Biblical Notes on Some New Akkadian Texts from Emar (Syria)

JOHN HUEHNERGARD
Harvard University Cambridge, MA 02138

IN A RECENT ARTICLE the present writer published five Akkadian texts from the vicinity of the ancient city of Emar (modern Meskeneh) in Syria.1 The texts date from the Late Bronze Age and are roughly contemporary with the Akkadian documents from Ugarit, somewhat later than the Amarna correspondence. 2 Many of the personal names in the Emar texts are West Semitic; several grammatical features exhibit West Semitic influence as well. Four of the texts are wills, and these present a few features that may be relevant to biblical customs. The purpose of this note is to bring those features to the attention of biblical scholars. In Genesis 31 Rachel steals the household gods (trpm/^lhm) of her

1 "Five Tablets from the Vicinity of Emar," RA 11 (1983) 11-43. The tablets are currently in private hands in New York City. Emar/ Meskeneh, situated on the right bank of the Euphrates (at the great bend) and roughly 100 km east-southeast of Aleppo, was the object of recent French excavations, which produced several hundred tablets soon to be published by D. Arnaud. For bibliography, see Arnaud, "Traditions urbaines et influences semi-nomades Emar, l'ge du Bronze rcent," Le Moyen Euphrate: zone de contacts et d'changes (d. J. C. Margueron; Leiden: Brill, 1978) 245 . 1, as well as the articles in the same volume by E. Laroche, D. Beyer, and Margueron; further, Arnaud, "Humbles et superbes Emar (Syrie) la fin de l'ge du Bronze rcent," Mlanges bibliques et orientaux en l'honneur de M. Henri Cazelles (AOAT 212; d. A. Caquot and M. Delcor; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener V.; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker, 1981) 1-14. 2 See D. Arnaud, "Les textes d'Emar et la chronologie de la fin du Bronze rcent," Syria 52 (1975) 87-92.

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NEW AKKADIAN TEXTS FROM EMAR 429 father Laban. From the time of the publication of a text in 1926,3 Rachel's behavior was interpreted by many scholars in the light of a number of Hurro-Akkadian legal documents from the site of Nuzi and its vicinity, in which family gods (iln) are bequeathed to a testator's principal heir, natural or adopted. It was suggested that possession of the family gods symbolized title to the family property, and that the legal situation in Genesis 31 was analogous.4 Thus, Rachel took the gods to ensure that she (or Jacob) would inherit Laban's estate. In the last two decades, however, the relevance of the Nuzi material to the plot of Genesis 31 has been questioned.5 It has been argued that, contrary to earlier claims, the household gods do not signify the right of inheritance. Rather, they merely represent the family unit; as such, they would naturally be willed to the chief heir, who would thereby be designated paterfamilias. The evidence of the Emar texts, to be cited presently, will not resolve the debate. Nevertheless, its similarity to that of the Nuzi documents, which have for so long figured prominently in attempts to elucidate Genesis 31, merits our pointing it out. In two of the Emar wills (our Texts 1 and 2), the testator makes his daughter both female and male.6 The purpose of this legal fiction, clearly, is to enable the daughter to inherit, something whichapparentlyshe would not otherwise be able to do. The testator in each case, we may assume, has no

