider a slave and a master âmarriedâ per se. The verses are translated to say that the woman could be âdesignatedâ for the adopter or his son. 26 adopter to provide for the young woman in multiple scenarios, including if he takes a second wife. There are also cases of young slaves at Nuzi adopted to be married and not returned to the status of slaves. Overall, the biblical text is perhaps the furthest in time and space from Nuzi than the other examples. By putting the biblical passage in conversation with the Nuzi texts, another way of looking at the daughterhood phenomenon emerges â an interest in protecting the rights of the adopted woman. 2.2.4 Conclusion Together, the evidence from Ugarit, Sippar, and the Hebrew Bible reveals a few things about the contracts from Nuzi. Likely, the practice of adopting daughters and daughters-in-law came from Old Babylonian traditions, yet other groups across the Near East also gave their daughters up as slaves that could be married into the family, or as daughters-in-law. The non-Nuzi evidence puts in relief how frequently the Nuzians used the daughtership contracts. It is also clear that the use of the three contract types, mârtûtu, kallatûtu, and mârtûtu u kallatûtu is specific to Nuzi, seeing as no other place uses three terms or combinations of terms to accomplish one task â adopting young women to be married. 27 Chapter 3: Scholarly Approaches To this point, I have addressed the content and archaeological context of the Nuzi daughtership contracts and similar evidence from across the ancient Near East. Now, I turn to the history of scholarship on the daughtership contracts, surveying categorizations and analyses of the texts from the early 20th century up to the present day. In particular, I focus on the proposals of Guillaume Cardascia, whose work on the contracts is one of the most influential in the field. 3.1 Early Approaches In the early 20th century, the first daughtership contracts were published by Edward Chiera and Ephraim Speiser under the heading âAdoption for Concubinage.â87 The influence of Chiera and Speiserâs translation is evident in the first analysis of the contracts. Paul Koschaker, in his work Neue keilschriftliche Rechtsurkunden aus der El-Amarna-Zeit (1928), argues that the difference between the three tablet titles was arbitrary, and that all the transactions were a kind of âfalse adoption,â a phrase he borrows from Martin David. False adoption refers to contracts that appear to use the framework of adoption to accomplish other things.88 Koschaker coins the term âmarriage adoptionâ (adoptio in matrimonium servile) for these false adoptions, arguing that marriage adoptions used an adoption framework to create marriages of lesser status compared 87 Chiera and Speiser, âSelected âKirkukâ Documents,â 42. 88 Another example of âfalse adoptionâ from Nuzi is the common use of adoption to gain land through oneâs new âinheritance.â âFalse adoptionâ has also been contrasted with âreal adoption,â where the main distinguishing factor is gender. According to Stohlman (1972), real adoption included adopting a son or a brother, and false adoption included all three types of daughtership adoption and adopting a sister (27-28). What is peculiar about this distinction is that women could be adopted as sons (see page 61 of this thesis for an example), and contracts where young men are adopted as sons often include the condition that the adopter will provide him with a wife (HSS 5 57, JEN 572 as examples), like the daughtership contracts stipulating target husbands for the young women. 28 with regular marriages.89 He posits that the women being adopted would be married to slaves, except for a few cases where âprotective clausesâ were included for free women being adopted.90 Building on Koschakerâs work, Elena Cassin categorizes the contracts into two categories: one for slaves, âadoption in matrimonium servileâ and another for free women called âadoption in matrimonium conjugale.â91 J. Mervin Breneman uses a similar division of free and slave-girl contracts in his 1971 dissertation, âNuzi Marriage Tablets,â noting that the difference between slave and free daughtership contracts is that free contracts focus on the protection of the adoptee, whereas slave contracts are centred on the rights of the adopter.92 However, based on this description, it is not obvious whether the women are slaves going into the transaction, or if they are going to become slaves through the transaction. Trying to distinguish between a slave or a free woman at Nuzi is challenging for three main reasons. First, it does not reflect Nuzian conceptions of slave and free. In AASOR 16 42, a woman is adopted ana mârtûti u kallatûti, and although she can be married to a slave, the tablet states that the adopter âshall not return her to the (status of a) slave girl.â93 The young woman adopted in AASOR 16 42 is married to a slave in AASOR 16 44. It is unclear if the womanâs marriage to a slave necessitates her becoming a slave herself or if the terms of the adoption contract were breached, and she was returned to the status of a slave. Breneman categorizes this text as a slave contract, even though the contract could be argued to center on the rights of the young woman by stipulating that she should not be returned to slave status. 89 Koschaker, Neue keilschriftliche Rechtsurkunden aus der El-Amarna-Zeit, 82â84. 90 Breneman, âNuzi Marriage Tablets,â 87. 91 Breneman, âNuzi Marriage Tablets,â 80. 92 Breneman, 130. 93 Breneman, âNuzi Marriage Tablets,â 146â47. 29 The second reason that the slave/free division is challenging is that it is often difficult to tell whose interest is best served by the contract. In JEN 596, a woman is given up for adoption ana mârtûti u kallatûti, and can be married off to a slave, a free man, or whomever the adopter pleases. If her husband dies, the adopter will repeatedly find her a new husband. The remainder of the tablet is badly broken. Breneman put this text into the slave category, even though the option existed for her to marry a free man. What complicates the situation further is that there is debate around whether remaining in the household of the adopter was of greater benefit to the woman, in terms of protection; or to the adopter, in terms of expanding their household. Finally, it is now accepted among scholars that legal statuses in the ancient Near East are not fixed. As Brigitte Lion writes, people at Nuzi âseem to have had multiple and complex identities.â94 One woman named Kisaia is adopted ana mârtûti u kallatûti in AASOR 16 30 and is married to a slave of her own choice after raising objection to the slave that her adopter, Tulpun-naya chose for her (AASOR 16 33). Kisaia appears to buy her freedom from her Tulpun-naya by giving over her son to Tulpun-naya in AASOR 16 32. This case of a shifting identity does not lend credence to the division between slave/free and demonstrates that there may be more to the contracts than the slave/free dichotomy. 3.2 Guillaume Cardasciaâs Approach In the 1940âs, scholars began to move beyond Koschakerâs argument that there is no difference between mârtûtu, kallatûtu, and mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts. Scholarly work shifted to investigating what each title meant and what the key differences are between them. Two theories 94 Lion, âQuestions of Identity in Nuzi,â 315. 30 emerged in response to these questions â one on the age of the adoptee, and the other on the financial benefit of the transactions to either the adopter or the guardian of the adoptee. Hildegard Lewy (1941) suggested that a girl given as both a daughter and daughter-in-law was too young to be married off by a traditional marriage contract or by a mârtûtu or kallatûtu contract alone. Therefore, she enters the adopterâs household as a daughter, to later become a daughter-in-law when she comes of marriageable age.95 The question concerning the age of the adoptees influenced another prominent idea about the daughtership contracts, put forth by Arnold van Praag in his 1945 work Droit matrimonial assyro-babylonien. He argues that there was a financial drive behind all the daughtership contracts; a young woman was adopted by her future father-in-law so that her guardian could receive her terḫatum sooner than if he had waited to marry her off.96 Both of these arguments explain why a person would choose to enter into a daughtership contract rather than a marriage contract â there could have been a financial need to give up a younger daughter into a future marriage. Van Praag also argued that families could avoid the cost of paying their daughterâs terhatum upfront in a daughtership transaction by switching their daughter with a young woman from another family; a family who gave a young girl up for adoption would adopt a woman of marriageable age from the same family.97 This claim, however, was only based on one set of transactions where young women were adopted into one anotherâs families; it does not hold up as a constant throughout the corpus. In response to the combination of daughter and daughter-in-lawship, van Praag saw the mârtûtu u kallatûtu 95 Lewy, âGleanings from a New Volume of Nuzi Texts,â 216, note 2. 96 Cardascia, âLâAdoption Matrimoniale a Babylone et a Nuzi,â 8. 97 Grosz, âOn Some Aspects,â 132. 31 contracts as providing the adopter with the most power over the adoptee â she could be married within the family or to someone outside.98 In 1959, Guillaume Cardascia addressed the two main ideas of age and financial drive in his influential article âLâadoption Matrimoniale a Babylone et Nuzi.â His article remains one of the most foundational works in the field, not for his main argument, but for his definition of marriage adoption and his treatment of the three different contract types, including his assessment of previous scholarly claims. Cardascia rejected both van Praagâs financial need argument and Lewyâs assessment of the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts as an underage girl being adopted to later become a daughter-in-law, calling it âcertainement erronée.â99 Rather than the financial or underage approach, Cardascia concludes that the daughtership contracts consist of the adoptive father acquiring the right to marry the adoptee off to a more or less extended circle of people.100 I agree with this claim, replacing âadoptive fatherâ with âadopterâ due to the variety of people, male and female that adopted young women at Nuzi. However, I disagree with the claims that Cardascia makes on his way to this conclusion. Cardascia sees the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts similarly to van Praag, arguing that this type of contract gave the adoptive father the authority to marry the adoptee inside or outside the family.101 Cardascia argues that in principle, by adopting a young woman as both a daughter-in-law and daughter, the adopter could marry the young girl off either inside or outside their household.102 This is a logical claim; adopting a woman as a daughter meant that one would 98 Van Praag, Droit matrimonial assyro-babylonien, 82. 99 Cardascia, âLâAdoption Matrimoniale a Babylone et a Nuzi,â 5. 100 Cardascia, 5. 101 Cardascia, 5. 102 Cardascia, 5; Westbrook, Old Babylonian Marriage Law, 39. 