Oracular Law in Bīt-Baḫiāni? Rethinking Divine Representation in Three Neo-Assyrian Trial Records.
Legal documents from the Neo-Assyrian period attest to a wide range of social and administrative authorities who function as judges—from local officials to the king himself. A set of three texts from outside the Assyrian heartland (Gūzāna and Kannuʾ) are unique in that they describe judgments render...
| Published in: | Journal of the American Oriental Society Vol. 145; no. 4; pp. 689 - 712 |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
American Society for Premodern Asia (ASPA)
Oct-Dec2025
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=190217240&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 190217240 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00030279 JOY jtl: Journal of the American Oriental Society issn: 00030279 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Oct-Dec2025 vid: 145 iid: 4 pid: 1463 pub: American Society for Premodern Asia (ASPA) artinfo: ui: 190217240 10.7817/jaos.145.4.2025.ar030 ppf: 689 ppct: 23 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 7.1MB tig: atl: Oracular Law in Bīt-Baḫiāni? Rethinking Divine Representation in Three Neo-Assyrian Trial Records. aug: au: Johnson, Dylan R. affil: Cardiff University. su: Assyrian history Legal documents Corpora Legal language Dispute resolution sug: subj: Assyrian history Legal documents Corpora Legal language Dispute resolution ab: Legal documents from the Neo-Assyrian period attest to a wide range of social and administrative authorities who function as judges—from local officials to the king himself. A set of three texts from outside the Assyrian heartland (Gūzāna and Kannuʾ) are unique in that they describe judgments rendered by the god Hadad/ Adad. To explain how a deity could decide a case, some have suggested that they were resolved through oracular means—a practice otherwise unattested in the Syro-Mesopotamian legal corpus. I contend that these are not cases resolved by mantic specialists, but rather by local authorities who oversaw the local economic, administrative, and legal institutions of the city. By contextualizing these trial records in the legal-administrative archives of Bīt-Baḫiāni/land of Gūzāna, I show that the judicial agency attributed to Hadad/Adad was modeled on the representation of deities based in temples all around the empire overseeing economic exchange. Hadad/Adad was a representative figurehead for the local regime of dispute resolution that stood alongside the administrative hierarchy of the Assyrian state, whose officials also heard cases at Gūzāna. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Journal of the American Oriental Society is the property of American Society for Premodern Asia (ASPA) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Journal of the American Oriental Society holder: American Society for Premodern Asia (ASPA) dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|