3 C. J. Gadd, "Tablets.from Kirkuk," RA 23 (1926) 126-27 (text 51); see esp. the comment of S. Smith on p. 127. 4 See, e.g., A. E. Draffkorn, "Ilni/Elohim," JBL 76 (1957) 216-24, esp. 219-22; E. A. Speiser, Genesis (AB 1; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964) 249-51; see M. Greenberg's article, cited in the following note, for additional references. 5 Initially by M. Greenberg, "Another Look at Rachel's Theft of the Teraphim," JBL 81 (1962) 239-48. For a synopsis and additional bibliography, see M. J. Selman, "Comparative customs and the Patriarchal Age," Essays on the Patriarchal Narratives (ed. A. R. Millard and D. J. Wiseman; Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1980) 101, 110, 132 n. 60. Still more recently, in the Festschrift for the eminent Nuzi scholar E. R. Lacheman, two additional studies concerning the household gods have appeared: E. Cassin, "Une querelle de famille," and . Deller, "Die Hausgtter der Familie Sukrija S. Huja," Studies on the Civilization and Culture of Nuzi and the Hurrians (d. M. A. Morrison and D. I. Owen; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1981) 37-46, 47-76, respectively. See also M. A. Morrison, "The Jacob and Laban Narrative in Light of Near Eastern Sources," BA 46 (1983) 155-64, esp. 161-62. 6 a-nu-um-ma PN mrtya(OVMV.MVNVS-ia) a-na sinni$ti(Mvum) zikari(mjAH) aS-kw un-$U "Now then I have established PN my daughter as female and male," Text 1:5-7; 2:8-10. A similar clause occurs in at least one other text from Emar; see D. Arnaud, "Traditions urbaines," 258 . 76. For inheritance by daughters in ancient Israel, note Num 27:1-11; see also recently Z. Ben-Barak, "Inheritance by Daughters in the Ancient Near East," JSS 25 (1980) 22-33. The evidence from Nuzi is given a detailed study by J. Paradise in "A Daughter and Her Father's Property at Nuzi," JCS 32 (1980) 189-207. See also n. 9, below.

430 THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY | 47, 1985 sons.7 In both texts, the next clause reads: ilnya u mtya l tunabbU "Let her (the daughter) invoke my gods and my dead."8 The verb in this clause, nabu, does not otherwise occur in the D stem and normally means "to name" rather than "to invoke"; nevertheless, the latter is the most probable rendering here. The "dead" we take to refer to the family ancestors.9 Following this clause in Text 1 is a series of injunctions which stipulate that the daughter's three sons are to support her as long as she lives (or they will lose their inheritance); and, upon her death, they are to divide the estate equally among themselves. In Text 2, however, the clause concerning the gods and ancestors is followed by one in which the testator bequeaths to his daughter his entire estate.10 There follow clauses concerning the remarriage of the testator's wife (see below), the death of the daughter and her husband's remarriage, and the deaths of both the daughter and her husband. It seems likely that in both texts the clause, "Let her invoke my gods and my dead," designates the daughter as the legal heir.11 In any case, the situaThis is made explicit in the text cited by D. Arnaud (see the previous note), in which the clause making the daughter female and male is preceded by the statement a-nu-ma mora (DUMU.NITAH) ul ff-mi(NU.TUK-mz), "Now then, I have no male offspring." In our Text 1, the testator refers to "my three sons"; but since the same individuals' mother is the testator's daughter, they must in fact be his grandchildren. 8 DINGIR.MES-W U me-te-ia hi- tu tu-na(-ab)-bU Text 1:8; 2:11-12. D. Arnaud informs me (private communication) that this expression appears in other texts from Emar. Note also the expression cited below in n. 11. 9 In Nuzi legal texts, the family "spirits" (etemmu) are occasionally associated with the family gods; see K. Deller, "Hausgtter," 73-76. A recently published Nuzi will offers a close parallel to the Emar texts under discussion here: E. R. Lacheman and D. I. Owen, "Texts from Arrap^a and from Nuzi in the Yale Babylonian Collection," Studies on . . . Nuzi and the Hurrians, text 6 (pp. 386-87, copy on p. 413). The testator of this will, who apparently has no natural sons, bequeaths his estate to his three daughters, whom he has adopted as sons, and to a woman named ASte (relationship to testator unclear). In lines 26-31 we read: Sum-ma f aS-te im-t-ut ma-an-nu-[um-me~e] T-na mratya(OUMU.MONVS.Mt-ia) eqlti(A.$k.ME$) bttya (.MES-rwT) 'C-ka^al-lu i-nabtya(t-ia) aS-'bu* [i7]/f([DiN]GiR.MES) e-te^em-me-ia T-palla-afr-Su, "If ASte dies, then whoever among my daughters, living in my house, holds my fields and houses, will revere my gods and spirits." 10 Lines 13-17: a-nu-um-ma bttTya(.ui.A-ia) bu-Si ba-Si-ti-ia mi-im-mu-ia a-na PN mr/ry(DUMU.MUNUS-iur) ad-din-Su-nu, "Now then, I have given my estates, my possessions (and) property, everything of mine to PN my daughter." 11 M. Sigrist ("Miscellanea," JCS 34 [1982] 242-46) has published a text, probably also from the vicinity of Emar, in which two sons inherit their deceased father's estate. After a series of quittance clauses, we read as follows in lines 25-27: PN PN2 i/w{DiNGiR.MES) mi-tiSa PN3 a-bi-Su-nu u-ka-an-nu, "PN and PN2 (the brothers) will honor the gods and the dead of PN3 their father" (taking the verb to be not knu D "to establish" but kunn "to look after, honor," despite the defective spelling of the final syllable). The clause is followed by a final stipulation, namely, that if the two sons die without progeny, the estate is not to be given to a stranger (nakaru; see below, n. 22). It is interesting that the brothers share responsibility for the family
7