32 marry her outside your family, as one would with their own daughter, and by adopting a daughter-in-law, the assumption is that she will be married to someone inside the family. Yet, the tablets do not support this logic enough to bring Cardasciaâs argument out of the theoretical sphere. As mentioned in my overview of the contract types above, the possibilities of marriage for the young women in the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts is almost evenly split between marriage inside or outside the household, sometimes with multiple options in the same contract. In brief, seven contracts specifically outline that she will remain in the household, whether married to a son, a slave, or the adopter, and four contracts give the adopter the flexibility that Cardascia refers to with a marriage inside or outside the household. Only one specifies that she will be married outside the household. In light of Cardasciaâs claim, a larger number of mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts should allow for marriage options inside or outside the household. Although there are only four contracts that stipulate marriage inside or outside the household, the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts outnumber both kallatûtu and mârtûtu for giving the adopter these explicit options, giving some credence to Cardasciaâs claim. Overall, however, there is a piece of evidence that casts doubt on Cardasciaâs argument about the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts giving adopters the most power out of all the contract types. This piece of evidence comes from the mârtûtu contracts. Cardascia acknowledges that these contracts are similar to the sistership (aḫâtûtu) contracts in that they allow the adopter to marry the young woman off to whomever they please.103 He acknowledges the challenge in defining marriage adoption and outlining what specifically delineates a marriage adoption from a 103 Cardascia, âLâadoption Matrimoniale,â 3â4. 33 regular adoption of children, but also does not delve into the mârtûtu contracts in any detail. Therefore, it is interesting to note that the mârtûtu contracts do not restrict the adopter from marrying inside their own household. In fact, there are 2 contracts that stipulate marriage inside the household.104 This example alone refutes the idea that the mârtûtu contracts were only for marrying the adoptee to someone outside the household. In addition, the majority of the mârtûtu contracts state that the adopter can marry the young woman off to whomever they please. There are not enough corresponding marriage contracts to affirm that this clause is referring to someone only outside the household. Arguably, the mârtûtu contracts give the adopter as much if not more latitude than the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts in terms of the adopteeâs target husband. Finally, regarding the kallatûtu contracts, Cardascia sees these functioning the same way that Lewy sees mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts: used for young women who are not of marriageable age and who enter their future husbandâs household early. This is why he rejects the idea that the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts are solely about age. He concludes that a young woman adopted ana kallatûti could be married to a son or a slave of the household, and that these contracts can function as a âmarriage by representation,â where the father-in-law is representing his son by arranging for his future marriage.105 In the corpus of kallatûtu contracts, only one contract explicitly names the person that the young woman will be marrying. In contrast, there are 2 mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts that specifically name the slave as the target husband of the adoptee. Applying Cardasciaâs logic that slaves are part of the household â which I agree with â the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts can also function as âmarriage by 104 JEN 465 and HSS 19 82. 105 Cardascia, âLâadoption Matrimoniale,â 4. 34 representation,â where the head of the household makes marriage contracts on behalf of his slaves. The crux of Cardiasciaâs article is where he puts forth another explanation for the purpose of marriage adoption in general â that these adoptions may play a similar role to the Near Eastern idea of the levirate.106 Named for the Latin root âlevirâ or husbandâs brother, the levirate is the idea that a childless widow should be remarried within her husbandâs family, with the aim of having a child who is attributed to the deceased husband. The concept is known from Deuteronomy 25:5-10, Genesis 38, and has close comparisons in Middle Assyrian Laws tablet A, ¶ 43 and Hittite Laws ¶ 193.107 Overall, Cardasciaâs conclusion is innovative, but there is presently no compelling evidence to support the idea that the daughtership contracts imitated the levirate at Nuzi. As mentioned earlier, a woman could be contracted to stay in her adopterâs house in perpetuity, but there is nothing to suggest that it is to honour the womanâs first husband through childbearing. Overall, Cardasciaâs work has been key to understanding the whole daughtership corpus at Nuzi. Yet, I think there is evidence to support a new approach to the material. 3.3 Recent Approaches Recent approaches to the Nuzi daughtership contracts continue to look for the best explanation for the three types of daughtership adoption. The main themes of the mid-20th century 106 Cardascia, 12. 107 MAL A ¶ 43 and Hittite Law ¶ 193 both describe a situation where if a man dies, his wife is to be given to the next son in the family. In the Hittite law, the woman could be given to her father-in-law if the second husband dies. Neither law mentions the need for the wife to produce a son for her deceased husband. 35 scholarship on the age of the adoptees, financial drives, and the power of the father-in-law continue to be explored. Most recently, Jeanette Fincke (2012) contributes to the financial discussion of daughtership adoption in her article âAdoption of Women at Nuzi.â She concludes that the greatest potential for financial gain of the adopter came from using ana mârtûti contracts, and that the guardian of the adoptee could gain the most from using ana mârtûti u kallatûti and ana kallatûti contracts. She notes that some of the adopterâs profits are hard to calculate, since a woman and her children staying in the adopterâs household will provide much more than just financial gain.108 Fincke also touches on the question of the age of the adoptees. She proposes that the adoptees in all three types of contracts are under marriageable age based on three pieces of evidence. The first is that the majority of daughtership contracts do not record the consent of the adoptee. While the approval of the young women is present in a few of the daughtership contracts, it is not a standard feature in any of the Nuzi contracts.109 Using Finckeâs logic, âregularâ marriage contracts should all seek the consent of the women involved in the transactions, yet this is not the case. Second, Fincke notes that some of the contracts state that the adoptee is to be married off at a later time, suggesting that she is too young to be married at the 108 Fincke, âAdoption of Women,â 138. 109 HSS 19 82 and HSS 5 79 record consent from the adoptee. While I commend Fincke for highlighting female consent in the Nuzi contracts, the ancient world did not have the same conception of consent as has emerged in the last 20-30 years. Consent and female bodily autonomy, particularly in a legal context, are a very recent development in the Western world. Between the 1970âs and 1990âs, reforms in countries like Australia, the United States, Sweden, and Ireland criminalized marital rape, destabilizing the idea that a marriage gave a spouse free access to a womanâs body. For an in-depth discussion, see Lisa Featherstone, ââThatâs What Being A Woman Is Forâ: Opposition to Marital Rape Law Reform in Late Twentieth-Century Australia,â Gender & History 29, no. 1 (March 2017): 87, particularly note 2. I offer this as an example of how far removed the modern understanding of consent is from the ancient tablets. A study of where women or young women give consent in ancient contracts could be a fruitful one for understanding the role of consent in ancient contracts. 36 time that the contract was written.110 Finally, Fincke points out that one contract calls the adoptee a ṣuḫartu, a word used for a younger girl rather than a woman.111 Although I do not agree with Finckeâs suggestion that consent implies adulthood, I do agree with Fincke that the use of the term ṣuḫartu and the fact that there are separate marriage contracts from the adoptions do insinuate that the young women were not old enough to be married at the time of the contract. In another work on the daughtership contracts, Katarzyna Grosz (1981) takes a social-anthropological approach to better understand the function and nature of the mârtûtu, mârtûtu u kallatûtu and kallatûtu contracts.112 Beginning with the mârtûtu contracts, Grosz proposes three different purposes. First, these contracts could be adoption stricto sensu, where a substitute mother is found for the adoptee if her own mother dies. Grosz also suggests that the contracts could provide lifelong support for the adoptee and her children (or even the guardian who gives her up for adoption) in the adopterâs household. Finally, she argues that the mârtûtu contracts created an extra set of parents who can contribute both financially and socially to the adopteeâs upbringing, like Godparents.113 One key thing missing from these conclusions is the future marriages of the young women. The absence of this discussion points to the fact that although Groszâs conclusions may be true of individual contracts, it is not possible to fit all the mârtûtu contracts into her three categories. 110 Fincke, âAdoption of Women,â 121â22. 111 Fincke, âAdoption of Women at Nuzi,â 121. 112 Grosz also discusses the Nuzi sistership contracts, ana aḫâtûti, but I do not cover them here. It is also of note that Grosz does not provide insight into the age of the adoptees in Nuzi contracts, frequently switching between girls and women in her descriptions of the adoptees. 113 Grosz, âOn Some Aspects,â 140â41. 37 For the kallatûtu documents, Grosz refrains from making conclusions, citing the need for more evidence before a pattern can be established.114 I counter this proposal to ask if the lack of kallatûtu contracts may be evidence in itself? Finally, regarding the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts, Grosz concludes that these contracts are used by the wealthy to permanently acquire the services of the adoptees. She notes that there is no evidence for the adoptee becoming a member of the adopterâs family, and moreover that the contracts often took the adopteeâs inheritance away from her children and gave it directly to the adopter. She also concludes that the adoptees in the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts likely came from the poorest strata of society.115 These conclusions are too specific to be applied to all the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts, however. It is difficult to tell who is from the poorest strata of society; so many of the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts have full bride-price payments of 40 shekels even if the woman is married to a slave, and some contracts specify that the young woman will be married to a son of the adopter or to a man of Arrapḫe.116 We have evidence that a handful of the young women adopted are being lifted out of the poorest strata of society, but this phenomenon is not limited to the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts. It is more likely that the young women in the daughtership tablets came from varied backgrounds of wealth, considering that some adoptees were able to keep their inheritance or property, and others had to give their belongings over to their adopter. Regrading the adopter more specifically, Grosz concludes that wealthy Nuzians use the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts to expand their households. I agree with this conclusion to the extent that wealthy 114 Grosz, 145. 