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Hammurabi and International Law CHAPTER 7 Hammurabi and International Law When the question of law arises with respect to Hammurabi, one immedi- ately thinks, of course, of that ruler’s “code,” but it deals in practical terms only with private law.1 In this chapter, I should like to discuss a different aspect of Hammurabi’s legal activities: those that belong to “international law.” As we shall see, however, that notion is somewhat anachronistic in the case of the Near East at the start of the second millennium BCE. The sources available for treating the subject are abundant, even though, paradoxically, none were discovered in Hammurabi’s capital. From 1907 on, the excavations of the Deutsche Orient- Gesellschaft in Babylon took ad- vantage of an accidental drop in the phreatic nappe to explore the Old Bab- ylonian layers in the region called “Merkes.” The soundings reached those strata only for very small areas, since they were located about thirty- nine feet deep. These were a few houses in a sector called ā lum eššum sı̣̄t Šamši, “the new eastern city.”2 A copy of two royal inscriptions was discovered in one of these buildings. Falkenstein has noted that these inscriptions could be signs that this was a building larger than a mere house, but that it could not have been the royal palace, since the walls measured only 31 ½ inches thick.3 But in fact, two letters were also discovered in that building, as well as a cash loan contract dated year 25 of Samsu- iluna. It is therefore clear that this was a private home, as in the rest of the sector, where the exhumed archives published by Horst Klengel date for the most part to the last kings of the fi rst dynasty, particularly Samsu- ditana.4 I sense in Falkenstein’s This chapter repeats elements from my “Hammu- rabi de Babylone et Mari: Nouvelles sources, nouvelles perspectives,” in Babylon: Focus mesopotamischer Geschichte, Wiege früher Gelehrsamkeit, Mythos in der Moderne, ed. J. Renger, Colloquien der Deutschen Orient- Gesellschaft 2 Copyright © 2014. University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved. of Chicago Press. © 2014. University Copyright (Sarrebruck: 1999), 111–30. The most notable addition is data that were the object of a lecture, still unpublished, at the Institut de Droit Romain on January 19, 2001. Charpin, Dominique. Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia, University of Chicago Press, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/brown/detail.action?docID=616024. Created from brown on 2017-10-05 13:17:51. 98 / Chapter 7 remark a certain disappointment that Hammurabi’s palace was not lo- cated. Nevertheless, it is not certain that, if it had been found, the discov- eries there would have been as spectacular as we might at fi rst imagine. In- deed, that palace, built by Sumu- la- El (1880–1845 BCE),5 founder of the dynasty, was abandoned by Samsu- iluna, who, in the name of his twentieth year of reign (1730 BCE), commemorated the construction of a new royal palace. The old palace continued to be in use, but we do not know what its exact purpose was. It is thus very possible that the tablets from Hammura- bi’s time were no longer kept there.6 By contrast, we have a small portion of the correspondence Hammu- rabi wrote, and in particular, the hundreds of letters he sent to Sin- iddinam and Shamash- hazir, who were posted in the ancient kingdom of Larsa after the Babylonian conquest. Although they deal primarily with administrative questions, a few data can be found in them relating to international law. But most of our information is provided by the archives of the Mari pal- ace. Paradoxically, it is in that building, destroyed by Hammurabi himself in the thirty- fourth year of his reign (1759 BCE), that we fi nd the most evi- dence about him. Among the thousands of letters addressed to King Zimri- Lim and discovered in his palace, several dozen were written by his envoys to Babylonia. The period for which the information is most dense is fairly limited: it covers the years 28–30 of Hammurabi (1765 to 1763 BCE). It was at this time that the Elamites attacked Mesopotamia from Iran, provoking an out- break in most of the Amorite kingdoms, which decided to set aside their traditional rivalries and unite against the invader. After the victory of the coalition, another confl ict erupted between Babylon and Larsa: aided by his allies, Hammurabi succeeded in defeating Rim- Sin and annexing his king- dom in 1763 BCE. I shall not attempt to be exhaustive here.7 I would like, with the aid of documents that have recently been published or are still in the process of being deciphered, to address three themes: the reception of foreign messen- gers, the law of war, and the conclusion of treaties. 