Lucy Emanuel

I am investigating the application of the law and individuals’ experiences of justice in Babylonia during the Kassite Period (c. 1595-1155 BCE). There are a few royal inscriptions relevant to this study, but much of the evidence for Kassite-era legal process comes from the ordinary, everyday cuneiform tablets excavated in the cities of Nippur (modern Nuffar) and Ur (modern Tell el-Muqayyar). These cuneiform archives contain various legal documents such as contracts, deeds and records of court proceedings, and they attest the experiences of a great range of individuals, from enslaved people to members of the royal family. I am using these legal texts to address a question of social history, namely, ‘was the law applied equally to people with different social statuses, or was there a difference between elite and non-elite justice in Kassite Babylonia?’