115 Grosz, 146. 116 Full bride-price payments can be seen in JEN 429, JEN 432, and JEN 26; JEN 428 and HSS 19 87 have marriages to a son or a free man. As a quick note on the designation âman of Arrapá¸«e,â it is accepted that this is a matter of status (free) rather ethnicity. It does not mean that the man is from Arrapḫe (Lion 2020, 312). 38 Nuzians used daughtership contracts to bolster their households, but disagree that it is related specifically to mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts. I now turn to two of these wealthy Nuzians to expand our understanding of all three contract types. 3.4 A New Approach to the Nuzi Daughtership Contracts From Paul Koschaker to Katarzyna Grosz, scholarship on the Nuzi daughtership contracts has changed considerably since the early publications of the 1920âs. And yet, in some ways, it has remained the same. Since the 1940âs, scholars have sought to isolate the three separate types of contracts, mârtûtu, kallatûtu, and mârtûtu u kallatûtu, and discuss what each category means for the parties involved in the contracts. In fact, this is the same practice that I have employed up to this point in this thesis. The problem with this approach is that it leaves out key information that can have a huge impact on what we know about the contracts, like the archaeological provenance and how people in the Late Bronze Age used the contracts. This approach, which isolates clauses on the tablets, is evident even in the way Mervin Breneman translates the daughtership tablets in his dissertation. He focuses on translating the main clauses, excluding the witnesses, names of the scribes, and sealings. This happens not only in studies of Nuzi, but also across Assyriology and Near Eastern studies. Scholars isolate written words on tablets so much so that the text âbecomes a static, unchanging abstraction, which can be studied as a fixed and self-contained system of meaning, removed from the dynamics of the social world in which it was produced and circulated.â117 117 Lauinger and Delnero, âReassembling the Social,â 2. 39 Now, credit is due to the many scholars in the history of Nuzi studies who value the context of the tablets, both archaeologically and socially. Ignace J. Gelbâs Presidential Address speech to the attendees of the American Oriental Society meeting in 1966 demonstrates this value. Gelb speaks in favour of the âarchival approach,â where if possible, one archive from one site in one period is subject to analysis. He says that there is great danger in concluding that all land in the Ur III period belonged to the state without acknowledging that oneâs sources are only from government archives.118 Yet, the logic that Gelb warns against has been applied to the Nuzi daughtership contracts. Conclusions have been drawn, like that of Katarzyna Grosz, positing that the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts are used by wealthy members of Nuzian society to âacquire permanent services of women dependentsâ119 without acknowledging that the same wealthy people used both kallatûtu and mârtûtu documents too. By starting from the archives and the people rather than the terms, as previous scholars have done, a more nuanced picture of the daughtership contracts of Nuzi emerges. The two archives that I analyse include that of the Teḫip-tilla family, which is responsible for a third of the daughtership contracts across all three contract types, and the archive of Tulpun-nayaâs household, another wealthy Nuzian. Together, these two archives comprise 40% of all the daughtership contracts found at Nuzi. I suggest, then, that we examine the daughtership contracts with an eye toward what the archives of the Teḫip-tilla family and Tulpun-naya can reveal about the contracts and their function at Nuzi. The approach that I take is similar to that of Brigitte Lion, who published an in-depth look at the 37-tablet archive of Tulpun-naya in 2020.120 She examines, where possible, the 118 Gelb, âApproaches,â 4â5. 119 Grosz, âOn Some Aspects,â 149. 120 Lion, âQuestions of Identity in Nuzi.â 40 gender, class, agency, and intersection of these on the people mentioned in the tablets. By approaching the tablets from a contextual perspective, Lion argues for a complex picture of society and social history in the kingdom of Arrapḫe.121 Like Lion, I aim to reveal nuance in the roles and outcomes of people who act as adopters, the women who are adopted, and those who give the young women up for adoption. This approach demonstrates that the most meaningful distinction between the daughtership contracts is not the Hurro-Akkadian terms, but the individual people who used the contracts. Before proceeding to an analysis of the daughtership contracts in the two archives, it is important to mention that although I aim to re-centre the people of Nuzi in the contracts, there are some problematic elements with my method. At present, the best way to access the experiences of Nuzians from a wide economic spectrum is through the archives of the aforementioned wealthy Nuzians. This is challenging because scholarly discourse on the ancient Near East has predominantly focused on the lives and records of the wealthy. The material and textual record left by elite members of ancient societies is often the most visible, particularly in archaeological contexts, but focusing on wealth alone perpetuates the cycle of marginalization that many people of low social and economic status face both in everyday life and in the study of history. I hope to mitigate this marginalization in my research by seeking to understand the impacts of the daughtership contracts on all of the people involved in the contract: the young women being adopted, the people who give young women up for adoption, and those who adopt the young women. Ultimately, my goal in using this approach is to shed light on the function of the tablets at Nuzi. 121 It appears that Lion has a forthcoming work that discusses Teḫip-tilla as well. 41 Another challenging component of my method is that the adoption of young women by wealthy men and women exists at a complex intersection of gender and power. It feels uncomfortable to be examining contracts that put underage girls into the household of some of the wealthiest people in the kingdom of Arrapḫe. Without importing modern assumptions onto the ancient texts, there is something especially unsettling about this phenomenon in light of recent and historical abuse of young women and men at the hands of the excessively rich.122 I am not claiming that the daughtership adoptions constituted abuse or led to the abuse of young women; however, if history tells us anything about young women and the wealthy, it is that most often the best interests of the young women are not considered in the transaction. Although the focus of this thesis is on ancient people and ancient contracts, my method is a response to modern approaches to the ancient material. Since I am writing in a modern context, it is also important not to ignore the modern experiences that shape both society and the academy, as well as the modern situations that to a certain extent reflect the power and gendered dynamics created in the daughtership contracts. The main purpose of this foray into modern problems is to acknowledge the real problems that are often overlooked in the study of history, and to acknowledge the ways in which my argument is in conversation with these things. With these key things in mind, however, I now return to the ancient material in its own context in the archives of Tulpun-naya and Teḫip-tilla. 122 Unfortunately, there are far too many instances to list here. In recent years, high profile cases have been brought against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Harvey Weinstein, and Peter Nygård for their abuse and exploitation of young women. 42 Chapter 4: Analysis 4.1 Wealthy Nuzians Part 1: The Teḫip-tilla Family Archive The Teḫip-tilla family archive has over 1000 tablets, and understandably for its size, it has not been subject to any systematic analyses as a whole. The last comprehensive study of the archive was done in the 1970âs, when Maynard Maidman analysed texts that deal with real estate and the real estate interests of the family for his PhD dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania.123 I rely on Maidmanâs dissertation and his more recent publications on Teḫip-tilla to build a picture of Teḫip-tilla and his family members at Nuzi. In total, there are 8 marriage adoption contracts where Teḫip-tilla is the adopter, and 5 where his family and household members are the adopters.124 This brings the total number of daughtership contracts in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs archive to 13 out of 40 tablets in my corpus across 3 generations. In terms of archaeological provenance, most of the texts can be traced to the houses of Teḫip-tilla and his grandson, Tarmi-tilla. Provenance is noted where known. 4.1.1 Overview of Teḫip-Tilla The main figure of the family archive is Teḫip-tilla son of Puḫi-šenni, identified as the most economically âactive and aggressive member of his family.â125 Teḫip-tilla appears to have had several careers, including being on a military platoon, as a real estate board member, and as a 123 Maidman, âA Socioeconomic Analysis,â 16. 124 Tehip-tilla is the adopter in BM 26222 (#17 in Appendix), JEN 429 (#8 in Appendix), JEN 620 (#7 in Appendix, which was not treated in the beginning section of this thesis due to its broken opening), JEN 596 (#6 in Appendix), JEN 430 (#5 in Appendix), JEN 437 (#4 in Appendix), JEN 26 (#3 in Appendix), and JEN 50 (#2 in Appendix). His household and family members adopt in JEN 431 (#11 in Appendix), AASOR 16 52 (#12 in Appendix), JEN 433 (#14 in Appendix), JEN 465 (#15 in Appendix). 125 Maidman, âA Socioeconomic Analysis,â 159. 43 ḫalṣuḫlu. The term ḫalṣuḫlu is a combination of an Akkadian root for âdistrictâ and a Hurrian ending for âvocation,â according to Maidman. There is no direct translation for the position, but what is known is that it is a âcrown officialâ whose major roles are surveying real estate and acting as a sort of judge for real estate transfers and claims.126 For non-official work, Teḫip-tilla also lent and exchanged various items including animals, grain, and bricks, so much so that exchange texts are the second most attested tablets in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs archive after various kinds of adoptions.127 Not only did Teḫip-tilla work in real estate, but he also purchased real estate by being âadoptedâ into different families across Arrapḫe. In fact, he was âadoptedâ over 270 times, and had holdings in Nuzi, Zizza, Unap-še, Artiḫi, Turša, and Apena, all in the Arrapḫan kingdom.128 A few notes are warranted about this particular type of adoption, as it was common at Nuzi and receives a lot of scholarly attention. Mentioned earlier as a kind of âfalse adoption,â the process for property adoption involved: someone being taken in âsonshipâ and paying their adoptive parents a âgift,â or rather payment for the land, and immediately receiving a portion of land as their âinheritance.