NEW AKKADIAN TEXTS FROM EMAR 431 tion is, as noted earlier, analogous to that found in the Nuzi documents; and the importance of an heir's access to the family gods was clearly not confined to the latter site. Whether the evidence of the documents from Emar, like that from Nuzi, is relevant to the events described in Genesis 31, we leave to those more qualified to discuss. In Deut 25:5 we find the beginning of the levirate law: k-ySb ^ahm yahdw mt Dahad mhem bn ^n-l, l^tihyeh D$et-hammt hahs lDS zr; yebmh ybD cleh lqhh l l^iSS wyibbmh, "When brothers dwell together and one of them dies without a son, the dead man's wife must not belong to a stranger outside; her brother-in-law will come to her and marry her, acting as her brother-in-law." In two of our Emar texts occurs an interesting parallel to marriage to an zr. In both of these texts the testator has made his wife "father and mother" of his estate (upon his death).12 Later the testator states (according to the better preserved text): Sum!-ma PN aSSatTyaipKU-ti-ia) arki(EGiR~ki) amli(L) za-ia-ri ti-il-la-ak subat$i(TG.ME$-$i) a-na //m'(GiS.S.A) lu- ti-i$-ku-un a-$ar libbffl(Sk-bi-$i) lu- ti-Uk, "If PN my wife would follow a strange man, let her place her clothes on a stool, and go where she will."13 The Akkadian form zayyru is normally a literary word meaning "enemy." In this context, however, that meaning is clearly inappropriate, and in the light of Deut 25:5 we may assume that zayyru is a West Semitism, cognate to Hebrew zr.14 Like zr in
gods and ancestors; note that they appear to receive equal legaciesboth get half the estate (miSil bti). 12 a-nu-um-ma PN aSSatya(OAM-ti-ia) a-bu ummu(AMA) ri<T btya(-ia) Si-it-ma, "Now then PN my wife is father and mother of my estate," Text 2:6-8; PN . . . aSSatya(OAM-ia) a-na a-bi ummi(AMA) [Sa] btya(-ia) aS-ku-un-Si, "I have established PN . . . my wife as father and mother of my estate," Text 3:3-5. 13 Text 2:18-24. (In "Five Tablets," 17, 30,1 read the first word of line 18 as i-nu-ma; but Sumf-ma is preferable.) The other text is our no. 3, lines 14-17; we present here a reading of these lines differing from that offered in "Five Tablets," following a proposal of C. Wilcke ("Familiengrndung im alten Babylonien," Anhang, in Geschlechtsreife und lgitimation zur Zeugung [ed. E. W. Mller; Institut fr Historische Anthropologie, forthcoming]): Sm-ma PN aSSatya (-i) arki(EGiR) amli(L) rza-ia"-ri rta-lak" i-na bmya{t-ia) [m]riy[a]([Dv]MV.ME$-i[a]) [li-te-li subt-Si (TG-) a-n] ///I(GIS.S.A) U-iS-ku-un a-Sar [libbiSik-bi-Si li(-it)}-ta-lak, "And if PN my wife would follow a strange man, let her forfeit my estate (and) my children; let her place her garment on a stool, (and) go off where she will." Wilcke has also improved on my original reading of lines 10-11 of this text (see also his notes 171 and \12):pi-i bbi(VLA-b) ''lu- la-a* t[u]-us-sa amlSi(L-Si) i-na btya(-ti-ia) 7w/-w" [/]-V tu-Se-re-eb, "She (the testator's wife) may not leave the gate; she may not bring a man of hers into my house." I wish to thank Prof. Wilcke for providing a copy of the typescript prior to publication of his article. 14 Akkadian zayyru, "enemy," is associated in both dictionaries with the ll-^aleph verb zru, "to hate, avoid"; cf. CAD 15; AHW1503. A hollow root z-w-r cognate to Hebrew zr is not attested in Akkadian. Another West Semitic lexeme appears in our Text 2, line 42, in lu- t-ur-Sa-Su-nu, "May they [dual, fern.] inherit them." The verb warSu, meaning "to inherit" (cf.

