Sex Offenses in Sumerian Laws

Bibliographic Data

ID3960115
AuthorsJ J Finkelstein (corresponding author)
Year1966
Volume86
Issue4
Pages355
Publication date1966-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Oriental Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0279 • E-ISSN: 2169-2289
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/596493
OpenAlexW2313798078
LanguageEN
Citations received9

THE FIRST TWO CONTRIBUTIONS to the Landsberger Festschrift, Assyriological Studies No. 16 (1965), offer significant additions to two of the Sumerian law codes which have thus far been known only in fragmentary form. In the first article, M. Civil provides some welcome additions to the Laws of Lipit-Ishtar, and in the second, 0. R. Gurney and S. N. Kramer offer two substantial fragments to the Laws of Ur-Nammu, heretofore known from only one very poorly preserved tablet. The following study will limit itself to one of the fragments published by Civil, namely N 1791, which joins the main tablet of the Lipit-Ishtar Laws, UM 29-16-55, at cols. xvii-xviii as illustrated by Civil on P1. I, and with rules Nos. 1, 2, and 10 of the Ur fragment U. 7739,1-19, ii 3-12 in the copy given by Gurney on p. 18. More specifically, attention will be focused primarily on xviii 32 if. of N 1791, treated by Civil on p. 4 of his article, and numbered by him as ? 33 of the Lipit-Ishtar code, and on ? 2 of the Ur-Nammu text as given by Kramer on p. 13 f., col. i lines 11-19. As it happens the same key phrase is found in both sections, the term e n u g i4 a, which is descriptive of the state or condition of the woman involved in both instances. In the Ur-nammu rule this phrase is coupled with the finite verbal form eg i4 in line 16, which must obviously be related in meaning to the descriptive term. The authors of both articles very naturally considered e-nu-gi4-a to be the negative of the wellknown e g i4a: kallatum bride, daughterin-law, thus rendering the negative form in the new texts as had not been betrothed, or who is not yet married, thus construing the finite verb e g i4 as to betroth. It will be the aim of the present discussion, however, to provide contextual as well as textual evidence to establish the meaning of the verb as to deflower and of the descriptive term found in the new rules as undeflowered, i. e., virgin in the strict physiological sense. A. The texts. We will first present here for convenience the transliterations and translations of the texts in question, anticipating our conclusions by departing from the translations first given by the authors of the original publications, in favor of the rendering of the key terms to be advocated below: Lipit-Ishtar ? 33

Ancient history · Civil law (Civil law) · Linguistics · Phrase · Political science · Public law · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Sumerian · Ancient Near East History · History · Law · Linguistics and language evolution · Mathematics · Philosophy

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