â129 Through these adoptions, Teḫip-tilla was theoretically a âsonâ to many people, yet we lack evidence that he joined these 270 families in any way beyond simply âinheriting,â or rather attaining the land. As Teḫip-tilla figures prominently in so many property adoptions, it is not surprising to find him among other common types of adoption at Nuzi, like the daughtership adoptions. 126 Maidman, âThe Office of Halsuhlu in the Nuzi Texts,â 239. 127 Maidman, âNuzi,â 218. 128 Maidman, âA Socioeconomic Analysis,â 159â63. 129 There are two terms for this kind of adoption: âsonship,â or mÄrÅ«tu which is associated with giving up land, and tidennūtu which is a kind of indentured service where people are given up instead of land (Lion 2020, 303). 44 4.1.2 Teḫip-tilla in the Daughtership Contracts Teḫip-tilla appears as the adopter in 8 contracts: 2 kallatûtu documents, 5 mârtûtu u kallatûtu documents, and one where the opening lines are broken. In all of these contracts, the women are expected to marry slaves, with one contract employing the phrase more commonly seen in mârtûtu contracts, that Teḫip-tilla will marry her to whom he pleases, either slave or free. In two of the contracts, the target husbands of the adoptees are slaves and are listed by name. If their first husbands die, Teḫip-tilla will provide each with a new husband, to whomever he pleases in one case and to a slave in another.130 In fact, this clause of providing another husband occurs in each of Teá¸«ip-tillaâs 8 daughtership contracts, save for one that is broken where the clause would typically appear.131 Some of these clauses go as far as to state that Teḫip-tilla will find the adoptee a fourth husband should her third husband die.132 Five of the tablets state that the young woman will not leave the house of Teḫip-tilla, and another contract states that the estate of the young woman now belongs to Teḫip-tilla.133 Teá¸«ip-tillaâs payments to those who give their daughters/sisters up for adoption vary from not being discussed in the tablet to 20 shekels in JEN 430, and even to 45 shekels in JEN 26. Overall, the contracts where Teḫip-tilla adopts young women are quite similar and could be considered a corpus more so than contracts under the separate titles kallatûtu and mârtûtu u kallatûtu. Since the women in the contracts are either implicitly or explicitly expected to stay in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs household, these contracts seem to be bolstering Teá¸«ip-tillaâs household with 130 JEN 50 and JEN 26 respectively. 131 The broken text is Jen 429 from room 15 in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs house. 132 BM 26222, JEN 437 (from room 15 in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs house), JEN 620. 133 Five with clauses dictating that the adoptee remain in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs house: JEN 620 (states that the father gave his daughter to Tehip-tilla forever), JEN 430, JEN 437, JEN 26, BM 26222. Adopteeâs estate is given over in JEN 50. 45 labourers. Brigitte Lion has shown that women at Nuzi were valuable workers in many parts of Nuzi life, from being wet-nurses to musicians and textile labourers.134 Although there are few cities or locations listed on the adoption tablets, one case study from the city of Turša in Arrapḫe demonstrates the value of women to the Teḫip-tilla family. A tablet found in room 16 of Teá¸«ip-tillaâs house details a list of workers in Enna-matiâs Turša household, including 30 women identified as something like âweavers of the thread.â135 We know Teḫip-tilla had an extensive property in Turša, and that the ownership of parts of the property changed hands between Teá¸«ip-tillaâs sons, from Akip-tašenni to Enna-mati.136 Therefore, it is very likely that the women of the Turša household were âadoptedâ by Teḫip-tilla, after which they were transferred to Enna-mati. We have evidence that women given to Teá¸«ip-tillaâs household through daughtership contracts were then given to his sons, perhaps fulfilling the clause that they will remain in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs household in perpetuity. Enna-mati gives a woman, Puḫuia, in marriage to Ḫulukka, who in turn gives Enna-mati a young woman he can marry to one of his slaves or sons. The tablet specifically states that âformerly, Puḫuia belonged to the household of Teḫip-tilla in daughtership and in daughter-in-law-ship, but now Enna-mati has relinquished her and given her as wife to á¸ªulukka.â137 I now bring texts involving Teḫip-tilla up against Cardasciaâs claim that the mârtûtu u kallatûtu documents existed for the adoptive father-in-law to gain leeway in marrying the young woman either inside or outside the family. Teá¸«ip-tillaâs power appears to lie not in marrying a woman inside or outside his household, but by keeping her inside of it. This likely contributed to 134 Lion, âWork and Gender in Nuzi Society,â 356. 135 Lion, 362. 136 Maidman, âA Socioeconomic Analysis,â 198. 137 JEN 639 + JEN 440, translation per Breneman (70). 46 the householdâs workforce through the physical and reproductive labour of the women. Teá¸«ip-tillaâs corpus of daughtership contracts reveals that the titles, in this case mârtûtu u kallatûtu and kallatûtu, are not the most important part of the tablet for understanding the social context of the contracts; rather, the people who are involved, and the specific clauses regarding the young womanâs future marriage are more indicative of the purpose of the daughtership contracts. The other members of Teá¸«ip-tillaâs household and their use of the daughtership contracts support this claim. 4.1.3 Uzna in the Daughtership Contracts Uzna was the wife of Teá¸«ip-tillaâs oldest son, Enna-mati. Uzna is one of the female members of the Teḫip-tilla family who acted independently â the others being Teá¸«ip-tillaâs wife, Ḫinzuri and his mother, Winnirke. Uzna participated in transactions on her own, including acquiring land and personnel for her household and acted in some transactions with her son, Takku. There is evidence that Uzna outlived Enna-mati, after which she acted alone or with her son. Based on her combined contracts with Takku, it is clear that she lived to see Takku well into adulthood.138 Uzna is the adopter of two young women, one in a mârtûtu u kallatûtu document and the other in a mârtûtu document.139 Each contract has some peculiarities that do not come up frequently in the other daughtership contracts. In the mârtûtu u kallatûtu document, Uzna adopts Aštun-naia as daughter and daughter-in-law to be given to one of her slaves. If AÅ¡tun-naiaâs first husband dies, Uzna will give her to another servant. AÅ¡tun-naiaâs estate belongs to Uzna and as 138 Maidman, âThe Teḫip-Tilla Family of Nuzi,â 152â53. 139 JEN 431 (from room 16 in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs house) and AASOR 16 52 (from room 21 in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs house) respectively. 47 long as AÅ¡tun-naiaâs mother â the one giving her up for adoption â lives, Uzna will give her food and clothing every year. There are no other payments exchanged in this document, which likely means that AÅ¡tun-naiaâs inheritance was part of Uznaâs payment. It is also interesting that AÅ¡tun-naiaâs mother receives support from Uzna for the rest of her life. This paints an almost charitable picture of Uzna, which is quickly challenged by the other contract. In Uznaâs mârtûtu contract, one of her own slaves gives his daughter up to Uzna, on the condition that Uzna will not make her a slave. In return, Uzna pays her slave 2 homers, 1 pi and 10 qa of barely and one garment as the price of his daughter. There is a clause stating that the young womanâs father must clear her of any claims and return her to Uzna, and that if the young woman runs away, her father will search for her and once again return her to Uzna. If he does not clear her and return her to Uzna, Uzna âshall pluck out the eyes of á¸ªanizu.â According to Breneman, having oneâs eyes removed at Nuzi was a penalty for committing adultery.140 Uzna takes this penalty out of context for something that does not usually warrant a penalty in the daughtership contracts. Perhaps Uzna could be described as â pardon the pun â a plucky businessperson. There is no marriage mentioned in this second contract that Uzna makes. It is possible that this contract is not a daughtership contract, but a regular adoption, as money is exchanged for the price of the girl herself, but not in the context of any future marriage. Leaving the mârtûtu contract aside temporarily, the mârtûtu u kallatûtu document is very similar to those that Teḫip-tilla makes, including a clause concerning the marriage of Aštun-naia to another slave if her first husband dies, and that the estate of Aštun-naia belongs to Uzna. The 140 Breneman, âNuzi Marriage Tablets,â 150. 48 condition that AÅ¡tun-naiaâs mother receive food and clothing from Uzna is unique among the Teḫip-tilla corpus. 4.1.4 Takku in the Daughtership Contracts Takku, the eldest son of Enna-mati, appears to have taken over his father Enna-matiâs household in Turša and was responsible for other Teḫip-tilla real estate holdings that he likely inherited from Enna-mati.141 Interestingly, Takku is known for writing two ânarrativeâ tablets that explain how the Assyrians captured two of his men and 200 homers of his grain in a raid on Turša.142 Takku only has one daughtership contract on record, a mârtûtu u kallatûtu document from Turša which states that he can marry the young woman, Waš-elli, himself, or give her to a slave.143 In either case, her children â both male and female â will be slaves of Takku, her estate also belongs to Takku, and she cannot go out from his house. This contract resembles those of Teḫip-tilla, yet it provides more detail on the specific situation of the young woman being adopted, and the potential future of her children. The fact that Takku may marry Waš-elli and keep her children as slaves may speak to her becoming a second wife to Takku, as her children would not be part of Takkuâs inheritance. 141 Maidman, âA Socioeconomic Analysis,â 255. The city of Turša seems to be a powerful center for the family. However, like most other places in the Kingdom of Arrapḫe, Turša has not been excavated. 142 Maidman, 253. Maidman explains that most of Takkuâs non-real estate texts were related to the exchange and sale of grain, which may contribute to Takkuâs anger over the loss of grain to the Assyrians. 143 JEN 432 from room 16 in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs house. 49 4.1.5 Tarmi-tilla in the Daughtership Contracts Tarmi-tilla was a grandson of Teḫip-tilla and Takkuâs cousin. Tarmi-tilla has the third largest collection of tablets out of the Teḫip-tilla family archives, after Teḫip-tilla himself and Enna-mati.144 This makes sense considering that Tarmi-tilla occupied a house connected with Teá¸«ip-tillaâs original property in Nuzi. It is unclear if Tarmi-tillaâs record is so large due to his economic activity or whether his property in Nuzi was more accessible to modern excavators than Takkuâs Turša property. Although Tarmi-tilla also had some of Teá¸«ip-tillaâs property in Turša that he took over from his cousin Wur-tešup, son of Akip-tašenni (Teá¸«ip-tillaâs third and youngest son), his main residence was at Nuzi. Maidman notes that Tarmi-tillaâs archive most closely resembles Teá¸«ip-tillaâs out of any other family memberâs archive, with a lot of real estate holdings across multiple Arrapḫan towns.145 There is one daughtership contract in Tarmi-tillaâs archive, a mârtûtu u kallatûtu document, where a young woman named Nuḫuia is adopted.146 This tablet shares a few similarities with Takkuâs daughtership contract. Tarmi-tillaâs contract notes that the children of Nuḫuia will be servants to Tarmi-tilla, her estate belongs to Tarmi-tilla, he will marry her to another servant if her first husband dies, and she shall not leave his house. A new addition is one clause that states, âif Nuḫuia, in the house of Tarmi-tilla lies down with another than her husband, she shall receive the penalty of adultery.