Subproject 1: “The Role of the Divine in Ancient Near Eastern Law.”

This subproject serves to clarify the functions of divinities and divine concepts in both the promulgation of laws and in legal judgments especially from Mesopotamia but also from the wider Ancient Near East including Egypt and Hatti.  The historical and cultural contexts of ancient Judaism, which included the empires and legal traditions of Mesopotamia, Hatti, and Egypt, do not attest to the notion of divine laws. Rather, the king was the lawgiver, styling himself as the definitive terrestrial judge. While the king would orient himself toward cosmic principles such as kittu and mesharu (“order” and “justice”) in Mesopotamia (Ma‘at in Egypt), the gods deemed him competent to establish the law. This conclusion is as exemplified by the epilogue of the Codex Hammurabi, and by the very language of legal judgment in Egypt, where the word of Pharaoh served as the establishment of justice. The numerous legal treatises from Mesopotamia and Hatti—and the singular legal text of the Great Edict of Horemheb from Egypt—name the earthly ruler in cases where they do provide information about their authority.

In Mesopotamia the gods can feature prominently in the prologue and epilogue of legal texts. However, they served as guardians and sponsors of justice rather than as lawgivers promulgating specific regulations. In addition to their roles in legal treatises, deities also serve as divine witnesses in judicial records, while the royal promulgations of law play little role in these records. Reflexes of the law treatises like Hammurabi’s instead turn up in scribal exercises throughout the broader Near East. Yet throughout Mesopotamia’s legal history spanning more than a millennium, these cultures did not leave behind written legal texts claiming to be of divine origin. Thus, this subproject will focus primarily on the complex dynamics of divinity in Mesopotamian traditions that supply the main foundation for the biblical material, yet also comparatively with Egyptian and Hittite material in an attempt to understand the texture of the relationship between divine warrant and royal legal authority.