432 THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY | 47, 1985 Deut 25:5, zayyru in these texts denotes not necessarily a foreigner, but merely someone outside the family circle.15 The widow of the testator may marry such an outsider only on the condition that she leave her first husband's house, and leave naked. The injunction to deposit one's clothes in the house before leaving is found in other texts from Emar16 and in Akkadian texts from Hattusas, Ugarit, and Tell el-Qitr. The subject is not necessarily a widow who wishes to remarry outside the family. In the text from Hattusas,17 it is the heir apparent of Ugarit, should he decide to accompany his adulterous mother into exile. In the texts from Ugarit18 and Tell el-Qitr,19 the injunction applies to persons who violate the conditions of the legal documents. In several wills from Nuzi,20 finally, it is stipulated that if the testator's widow wishes to remarry, she is to be stripped of her clothes before being sent out of the house. While there is in all of these texts undoubtedly an element of humiliation intended in forcing an individual to leave the paternal estate naked, there is clearly also an economic motive: the individual, prohibited from taking even a stitch of clothing, is made to renounce, symbolically, any claim to the estate in question.21 The reason for this stipulation in the case of a widow who wishes to remarry is clear. In our Texts 2 and 3 from Emar and in the Nuzi documents just referred to, the testator in his will has given his wife control over part or all of his estate; should she remarry, that part of the estate would, without the stipulation, become part of another man's property.

Hebrew yraS), is otherwise unattested in Akkadian. D. Arnaud, in a private communication, notes that the related noun warrSu, "heir," is common in Emar texts. 15 See P. Humbert, "Les adjectifs 4zr' et 'nokrf et la 'femme trangre' des proverbes bibliques," Mlanges syriens offerts Monsieur Ren Dussaud (Paris: Geuthner, 1939) 1. 25966, esp. 260-62; L. A. Snijders, The Meaning of"xi in the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill, 1953) esp. 68-70, 75-78. D. Arnaud informs me (private communication) that zayyru is not attested in his Emar texts; instead the word that appears is nikaru, which is to be compared with Hebrew (ben-)nekr and nokr in addition to Akkadian nak(a)ru. See also D. Arnaud, "Humbles et superbes," 7. 16 See D. Arnaud, "Traditions urbaines," 258 and n. 83; Arnaud, "Humbles et superbes," 12 and . 2. 17 J. Nougayrol, PRUA. 126-27, lines 23-27 (see also lines 37-39). 18 F. Thureau-Dangin, Syria 18 (1937) 246, lines 16-23; see also J. Nougayrol, Ugaritica 5 text 83 (pp. 176-77), lines 6-10. 19 D. C. Snell, "The Cuneiform Tablet from el-Qitr," Abr-Nahrain 22 (1983-84) 159-70.1 wish to thank Prof. Snell for sending me a typescript of his study before its publication. 20 Four of these are cited in E. Cassin, "Pouvoirs de la femme et structures familiales," RA 63(1969) 136 n. 2. 21 See E. Cassinis thorough discussion of the Nuzi material, ibid., 121-48, esp. 136-44; also A. Draffkorn Kilmer, "Symbolic Gestures in Akkadian Contracts from Alalakh and Ugarit," JAOS 94 (1974) 181 and n. 20.