â Yet, it appears that these conditions only apply if he marries her to one of his slaves. Tarmi-tilla also has the option to marry her as a wife âat the gate,â clearly outside the household, and to collect the bride-price. One interesting thing about the contracts of Takku and Tarmi-tilla is that they specify what 144 Maidman, âThe Teḫip-Tilla Family of Nuzi,â 151. 145 Maidman, âA Socioeconomic Analysis,â 283. 146 JEN 433 from room 12 in Tarmi-tillaâs house. 50 happens to the adopteeâs children, which is not something that appears in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs contracts. It is possible that enough claims were raised over ownership or guardianship of the adopteeâs children in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs generation that more specific claims were warranted regarding the ownership of the adopteeâs children. While there are lawsuits detailing family members of the adoptees trying to claim guardianship or money over the women, no lawsuits related to Teá¸«ip-tillaâs household and the many children of the daughtership adoptees are extant. As one final note, Tarmi-tillaâs contract may appear to support Cardasciaâs argument that the power of the adopter lies in the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts, where he can marry the young woman to someone inside or outside his household. Once again, however, I argue that it is not the type of the contract, in this case mârtûtu u kallatûtu, but the specific conditions outlining the future husband of the young woman that that are the key to the decision of the adopter. 4.1.6 Pai-tae, Slave of Teḫip-tilla, in the Daughtership Contracts Pai-tae is not a member of the Teḫip-tilla family but is a member of Teá¸«ip-tillaâs household. He is identified in his daughtership contract not by a patronymic, Pai-tae son of [fatherâs name], but as Pai-tae, slave of Teḫip-tilla.147 The tablet has two parts. The first has been translated in a few different ways, but the second part of the tablet has always been known as a mârtûtu contract. In the opening lines of the tablet, it is unclear if Akap-šenni gives Watiia, a á¸ªÄbiru woman, as a daughter to Pai-tae, or if Watiia gives Akap-šenni as a son to Pai-tae.148 The next line is âwhen Akap-šenni leaves the house of Pai-tae, he shall give a substitute to Pai-tae and he may leave.â 147 JEN 465 from room 16 at Teá¸«ip-tillaâs house. 148 Breneman translates this as Akap-šenni giving Watiia to Pai-tae; Stephen Stohlman in his unpublished PhD dissertation âReal Adoption at Nuziâ translates the same text as Watiia giving Akap-šenni to Pai-tae (189). Thankfully, the first two lines do not seem to have a bearing on the mârtûtu contract in the second part of the tablet. 51 What follows is a mârtûtu contract where Pai-tae adopts Watiia as a daughter and may give her as a wife to a man who dwells in his house. There appears to be an offer to Watiia directly, where if she pleases âshe may dwell in the house of Pai-tae and Pai-tae will give Watiia food and lodging.â Although this transaction is unique in the corpus, a few key things can be gleaned from it. It appears that, like Takku, Pai-tae can give Watiia to a slave in marriage, or he can marry her himself. This contract is the only one in the corpus that allows the young woman to choose whether she wants to marry the adopter or not. The contract also gives us a look into the complex structure of Teá¸«ip-tillaâs household, in that his slaves are bolstering their own âhouseholdsâ with more people. The fact that this contract lists the âhouse of Pai-taeâ yet was found in room 16 in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs house may point to the âhouse of Pai-taeâ as a euphemism for a portion of Teá¸«ip-tillaâs physical property where Pai-tae lived.149 4.1.7 Conclusion When Teá¸«ip-tillaâs daughtership documents are removed from the larger daughtership corpus and analysed on their own, a few noteworthy things emerge. First, most of the tablets posit marriage inside the household to a slave, or to the adopter. Moreover, the young women are expected to stay in the households of their adopters and to be married once again inside the household should their first husbands die. Although Teḫip-tilla himself appears to use only mârtûtu u kallatûtu or kallatûtu contracts, other members of his household and extended family used mârtûtu contracts. Based on the Teḫip-tilla family corpus, I argue that the terms mârtûtu u 149 This provenance comes from Chiera, Mixed Texts. 52 kallatûtu, mârtûtu and kallatûtu are not indicators of how the young women were married off, but rather that they are dependent on the parties in the contracts. Specifically, the members of Teá¸«ip-tillaâs household make similar arrangements for the adoptees, as does another wealthy Nuzian, Tulpun-naya. Three contracts from the archive of Tulpun-naya stand out as shockingly similar to those of Teḫip-tilla. I turn to her next.53 4.2 Wealthy Nuzians Part 2: The Tulpun-naya Archive 4.2.1 Overview of Tulpun-naya It is well documented that Tulpun-naya and âthe great landlordâ Teḫip-tilla were contemporaries at Nuzi.150 Tulpun-naya was a married woman who engaged in a variety of economic activities on her own. She purchased real estate like Teḫip-tilla, was even adopted âas a sonâ to obtain land, made loans, had debt slaves, and of course adopted young women in daughtership contracts.151 Tulpun-naya was clearly among the wealthy at Nuzi, however, there is one tablet that may reflect a time when Tulpun-naya was a slave herself. The recently published JEN 867, from room 15 in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs archive tells of one Tulpun-naya along with all her children entering the house of Teḫip-tilla as slaves.152 Unlike some names at Nuzi, Tulpun-naya is not common. In Nuzi Personal Names, four out of 6 people with the name Tulpun-naya can be directly linked to the Tulpun-naya of wealth, daughter of Å eltun-naya (her mother) and Erwi-šarri (her father), wife of Hašuar.153 JEN 867 is badly broken, and due to the challenges of chronology at Nuzi it is difficult to say when this happens at any specific point in Tulpun-nayaâs life. The contract states that she and her children can go free if they provide substitutes, but no other contracts are currently available to corroborate that she went free. Although the details of the situation are unclear, the main thing that JEN 867 provides is a direct link between Tulpun-naya and Teḫip-tilla as contemporaries. 150 Lion, âWork and Gender in Nuzi Society,â 296. 151 Lion, âQuestions of Identity in Nuzi,â 298. 152 Maidman, Life in Nuziâs Suburbs, 170â73. 153 Gelb, Purves, and MacRae, Nuzi Personal Names, 157; Tulpun-nayaâs familial connections are confirmed by Lion, âQuestions of Identity in Nuzi,â 298. 54 4.2.2 Tulpun-naya in the Daughtership Contracts Returning to the days of Tulpun-nayaâs wealth, there are two contracts where Tulpun-naya adopts young women, once in a mârtûtu u kallatûtu contract and the other in a mârtûtu contract.154 I have touched on the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contract briefly in a previous section. As a reminder, this contract involves Tulpun-naya adopting Kisaia as a daughter and daughter-in-law. The main clauses in the tablet state that Kisaia will be married to one of Tulpun-nayaâs slaves, if her first four husbands die, Tulpun-naya will provide her with a fifth, all the possessions of Kisaia belong to Tulpun-naya, and as long as Kisaia lives she will not leave the house of Tulpun-naya. Tulpun-naya pays the âfull amount of the price of Kisaia according to the wives of Tulpun-nayaâ to Kisaiaâs mother. If Kisaia breaks the contract and leaves Tulpun-nayaâs house, she owes 1 mina of silver and 1 mina of gold to Tulpun-naya. This contract is almost identical to those where Teḫip-tilla is the adopter. Unfortunately, the names of scribes are not preserved in the majority of Brenemanâs translations, so it is not currently possible to speculate on this being a scribal or social similarity. I posit that it is most likely a social similarity since Tulpun-naya used at minimum 5 different scribes in her business dealings.155 While contracts from Teá¸«ip-tillaâs family appear to confirm that women remained in his household for their whole lives, Kisaia flips this assumption, and almost every other clause in the contract, upside down. In Kisaiaâs marriage contract, she chooses her own spouse after rejecting the slave that Tulpun-naya chose for her.156 Lion mentions that the original husband that Tulpun-naya chose was blind; Lion questions whether this contributed to Kisaiaâs demand to be married 154 AASOR 16 30 (#9 in Appendix) and AASOR 16 23 (#10 in Appendix). 155 Lion, âQuestions of Identity in Nuzi,â 297. 156 AASOR 16 33. 55 to another husband.157 Furthermore, we know that many years later, Kisaia gives up a son to Tulpun-naya to buy her own freedom.158 Does this mean that Kisaiaâs son was worth 1 mina of gold and 1 mina of silver? Or instead that person for person was an acceptable way to buy freedom? Either way, the contract-trail of Kisaia provides a new level of depth to the life of a woman adopted and married within a wealthy personâs household. Taken together with the daughtership contracts of Teá¸«ip-tillaâs archives, the contracts appear to be both binding and flexible at the same time, since some women were passed on in Teá¸«ip-tillaâs household to his son, yet Kisaia has the power both to choose her spouse and leave her masterâs household. Tulpun-nayaâs other daughtership contract is a mârtûtu contract where a young woman, Å i-damqat, is given by her brother into daughtership to Tulpun-naya. This is similar to the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contract, with conditions concerning Tulpun-naya giving Å i-damqat in marriage to a slave, marrying her to an eleventh husband if the tenth dies,159 and that she will remain in the house of Tulpun-naya. This contract also has phrases that set it apart and point to it being tailored to the specific situation it addresses. First, this is the only contract that posits offering the adoptee to a taluḫu or making her a harimtu. These terms are both debated. A taluḫu may be someone of lesser status than a free person, considering that people could be âcondemned to serve as taluá¸«usâ and are associated with the women of another wealthy Nuzianâs household. At the same time, they do not appear to be slaves.160 A harimtu has traditionally been thought of as a prostitute, but Julia Assante argues for harimtu to be translated as a âsingle- 157 Lion, âQuestions of Identity in Nuzi,â 314. 158 AASOR 16 32. 159 I think sheâs getting a bit dramatic with the potential death of future husbands. 160 Lion, âWork and Gender in Nuzi Society,â 304. 56 woman.