고대 오리엔트 누지(Nuzi) 문서의 절도 소송

Abstract

Nuzi was not an important city in their time but a typical provincial town in Mesopotamia. However, the texts unearthed in Nuzi are the unique sources for the social and economic conditions of people in a given land and a short period of time, which shows the ordinary life in an ordinary town. By this ordinariness of Nuzi, we can be helped to see the dynamics of social and economic history of an ancient town in the Ancient Orient. Nuzi is known as a Hurrian society. According to the extant documents of Nuzi, Akkadian was the written language for Hurrian society, while Hurrian was used as the language of daily life. At Nuzi, various kinds of documents were found such as adoption contracts, sales documents, mortgage documents, letters, slavery documents, and lawsuit documents. Among the documents, there is no law code known to us, while their neighbor had them such as the Lipit-Ištar Lawcode, the Eshnunna Lawcode, the Code of Hammurabi, Middle Assyrian Laws, and the Hittite Laws. However, although there is no codification found at Nuzi, it is possible to understand their law system through the vast Nuzi documents, and here, it will be done by observing the cases of theft of animals which were one of important property in ancient times. Generally the texts relating to the theft in Nuzi appear in litigation texts which deal with the lawsuit in the court before the judges. Although we do not have the document which codifies the process of litigation, from the vast document dealing with lawsuits, it can be reconstructed fairly well. The typical court procedure in Nuzi is; (1) initiation of the lawsuit, (2) the evidence by witnesses, (3) securing the evidence by a religious action (or an ordeal), (4) decision, (5) imposition of penalties, (6) seals, (7) appendix. Also the penalties relating to animal larcenies can be summarized as follows: (1) In cases of stealing large animals such as oxen and horses, twofold restitution was imposed. (2) In cases of misappropriation of large animals, the culprit should restore the animals. (3) In cases of stealing small animals such as sheep and goats, the penalty was imposed twelve fold. (4) If the defendant failed to follow the order of the court, the penalty can be doubled. Based on the observations above, the laws of Nuzi relating to the theft are more generous than corresponding laws of their neighbors, e.g. the Code of Hammurabi, which frequently requires the death and, sometimes, mutilation of the thief. Considering idealistic and propagandistic features of the Assyrian Lawcodes, it will be more plausible that the cases of Nuzi show the realistic application of laws in the court of the Ancient Orient.