NEW AKKADIAN TEXTS FROM EMAR 433 The stipulations of these contracts, then, are intended to keep the patriarch's property within his family.22 A similar intent also forms part of the motivation for the levirate law expressed in Deut 25:5: were the dead brother's wife to marry an ^Szar, part of the family property would be lost.23 Both in the Emar (and Nuzi) documents cited above and in the levirate law, therefore, are provisions intended to prevent a widow from alienating her husband's property by marrying someone outside the family. In Deut 25:5 such a marriage is simply forbidden; in the Akkadian texts it is possible only if the widow renounces claim to her dead husband's estate by means of a humiliating gesture. It is significant that in the two Emar texts the word zayyru occurs to indicate explicitly a man outside the family, just as zr appears in Deut 25:5. Hos 2:4-5a reads: rb bHmmkem rb, k-hP lD HM wDanok lD D sah, wtasr znnha mippneh wna^appha mibbn sdeh; penD ap$tenn crumm whissagtha kym hiwwledh, "Take action against your mother, take action, for she is not my wife and I am not her husband, that she remove her harlotry from her face and her adultery from between her breasts; lest I strip her naked, making her as on the day of her birth." In an article published fifty years ago, C. Kuhl showed that this passage, in which an adulterous wife is divorced and stripped naked, is paralleled by a Middle Babylonian text from Hana and a text from Nuzi.24 C. H. Gordon soon discovered another relevant Nuzi document,25 and E. Cassin has added two more.26 In the Hana text, a woman who wishes to divorce her husband must leave the house naked. In each of the Nuzi texts, to which we have already referred above, a widow who wishes to remarry is to be stripped and

22 Compare the injunctions in wills which prohibit the selling of family property to a stranger (usually nakaru, the normal Akkadian word for our zayyru). From Nuzi note, e.g., E. Chiera, Joint Expedition with the Iraq Museum at Nuzi, vol. 5 (Philadelphia: ASOR, Publications of the Baghdad School, 1934) text 444:17-18; Chiera, Excavations at Nuzi, vol. 1 (HSS 5; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1929) text 73:26-28; R. H. Pfeiffer and E. R. Lacheman, Excavations at Nuzi, vol. 4 (HSS 13; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1942) text 366:23; Lacheman, Excavations at Nuzi, vol. 8 (HSS 19; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1962) texts 2:60-61; 7:44-45. In the Sigrist text, probably from the vicinity of Emar, note lines 31-33: btu(t-tu4) Sa be-li-Su<-nu> a-na na-ka-ri la- i-na-din, "Their lord's estate may not be given to a stranger." 23 The levirate law is also intended to provide an heir for the deceased brother, of course. But the economic motive is also present; see G. von Rad, Deuteronomy (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966) 154; R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965) 1. 38. 24 C. Khl, "Neue Dokumente zum Verstndnis von Hosea 2:4-15," ZAW 52 (1934) 102-9, esp. 105-6. The relevant part of the Hana text is discussed in detail by E. Cassin, "Pouvoirs," 137-38. 25 "Hos 2:4-5 in the Light of New Semitic Inscriptions," ZAW 54 (1936) 277-80. 26 In "Pouvoirs," 136 . 2.

434 THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY | 47, 1985 sent forth naked. To these parallels we may now add our two Emar texts. The parallels not only illustrate what was apparently a widespread custom, but also suggest that the treatment of the wife in Hos 2:4-5 was intended, in addition to shaming her, to emphasize her sudden lack of economic security.27
See H W Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia, Philadelphia Fortress, 1974) 34 Note also the following curse found in one of the Sefire stelae, according to the reading adopted by J A Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions ofSere (Rome Biblical Institute, 1967) 14 (Stele I A, lines 40-41) fw^yk zy tcrr z]n[yh kn ycrrn nSy mtc:>l wnSy cqrh wnSy rfbwhf "[And as a pros]ti[tute is stripped], so may the wives of Matel and the wives of his offspring and the wives of [his] n[obles] be stripped " See Fitzmyer's comments, ibid , 57 The issue here is not adultery, of course, but the political faithlessness of the women's husbands But again the image invoked by the curse is not only one of humiliation, but also one of economic destitution
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