â161 In either case, whether single in Tulpun-nayaâs household or as a prostitute, the following line in the contract makes sense: that as long as Tulpun-naya lives, she shall feed Å i-damqat. One thing that sheds light on the contract is that Å i-damqatâs brother, the one giving her up in the contract, is a slave named Ḫanatu serving 10 years in Tulpun-nayaâs household on a tidennūtu contract. The situation in this contract is reminiscent of AASOR 16 52 where Uznaâs slave gives his daughter to Uzna and she cannot make the adoptee a slave, but she will be returned to Uznaâs house if she runs away. In each case, it seems as though a slave of a wealthier person appeals to them to give a level of protection to their family members â in Uznaâs case, it is her slaveâs daughter, and in Tulpun-nayaâs case, it is her slaveâs sister. While the prospects for Å i-damqat to become a prostitute or marry a slave or a taluḫu may not seem great, she is guaranteed to be fed while Tulpun-naya is alive â or at the very least while she can afford to feed Å i-damqat if her self-sale to Teḫip-tilla is considered. 4.2.3 Ḫanate, Slave of Tulpun-naya, in the Daughtership Contracts Like Teá¸«ip-tillaâs slaves, Tulpun-nayaâs slaves had the agency to act on their own. In the final daughtership contract of Tulpun-nayaâs archive, Ḫanate, a female slave of Tulpun-naya, is the adopter. Her mârtûtu u kallatûtu contract describes a young girlâs parents approaching Ḫanate âfrom the streetâ and asking her to adopt their daughter, Ḫalb-abuša.162 The phrase âfrom the streetâ may insinuate a few different things â some scholars have suggested that it implies that 161 Lion, âQuestions of Identity in Nuzi,â 305. 162 AASOR 16 42 (#13 in Appendix). 57 the contract was made publicly, others posit that it indicates an emergency.163 This term most likely refers to a lack of wealth, considering that Ḫalb-abuša is being adopted out of slave status, but other uses of the phrase need to be considered to say conclusively. Like the contracts where Tulpun-naya and Teḫip-tilla are adopters, this contract outlines that á¸ªalb-abuÅ¡aâs belongings now belong to Ḫanate, and if her first two husbands die, Ḫanate will give her to a third. The contract states that Ḫanate can marry Ḫalb-abuša to a free man or to a slave, but she cannot be returned to the status of a slave girl and must be treated as a âdaughter of Arrapá¸«e.â164 Luckily, there is a trail of evidence for á¸ªalb-abuÅ¡aâs experience after daughtership adoption. One lawsuit reveals that she tried to run away from Ḫanate and had to be returned to her, and another contract shows that she got married to one Erwi-ḫuta, a slave of Tulpun-naya. She was identified in her marriage tablet as âthe daughter of á¸ªanate.â165 A question that emerges from this collection of contracts is whether Ḫanate, as a slave of Tulpun-naya, is also in the business of bolstering the household with more slaves, male or female, or if she had the power to marry Ḫalb-abuša to whomever she pleased. This contract mirrors many different contracts from the Teḫip-tilla archive, including a case where Pai-tae, a slave of Teḫip-tilla is the adopter, and another where the young woman adopted by Uzna cannot be returned to the status of a slave. 163 Breneman, âNuzi Marriage Tablets,â 147â48. 164 Like the term âson of Arrapá¸«e,â this phrase refers to freedom here, rather than ethnicity. 165 The lawsuit for Ḫalb-abuša running away is recorded in AASOR 16 43 and her marriage is recorded in AASOR 16 44. 58 4.3 Conclusion Tulpun-nayaâs daughtership contracts provide further proof that the most revealing part of the contracts are the people involved and the specific details of the contracts. Together with Teá¸«ip-tillaâs archive, the daughtership contracts of the wealthy shed light on the roles of the adopter, the person or people giving up a young woman for adoption, the adoptee, and the outcomes for each party. Beginning with the adopter, the two archives demonstrate that the adopter can be male or female and can be of free or slave status. Furthermore, wealthy Nuzians only ever act as adopters in the daughtership contracts, never as the ones giving up young women for adoption, whereas the slaves of the wealthy Nuzians adopted young women and gave their daughters and sisters up for adoption. The contracts reveal that the adopter can benefit greatly from the contract by increasing their household labour force; other times, they are adopting young women out of slavery. The latter scenario may be more beneficial to the adoptee than the adopter, particularly in cases where the women may not become slaves or be returned to slavery. Another key element this time not only for the adopter, but also for the adoptee, is ownership of the adopteeâs children. In two contracts, the adopters â Takku and Tarmi-tilla â benefit from the reproductive labour of the adoptees, as the contracts state that the adopteesâ children will belong to the adopter as slaves. In another case, Kisaia earns her freedom from Tulpun-naya by giving up one of her children to stay in Tulpun-nayaâs household. These incidents raise questions regarding the status of the young womenâs children in daughtership transactions. Were the children of women adopted by wealthy Nuzians automatically considered the property and slaves of the adopter? Or do the children belong to their mother unless explicitly stated otherwise? One main consideration in answering these questions is that the status of slaves at Nuzi was flexible. While some slaves at Nuzi were temporary, like fixed term debt-slaves, 59 other boundaries are harder to delineate, like young women being adopted out of slavery and still marrying slaves. The latter scenario may point to slave status not being transmitted through marriage at Nuzi, but the evidence is unclear on this. If marrying a slave was no different from marrying a free person, then perhaps it would not be a separate category in the daughtership contracts. Another consideration in answering the questions around children and status transmission is that the roles of family and household members intersect and are even interchangeable at Nuzi, as evidenced by the marriage contracts of slaves from Teá¸«ip-tillaâs household. In one marriage contract, the father of the slave pays the bride-price, and the contract states that the brideâs children will belong to the slaveâs father.166 In another marriage contract, Teḫip-tilla pays the bride-price for his slave, and the contract states that the brideâs children will belong to Teḫip-tilla.167 Clearly, the head of the household could act as a father- or mother-in-law in marriage contracts the same way that they can act as a father or mother-in-law in marriage adoption. Another key thing about marriage contracts is that they mention the future children of the adoptee more often than in daughtership adoptions, particularly when the women marry slaves.168 In one case, the slaveâs owner will choose one son and one daughter of the womanâs children and keep them as slaves, and the rest of them will go free.169 Therefore, particularly in the contracts of Takku and Tarmi-tilla, there may have been a condition on the status of the 166 JEN 441. 167 JEN 637. 168 JEN 120, JEN 638 + JEN 440, JEN 637. 169 HSS 19 83. 60 adopteesâ children as the adoptees could marry Takku and Tarmi-tilla.170 What can be said is that the slave status could be biologically reproduced like the case of Takkuâs future children, or legally reproduced in the case of Kisaiaâs child. Like the daughtership contracts, there seems to be a certain amount of flexibility in the status of the children. Therefore, I posit that the status of the adopted womenâs children is flexible in cases where it is not explicitly outlined in the contract. Turning completely to the adoptees now, it is clear that the circumstances of the adoptees seemed to vary the most after the contracts were written up. While it is difficult to trace the post-adoption lives of the adoptees in all cases, we do have some examples from the future marriages and trials of adopted women, which paint a complex picture. Kisaia regained free status and left the household of her master, Ḫalb-abuša was married to a slave although not a slave herself, and Puḫuia is transferred from Teá¸«ip-tillaâs household to Enna-matiâs household, and then given to a husband outside the household entirely. It is challenging to comment on the extent to which the adopted young women âbenefitâ from the daughtership transactions. They likely benefit from being adopted out of slavery, like the contract where Å i-damqat is adopted and provided for by Tulpun-naya. Yet, Å i-damqatâs circumstance is irreducible to being classified as beneficial or detrimental as she could become a prostitute or be married to a slave, and still be provided for by Tulpun-naya. In á¸ªalb-abuÅ¡aâs case, a lawsuit between her adopter and her natal parents suggests that Ḫalb-abuša either returned to them, or they took her back.171 This case brings into question whether or not young women did benefit from being âadoptedâ out of slavery. Overall, there are 170 This argument perhaps raises another question as to whether marriages to the masters of the household would require separate marriage contracts. Since the women may not be considered primary wives (and their children are slave), a separate marriage contract from the daughtership contract may not have been considered a necessity. 171 AASOR 16 43. 61 signs that may point to some benefits for the adoptees, but a tragic image of young women trying to return to their natal families also emerges. Finally, the people who give up their daughters or sisters in adoption appear to have as complex of situations as the adoptees. There are a few instances where these people can benefit directly from the adoption, the like the case of Uzna supplying food and clothing to the adopteeâs natal mother. Based on the contract where á¸ªalb-abuÅ¡aâs parents appealed to Ḫanate in the street, there may be an emotional benefit to raising oneâs daughter out of slavery in addition to the payment received for her. Yet, the fact that Ḫalb-abuša returned to her parents and they refused to give her up until a lawsuit was brought against them seems to refute the emotional gain argument in this particular case. Beyond just the benefits to be gained, this contract demonstrates that even people of slave or poor status had a certain amount of bargaining power in the contract. Since the contract states that they approached Ḫanate, we can assume that the adopteeâs parents initiated this contract, ensuring that their daughter would not be returned to slave status. The few things that can be gleaned from the experiences of the people giving young women up for adoption is that they appear to be from varied backgrounds but are frequently slaves, that they are able to negotiate in the contracts, and can be both negatively and positively impacted by the outcomes of the daughtership contracts. Besides the few extant lawsuits involving the original family of the adoptee, there is little other evidence available to draw extensive conclusions about these contracting parties in the two archives. When both Tehip-tilla and Tulpun-nayaâs contracts are removed from the daughtership contract corpus, an interesting division arises in the corpus â one that was also made by Breneman in his dissertation when he divided texts by the young women being slave or free. Yet, we reached these conclusions through different avenues. While Breneman focused on whose 62 interests were served by the contract coupled with previous division of slave and free, I have sought to contextualize the contracts in their social/archival context to see if meaningful similarities and differences arise. As it turns out, the Teḫip-tilla and Tulpun-naya archives account for all the contracts that posit marriage to a slave, while the rest of the daughtership contracts largely state that the adopter may give the adoptee to âwhomever they please.