Old Assyrian wedding contract

A copy of an Old Assyrian wedding contract excavated in Kaneš (Anatolia) in the 1920's by Prof. Bedřich Hrozný. Today it is deposited at the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts of the Charles University in Prague. The original clay tablet dates back to 20th-18th century BC and was found in an Old Assyrian trade colony Kaneš (today's Kültepe, located in southern Anatolia). Old Assyrian merchants, whose wives stayed in Aššur (Old Assyrian "capital" located in northern Mesopotamia), married side-wives here. This contract confirms the marriage of Puzur-Ištar and his secondary wife Ištar-Lamassi and specifies the conditions of the marriage - the amount of silver that will be payed by the one who leaves the other and the circumstances under which can/can't Puzur-Ištar marry another secondary wife. Hand-written in Old Assyrian, in an Old Assyrian cuneiform script, fired in a kiln with wood. The text is written on the obverse, lower edge, reverse, upper edge and the left side of the tablet. A colophon at the end of the text (on the left side of the tablet) contains an information, that it is a copy written by me, as was the custom in Mesopotamia.

Size: 4.2 cm x 4.8 cm x 1.8 cm (width x height x thickness).

I will enclose a paper with transliteration, transcription, translation to English and with some basic information about the text, the language, the script etc.

MORE PICTURES

Back to Clay tablets   Back to Products   Home