Old Babylonian Legal Process:
The É-Dublamah
Old Babylonian Legal Process:
The É-Dublamah
A Sentient JDAM (@asentientjdam.bsky.social): "Quick thought. Do we know that the house the tablets were found was Ea-nasir's? Maybe it was a government office that was looking into the claims."
Great question: he likely would have been paying the Dilmun Tithe, which was a 10% state tariff on merchants that traded between Ur and Dilmun. If he had issues with his partners or clients, he would have been brought to court. That would have been at the É-Dublamah, or Great Tribunal House.
Ben Fleuss (@enricodandolo.bsky.social): "Oh huh, do you have any literature on that? I was under the impression that there were no permanent courts or anything like that in Mesopotamia and that most trials took place in places like city gates."
Sure! The process, like our own court systems, didn't go from nothing to a supreme court. There were adjudication attempts, neighborhood processes, and ultimately this Great Tribunal House. This looked a bit different in other cities, who had other systems. First, adjudication, see Thomas Hertel (2013) Old Assyrian Legal Practices. And thereafter, the E-Dublamah, see this link to Nicholas Postgate's talk on the institution (link to YouTube).
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