â Considering that these two phrases, to whomever they please and to a slave, are both stated in the contract of Tulpun-nayaâs slave, it becomes clear that these two statements meant different things to the Nuzians; that âto whomever they pleaseâ did not include slaves. Moreover, beyond just the division of slave and free, the archives have demonstrated many nuances to the daughtership corpus that are only visible beyond the division of the contracts into mârtûtu, mârtûtu u kallatûtu, and kallatûtu. In contrast to Groszâs conclusion that the mârtûtu u kallatûtu contracts were used by wealthy Nuzians to bolster their household, I propose that the wealthy, and the slaves of the wealthy, engaged in daughtership contracts both to build up their households and to provide some level of protection to the family members of their slaves. And they used all three contract types to achieve this.63 Chapter 5: Conclusion Almost 100 years after the first official excavation at Nuzi, there is still much to be said about the âpuzzling intricaciesâ of the records.172 The function of the daughtership contracts was originally thought to be for concubinage or lower-status marriage. Next, scholars posited that the main purpose of the contracts was for securing marriages for young women who were not of marriageable age, which still holds true, but is not the only reason the contracts exist. This argument for age became tied up in the financial need argument, or that young women were exchanged for their bride-price in an early marriage agreement so that their guardian(s) could gain more money, sooner. This argument was rejected by Guillaume Cardascia, who thought that the main function of the daughtership contracts was the ability of the father-in-law to marry off the newly adopted daughter. He saw the most power in the mârtûtu u kallatûtu documents, in that the adopter could marry the young either woman inside or outside their household. Around this time, inquiries emerged into the separate titles for daughtership contracts. Another pitch was made for the financial argument, this time in three different dimensions of daughtership contracts, that brought up rather ambiguous results. And finally, while a social-anthropological approach yielded creative results, the conclusions were not faithful to the texts themselves. In response to this trajectory of scholarship, I have argued that the main purpose of the daughtership adoptions, in contrast to real adoptions, can vary by contract. Moreover, the purpose of the daughtership adoption is not circumscribed by the title of the contract. By bringing an archival approach to the texts, I have shown that there is a divide between daughtership contracts used in identifiably wealthy households, and those that are not. I have 172 Zaccagnini, âNuzi,â 567, n. 6. 64 also shown that within the archives of Teḫip-tilla and Tulpun-naya, there is again diversity in the purpose behind the young womanâs marriage. In some cases, it is about sustaining the large households with labourers, and in others it appears that the young woman is being adopted out of slavery, although the outcomes of this particular kind of adoption are variable. One question remains to be answered, which is why Nuzi? Why did this upstream site develop such a unique practice in a short 150 years? The answer to this question lies once again with the people of Nuzi themselves. The peopleâs propensity for adoption spilled into all avenues of life â buying real estate and receiving an âinheritance,â both young men and young women being adopted âas sons and daughtersâ for marriage, and even being adopted into apprenticeships. In great contrast to Babylonia, where so often legal texts are designed to protect oneâs inheritance, it seems that Nuzians sometimes used their inheritance as a form of currency. They sold their land âas inheritanceâ through adoption. This practice was likely due to the financial needs of the people giving up their land, as there is evidence for written wills and contracts that specifically outlined inheritance. This same concept applies to the idea of getting married. Nuzians seem to have used the idea of future marriage, for young women in this case, to accomplish other things in the meantime; getting a lump sum of money or goods, finding a household for the young woman to live in until she is married, strengthening the labour force of oneâs household, or absorbing the young womanâs inheritance. Thus, while the Nuzians adopted the idea of adoption âas daughters and daughters-in-lawâ from the Babylonians, the practice undoubtedly grew and changed from its Old Babylonian context to suit the needs of the ever-changing needs of the people of Nuzi. There is one main limitation to this study: the accessibility of evidence for wealthy Nuzians. The two archives that I analysed in this study involved two of the wealthiest families at 65 Nuzi, with identifiable names, patronymics, spouses, and even slaves. This allowed for a deeper analysis of how both the daughtership contracts and the people who used them interacted with the wealthy households. The two archives of Tulpun-naya and Teḫip-tilla only account for 16 out of the 40 tablets that I analysed for this thesis. This means that more than 60% of the daughtership contracts have yet to be treated with an eye for the contexts of the people involved. One area that may give a better idea of the social context of some of the tablets is by looking for patterns in scribes and/or witnesses to the âotherâ 60% of the corpus. Alternatively, correlating the administrative records or ration records from Nuzi with some of the daughtership contracts could reveal more of the social context. Although this thesis focuses on the town of Nuzi, it is more broadly about ancient people and how we study them. Since ancient people lived in dynamic societies, the methods used to study them must account for the complexities of both the text found on the tablets, and the people whose stories they record. 66 Bibliography Breneman, J. Mervin. âNuzi Marriage Tablets.â Ph.D., Brandeis University, 1971. Cardascia, Guillaume. âLâAdoption Matrimoniale a Babylone et a Nuzi.â Revue Historique de Droit Français et Ãtranger (1922-) 36 (1959): 1â16. Charpin, Dominique. âLettres et Procès Paléo-Babyloniens.â In Rendre La Justice En Mésopotamie: Archives Judiciaires Du Proche-Orient Ancien, edited by Francis Joannes, 73â115. Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2000. Chiera, Edward. Joint Expedition with the Iraq Museum at Nuzi: Miscellaneous Texts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1934. âââ. âReport of the Director in Charge of the School in Bagdad.â Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 20 (1925): 19â25. Chiera, Edward, and Ephraim A. Speiser. âSelected âKirkukâ Documents.â Journal of the American Oriental Society 47 (1927): 36â60. Fincke, Jeanette C. âAdoption of Women at Nuzi.â In The Nuzi Workshop at the 55th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, edited by Brigitte Lion and Phillipe Abrahami, 19:119â40. Studies on the Civilization and Culture of Nuzi and the Hurrians. Eisenbrauns, 2012. Gelb, Ignace J. âApproaches to the Study of Ancient Society.â Journal of the American Oriental Society 87, no. 1 (1967): 1â8. Gelb, Ignace J., Pierre M. Purves, and Allan MacRae, eds. Nuzi Personal Names. Vol. 57. The University of Chicago Oriental Institute Publications. The University of Chicago, 1943. Grosz, Katarzyna. âOn Some Aspects of the Adoption of Women at Nuzi.â In In Honor of Ernest R. Lacheman on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday, April 29, 1981, edited by Martha A. Morrison and David I. Owen. University Park: Eisenbrauns, 1981. Harris, Rivkah. âThe Organization and Administration of the Cloister in Ancient Babylonia.â Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient; London 6 (January 1, 1963): 121â57. Justel, Josué J. âA New Expression for Adoption from Nuzi and Ekalte. Some Remarks on the Role of Adoption during the Late Bronze Age.â Zeitschrift Der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 161, no. 1 (2011): 1â15. Koschaker, Paul. Neue keilschriftliche Rechtsurkunden aus der El-Amarna-Zeit. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1928. 67 Lacheman, Ernest René, and M. P. Maidman. Joint Expedition with the Iraq Museum at Nuzi VII. Studies on the Civilization and Culture of Nuzi and the Hurrians. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1989. Lauinger, Jacob, and Paul Delnero. âReassembling the Social from Texts and Contexts.â In Texts and Contexts: The Circulation and Transmission of Cuneiform Texts in Social Space, edited by Jacob Lauinger and Paul Delnero. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2015. Lewy, Hildegard. âGleanings from a New Volume of Nuzi Texts.â Orientala, Nova, 10 (1941): 201â22. Lion, Brigitte. âQuestions of Identity in Nuzi: Another Look at Tulpun- Nayaâs Archive (Nuzi, XIVth Century BCE).â Die Welt Des Orients 50, no. 2 (November 9, 2020): 295â317. âââ. âWork and Gender in Nuzi Society.â In Studying Gender in the Ancient Near East, edited by Saana Svärd and Agnès Garcia-Ventura, 354â70. Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns, 2018. Maidman, Maynard. âA Socioeconomic Analysis of a Nuzi Family Archive.â Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1976. âââ. Life in Nuziâs Suburbs: Text Editions from Private Archives (JEN 834-881). Vol. 9. Antichistica: Studi Orientali 26. Venezia: Edizioni Caâ Foscari, 2020. âââ. âNuzi: Portrait of an Ancient Mesopotamian Provincial Town.â In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, edited by Jack M. Sasson, Vol. II. New York: Scribner, 1995. âââ. âThe Office of Halsuhlu in the Nuzi Texts.â In Studies on the Civilization and Culture of Nuzi and the Hurrians I: In Honor of Ernest R. Lacheman on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday, April 29, 1981, edited by Martha A. Morrison and David I. Owen, 233â46. Eisenbrauns, 1981. âââ. âThe Teḫip-Tilla Family of Nuzi: A Genealogical Reconstruction.â Journal of Cuneiform Studies 28, no. 3 (1976): 127â55. Negri Scafa, Paola. âThe Scribes of Nuzi.â In Nuzi at Seventy-Five, edited by Martha A. Morrison and David I. Owen, 10:63â80. Studies on the Civilization and Culture of Nuzi and the Hurrians. Eisenbrauns, 1999. Rainey, Anson Frank. âThe Social Stratification of Ugarit.â Ph.D., Brandeis University, 1962. Roth, Martha T. Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Edited by Piotr Michalowski. Translated by Simon B. Parker. 2nd ed. Society of Biblical Literature Writings from the Ancient World. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1997. 68 Spada, Gabriella. âTwo Old Babylonian Model Contracts.â Cueniform Digital Library Journal, no. 2 (2014): 13. Van Praag, Arnold. Droit matrimonial assyro-babylonien. Amsterdam: N.V. Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij, 1945. Westbrook, Raymond. Old Babylonian Marriage Law. Archiv Für Orientforschung. Horn, Austria: Ferdinand Berger & Söhne Gesellschaft m. b. H., 1988. Zaccagnini, Carlo. âNuzi.â In A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, edited by Raymond Westbrook, 1:565â617. Brill, 2003. 69 Appendix 1. Exodus 21:7-11, JPS When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not be freed as male slaves are. If she proves to be displeasing to her master, who designated her for himself, he must let her be redeemed; he shall not have the right to sell her to outsiders, since he broke faith with her. And if he designated her for his son, he shall deal with her as is the practice with free maidens. If he marries another, he must not withhold from this one her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. If he fails her in these three ways, she shall go free, without payment. 