Colloque - Archives paléo-babyloniennes : 140 ans de publications et d'études (1882-2022) :Clay Envelopes Inscribed with Juridical Texts from Old Babylonian Alalah (Level VII)

Civilisation mésopotamienne

Dominique Charpin

Collège de France

Année 2022-2023

Colloque - Archives paléo-babyloniennes : 140 ans de publications et d'études (1882-2022) :Clay Envelopes Inscribed with Juridical Texts from Old Babylonian Alalah (Level VII)

Jacob Lauinger, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore

It is well known that, in the Old Babylonian Period, a cuneiform tablet inscribed with a juridical text was often encased in a clay envelope and the tablet's text was reproduced on the envelope's surface. This practice was intended to prevent forgery and safeguard the tablet inside. However, despite understanding the general contours of the practice, a number of questions remain. For instance, when and how was the duplicate version of a juridical text reproduced on the envelope? What was the legal status of the envelope relative to its corresponding tablet? In this paper, I focus on the corpus of juridical tablets and envelopes from Old Babylonian Alalah. Specifically, I take two approaches: First, I offer a taxonomy of the textual variants that occur across the duplicate versions of juridical texts found on tablets and their envelopes; and second, I document the spatial relationship between juridical tablets and their envelopes as reconstructed from the archaeological record. My goal is to highlight tendencies in the Alalah material that may prove helpful for researchers working with other Old Babylonian archives.