1. The Reception of Foreign Messengers The Amorite period had no permanent ambassadors: messengers were therefore the essential instrument in diplomatic relations.8 I shall show what access they had to the palace of Babylon and how audiences ordinar- ily unfolded, and shall examine the meals and presents the king offered Copyright © 2014. University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved. of Chicago Press. © 2014. University Copyright messengers. I shall conclude by analyzing the composition of the king’s Charpin, Dominique. Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia, University of Chicago Press, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/brown/detail.action?docID=616024. Created from brown on 2017-10-05 13:17:51. Hammurabi and International Law / 99 council and the secret audiences he granted at times to certain foreign emissaries. 1.1. Access to the Palace Not everyone who wished to enter the palace was allowed to do so. Visi- tors were carefully screened by guards, as Ibal- pi- El indicates: “It was early morning when we arrived at the palace gate. The guards let a messenger from the king of Kurda enter.”9 Visitors did not necessarily obtain an audience immediately, as an envoy of Zimri- Lim complained: “Since I arrived in Babylon, I have not been able to have an interview with Hammurabi or to set before him what I had to say to him. Hence I could not send my lord my complete report of how he might have answered me. Therefore, my lord must not be angry.”10 Those who were not allowed to enter generally became annoyed. Some noisily demonstrated their indignation, like the Elamite messengers de- scribed by Yarim-Addu: “These messengers did not cease to shout at the palace gate. They tore their clothes with their own hands, saying: ‘We came to [transmit] words of peace: why can we not . or enter and have an in- terview with the king?’ They said that and many other things at the palace gate, but no one replied and they went away again.”11 As diplomatic ten- sions with Elam increased, Hammurabi had these messengers confi ned to their residence: “The Elamite messengers arrived but could not approach the palace gate. The king’s guards kept them in their lodgings.”12 Ultimately, these messengers were treated like prisoners: “The Elamite messengers were put in irons. Their servants, donkeys, and belongings have just been taken for the palace. May my lord know.”13 It was only at the end of the war that they recovered their freedom: “The Elamite messengers who were im- prisoned long ago, at present he [Hammurabi] has liberated them. He has placed them in lodgings and has reestablished their former provender.”14 1.2. Ordinary Audiences During the war against Elam, when Zimri-Lim wanted to transmit a letter to Hammurabi, he sent out two copies. The fi rst contained the message ad- dressed to the king of Babylon; the second was a copy for Ibal- pi- El, head of the Mariot expeditionary corps, so that he would know in advance the content of the message to be read. The tablet for Hammurabi, meanwhile, was to remain in its sealed envelope until the audience. At the same time, Copyright © 2014. University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved. of Chicago Press. © 2014. University Copyright Ibal- pi- El received orally the salutation formulas to be given to Hammu- Charpin, Dominique. Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia, University of Chicago Press, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/brown/detail.action?docID=616024. Created from brown on 2017-10-05 13:17:51. 100 / Chapter 7 rabi—which at that time were not put in writing—and also recommen- dations. One day, upon leaving his lodgings, he went to the palace. It was there that he noticed a messenger from Kurda: “He entered with us, but I managed to keep the messenger from the king of Kurda separate from the retinue of La’um, Etel- pi- Shamash, and all the [other] servants of my lord.”15 The rule at the time was that all the messengers present in a capital attended the audiences. A letter16 even notes the embarrassment on the part of Ishme-Dagan’s messengers, who were forced by Hammurabi to carry out their mission in the presence of Zimri-Lim’s envoys, even though their mas- ter was complaining about the king of Mari. Since they did not want to say anything, Hammurabi ordered them to express themselves with an en- ergetic qibē qibē (“Speak! Speak!”). The public nature of the situation did not prevent asides: Mut- Hadqim, the Ekallatean general, was occasionally seen whispering something in Hammurabi’s ear. Ibal- pi- El’s ears were ap- parently sharp enough to catch the words he was not supposed to hear, and of course he reported them to the king of Mari.17 Certain etiquette problems arose because messengers from various places were received at the same audience.
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