2. JEN 50 (Breneman, 1971) Tablet of daughtership and daughter-in-lawship of Ḫatamerša, the daughter of Ariḫ-ḫa, son of Sin-nabu. Ariḫ-ḫa, son of Sin-nabu, gave (her) into daughtership and daughter-in-lawship (6) to Teḫip-tilla, son of Puḫi-šenni. And Teḫip-tilla gave Ḫatamerša as wife to Iriš-aba, his slave. If Iriš-aba dies, then (10) Teḫip-tilla will give Ḫatamerša to whom he pleases. The estate of Ḫatamerša (belongs) to Teḫip-tilla. If Ḫatamerša has a claimant, Ariḫ-ḫa shall clear her and give her to Teḫip-tilla. (15) Teḫip-tilla gave [x shekels] of silver to Ariḫ-ḫa. If Ariḫ-ḫa breaks the contract (and) raises a claim against his daughter, he shall give [l] mina of [silver] and 1 mina of [gold] to Teḫip-tilla. 3. JEN 26 (Breneman) [Tablet of daughter]ship and daughter-in-lawship of Teḫip-tilla son of Puḫi-šenni. Iuki, son of Mazil, gave his daughter Å iluia (5) Into daughtership and daughter-in-lawship to Teḫip-tilla. And Teḫip-tilla will give her as wife to Akib-šarri, his slave. If Akib-šarri dies, (10) then Teḫip-tilla will give Å iluia to another slave. As long as Å iluia lives, she shall not leave the house of Teḫip-tilla. Teḫip-tilla gave 45 shekels of silver to Iuki. 4. JEN 437 (Breneman) Tulpi-šenni, son of Elḫip-šarri, has given his sister Warḫa-zizza into daughter-in-lawship to Teḫip-tilla (5) son of Puḫi-šenni. Teḫip-tilla has given her completely into wifehood to his slaves. If her first husband dies, he will give her to a second. If her second husband (10) dies, he will give her to a third. If her third husband dies, he will give her to a fourth. As long as the young female slave, Warḫa-zizza, lives, she shall not leave the house of Teḫip-tilla. (15) [if] the maid [has] a claimant, Tulpi-šenni will clear her. [Teḫi]p-tilla gave [x shekels of silver] to Tulpi-šenni. [Whoever breaks the contract] will pay 2 minas of silver. 5. JEN 430 (Breneman) Aripeia, son of La[...], gave his daughter Mušatil as daughter-in-law to Teḫip-tilla. (5) Teḫip-tilla [will give] Mušatil to his slaves as wife. And as long as Mušatil lives, (10) she shall not 70 leave the house of Teḫip-tilla. Whoever breaks the contract shall pay 1 mina of silver and 1 mina of gold. Witnesses; scribe, Arta-šenni; (23) Teḫip-tilla gave 20 shekels of pure silver to Aripeia as bride-price. And for 20 shekels of silver he gave his daughter. 6. JEN 596 (Breneman) [Tablet of da]ughtership and daughter-in-lawship [of ...] son of Tae, [Å atiia] his sister he gave (5) [into daughters]hip and daughter-in-lawship to Teḫip-tilla son of Puḫi-šenni. And Teḫip-tilla will give Å atiia [as wife] to whom he pleases, [if he pleases] he may give her to a (free) man? [if he pleases] he may give her [to a slave], (10) [if the first] husband [dies] to a second husband [he shall give her]. (Rest badly broken) 7. JEN 620 (Breneman) (First part destroyed; several lines broken) (4, 5) (to whom) he wishes [among his slaves] he shall give her. [if her first husband] dies, to a second [he shall give her]. (7) [if the third?] dies, then to a fourth [he shall give her]. [Her estate belongs to] Teḫip-tilla. From the house of Teḫip-tilla she shall not go out. (10) Forever Ukur-šarri gave his daughter to Teḫip-tilla. The transaction is completed, indeed it is (passed over) transacted. The one who breaks the contract shall pay 1 mina of silver and 1 mina of gold. 8. JEN 429 (Breneman) [Tablet of] daughtership and daughter-in-lawship of Teḫip-tilla son of Puḫi-šenni. Apampa, son of lira [...] gave (5) his sister Ḫašip-kanzu in daughtership and daughter-in-lawship to Teḫip-tilla. Teḫip-tilla gave 40 shekels of silver to Apampa. The one who breaks the contract (10) between them shall pay 2 minas of silver. 9. AASOR 16 30 (Breneman) Tablet of daughtership and daughter-in-lawship of Ḫašim-matka; Kisaia, daughter of Ḫašim-matka by (her) authority and declaration gave Kisaia (5) into daughtership and daughter-in-lawship to Tulpun-naya, daughter of Å eltun-naia. And Tulpun-naya, to whomever among her slaves she wishes shall give Kisaia as wife, (if) her first husband dies, [she shall gi]ve her to another man. (10) If the second husband dies, she shall give her to a third man. (If) the third husband dies, she shall give her to a fourth. If the fourth husband dies. And the possessions [...] of Kisaia belong to Tulpun-naya. As long as Kisaia lives, (15) she shall not leave the house of Tulpun-naya. And the full amount of the price of Kisaia according to the wives of Tulpun-naya, she shall pay. If Kisaia breaks the contract and leaves the house of Tulpun-naya, 1 mina of silver and 1 mina of gold (20) she shall pay to Tulpun-naya. 10. AASOR 16 23 (Breneman) 71 Tablet of daughtership of Å i-damqat, daughter of Ḫabil-damqu; with her consent, his sister, Ḫanatu, son of Ḫabil-damqu gave into daughtership to Tulpun-naya, daughter of Erwi-šarri. (5) And Tulpun-naya will give Å i-damqat (away) as wife. If Tulpun-naya wishes, she may give her to a slave, and if she wishes, she may give her to a taluḫu, and likewise, if Tulpun-naya (10) wishes, she may make Å i-damqat a hierodule. As long as Tulpun-naya lives, she shall feed her. If ten of her husbands have died, then she shall give her as wife to an eleventh. If Å i-damqat breaks the contract (15) and leaves the house of Tulpun-naya, she shall pay 2 minas of gold to Tulpun-naya. (17) And if Ḫanatu causes his sister Å i-damqat to leave the house of Tulpun-naya and the contractâ dittoâ (breaks, he shall pay 2 minas of gold). 11. JEN 431 (Breneman) Tablet of daughter[ship and daughter-in-lawship of] Muti-[bâšti. She has given] her daughter Aštun-naia into daughtership [to (5) Uzna. Uzna] shall give her as wife to a slave of hers. If the first husband dies, then she shall give her to another servant. (10) The estate of Aštun-naia belongs to Uzna. As long as Muti-Bâšti lives, Uzna shall give her clothing [and food every year]. 12. AASOR 16 52 (Breneman) Thus says Ḫanizu slave of Uzna, Ḫašillu my daughter I have given into daughtership to (5) Uzna, wife of Enna-mati. And Uzna gave to Ḫanizu 2 homers, 1 (pi) 10 (aa) of barley and one garment as the price of Ḫašillu. (10) If Ḫašillu has a claimant, Ḫanizu shall clear her and give her to Uzna. Uzna shall not make Ḫanizu a slave girl. If Ḫašillu flees (?) Ḫanizu (20) shall search for her, bring her back and give her to Uzna. If Ḫanizu (25) does not clear Ḫašillu, search for her and give her to Uzna, then Uzna shall pluck out the eyes of Ḫanizu. 13. AASOR 16 42 (Breneman) Tablet of daughtership and daughter-in-lawship of Ḫanate slave of Tulpun-naya. (5) Å ukr-apu son of Arnamar and Ḫiiar-elli wife of Å ukr-apu gave their daughter Ḫalb-abuša into daughtership and daughter-in-lawship to Ḫanate, slave of Tulpun-naya. And Ḫanate may give Ḫalb-abuša as wife to whom she pleases. She may give her as a wife to a slave. (10) (If) her first husband should die, she may give her to another man; if her second husband dies, she may give her to a third; if her third husband dies, (etc.) And the belongings of Ḫalb-abuša (15) shall belong to Ḫanate. Thus says Å ukr-apu and thus says Ḫiiar-elli, From the street we appealed to Ḫanate, and we gave (to her) Ḫalb-abuša. (20) Ḫanate shall treat Ḫalb-abuša as a daughter of Arrapḫe she shall not return her to (the status of) a slave girl. If Ḫalb-abuša has a claimant Å ukr-apu (25) and Ḫiiar-elli shall clear her and give her to Ḫanate. If Å ukr-apu and Ḫiiar-elli break the contract and (30) raise claims against Ḫanate on account of Ḫalb-abuša, they shall pay 2 Lullian slave girls to Ḫanate. 14. JEN 433 (Breneman) 72 Tablet of daughtership and daughter-in-lawship of Taia, son of Nûr-aḫḫušu. He has given his daughter Nuḫuia in daughtership and daughter-in-lawship (5) to Tarmi-tilla, son of Å urki-tilla. Tarmi-tilla shall give her as wife to a servant of his, or if he wishes, he may give her in marriage at the gate, and he shall receive her price. Should one servant die, (10) he (Tarmi-tilla) shall give her as wife to another (servant). The estate and belongings of Nuḫuia (belong) to Tarmi-tilla. As long as Nuḫuia lives, she shall not leave the house of Tarmi-tilla. (15) Whoever among them breaks the contract shall pay 1 mina of silver and 1 mina of gold. If Nuḫuia, in the house of Tarmitilla lies down with another than her husband, (she shall receive) the penalty of adultery. (20) The children of Nuḫuia shall be male and female servants. Tarmi-tilla has given to Taia [x] homer(s) of barley and 10 shekels of silver ḫašaušennu as bride-price of Nuḫuia. He has been paid in full. (36) The tablet was written after the proclamation in the presence of Teš-urḫe, the mayor. 15. JEN 465 (Breneman) Akap-šenni gave Watiia, a Ḫabiru woman, as daughter to Pai-tae slave of Teḫip-tilla. When Akap- šenni (5) leaves the house of Pai-tae, he shall give a substitute to Pai-tae and he may leave. (8) Tablet of daughtership of Pai-tae. He has adopted Watiia as daughter. (10) If he (she?) pleases, he may give Watiia as wife to a man who dwells in his house. If Watiia pleases, she may dwell in the house of Pai-tae and Pai-tae will give Watiia food and lodging. 16. JEN 432 (Breneman) Tablet of daughtership and daughter-in-lawship of Akip-tilla, the son of Arip-ḫarpa; his [daughter] Waš-elli, into daughtership and into daughter-in-lawship (5) he gave to Takku, the son of Enna-mati. Takku, if he wishes, shall give Waš-elli as wife to his slave [...] and if he chooses, she shall he given to a slave [that has been taken into sonship?]. (10) Or, if he so desires, Takku himself may take her as wife, 40 shekels of ḫašaušennu silver, (due) to Akip-tilla he shall receive from Takku. All the offspring (15) that come out of Was-elli (become) Takku's female or male slaves. The estate left by Waš-elli [...] shall belong to Takku. As for Waš-elli [...] (20) [... from the house of Tak]ku she shall not go out. [if] there is a claim against Waš-elli, her father Akip-tilla shall free (her) (25) (and) deliver her to Takku. Whoever among them breaks the contract shall pay 1 mina of silver and 1 mina of gold. The tablet was written in the gate of the city Turša. (39) Zunza son of Intuia, the scribe. (42) The declaration of Akip-tilla, before these witnesses he spoke, I received 4 shekels of silver, of her terḫatu, from Takku. 17. BM 26222 (Müller, 1998, translation from German my own) Contract of Zike, son of LÄ-qÄpu. He made a contract for his daughter Lamassani. (5) He gave her as daughter and daughter-in-law to Teḫip-tilla, son of Puḫi-šenni, and Teḫip-tilla took her in marriage for all his slaves. (10) When the first of his slaves dies, he will give her in marriage to another of his slaves. When his second slave dies, he will give her to his third slave. (14) When his third slave dies, he will give her to his fourth slave. When his fourth slave dies, he will give her in marriage to his fifth slave. (19) As long as Lamassani lives, 73 she shall not leave the household of Teḫip-tilla. (22) When Lamassani dies, the entire (estate) of Lamassani belongs to Teḫip-tilla. Teḫip-tilla gave 40 shekels of silver as her bride price to the Zike. The silver is paid. (30) If Zike breaks the contract, he will pay 2 minas of gold to Teḫip-tilla.
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Ancient Culture, Religion and Ethnicity
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
A new approach to ancient archives : a re-evaluation of "daughtership" adoption at Nuzi
Text