Bequeathing and inheriting in the Old Babylonian Period (ca. 2000-1600 BC)

Houseplan — Plan of the house of Ilum-naši in Nippur, which his four sons divided among themselves ca. 1740 B.C., see Stone, Iraq 43 (1981), 19-33; Stone, SAOC 44 (1987), 64-69 and texts nos. 42-47.

What happens to property after the owner’s death? Who may inherit it? And how is an estate divided among several eligible heirs? These questions are still on people’s minds today, and they are probably as old as the idea of ownership itself.

The oldest written sources concerning inheritance come from Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BCE. While they are still rare, their number increases significantly at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE. In Assyria, this period witnesses the first written testaments in human history. In Babylonia, people did not write wills but documented the shares heirs received when an estate was divided. The deeds recording the division of the estate served the heirs as proof of their ownership rights.

The project studies the content of approximately 300 inheritance deeds known today, as well as other pertinent legal documents and provisions in the law collections. The following questions will be addressed: What form do inheritance deeds follow? What differences in form are attested in the various cities of Babylonia? What are the Sumerian and Akkadian terms relevant to inheritance law and how are they to be understood in concrete terms? Which goods are documented and to what extent? Who were the testators and who were the heirs? How should one imagine the process of dividing an estate? How large were the shares of the individual heirs?

Another question concerns the economic impact of the division of estates: as a rule, the sons inherited the paternal property. Daughters received a dowry when they married, moved into the husband’s household and left their family. The sons shared the property equally. The eldest son received an extra share, presumably as compensation for his duties as administrator of the estate. However, this extra share at most consisted of an extra portion of the inheritance. Since some of the families whose archives have been preserved had many children, these rules for the division of the estate led to a fragmentation of family assets in the long run. It will therefore also be examined whether there were suitable measures to counteract this effect and to what extent they were applied.

Inheritance contract from the family of Mannum-mēšu-liṣṣur, residents of the city of Nippur, s. CDLI no. P270640