An Eye for an Eye or for Shekels: Canaan’s Cuneiform Laws

The cuneiform Laws of Hazor, from the first half of the 2^nd millennium B.C.E., suggest that biblical laws had roots in Canaanite law. This challenges, for example, the idea that the Bible’s lex talionis was borrowed from Hammurabi’s laws. While some ancient Near Eastern laws draw distinctions between social classes, Leviticus later makes clear that all human lives are equally valuable.

Prof.

Wayne Horowitz

Prof.

Wayne Horowitz

Categories:

Emor

An Eye for an Eye or for Shekels: Canaan’s Cuneiform Laws

As an Assyriologist, I study cuneiform, the writing system of ancient Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq) that was invented over 5,000 years ago in southernmost Iraq in the city of Uruk, a neighbor of Abraham’s hometown of Ur.^[1] This writing system makes use of signs, not letters, and for the sake of time and simplicity, if not total accuracy, can be compared quite nicely to the way that Chinese or Japanese script is used in our world today.

The cuneiform script was the international writing system of the entire Middle East from the time of the Babylonian king Hammurabi (1792–1750 B.C.E.) down to the historical victory of the alphabet over sign-systems ca. 1000 B.C.E.^[2] It was originally used for Sumerian, a non-Semitic language. From there, it came to be used for the Semitic languages of the ancient Near East, including Akkadian, Amorite, and Ugaritic.^[3]

In the second millennium B.C.E., cuneiform writing spread to cities in what is today Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt, with main centers at the time of Hammurabi including Mari and Emar in today’s Syria, and Hazor in the Hula Valley in the Galilee, not far from the modern development town of the same name and Rosh Pina.

Cuneiform in Canaan

The earliest inscriptions and cuneiform documents that were deciphered in the middle of the 19th century C.E. came, for the most part, from the capital cities of the Assyrian Empire—including Assur, Nineveh, and biblical Nimrud. The first cuneiform tablets from Hazor were found in the 1950s and 60s by Hebrew University excavators under the supervision of the now near legendary Professor Yigal Yadin, also the excavator of Masada. They were published by Professor Hayim Tadmor of the old Assyriology department of Hebrew University.^[4]

Soon after my own arrival in Israel in 1986 as an oleh chadash (new immigrant), I was invited to take the project of studying and publishing cuneiform finds from the renewed excavations at Hazor directed by Professor Amnon Ben-Tor of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. For many years, my partner in this work was Professor Aaron Shaffer, the first Sumerologist at the Hebrew University. Our work together on the “Cuneiform in Canaan” project continues today under the leadership of my student, Dr. Peter Zilberg.^[5]

Fragments of a Legal Tablet

In the summer of 2010, two tiny fragments of a cuneiform tablet in Middle Bronze Age script (ca. 20^th–16^th c. B.C.E.) were discovered by the Hazor excavators. I was immediately informed, and I waited patiently for a few days for the fragments to be brought back to Jerusalem for my inspection, after the process of preliminary cleaning and preservation of the artifacts by the archaeological team.

On a Friday afternoon, just a few hours before Shabbat, I met the fragments, for the first time in the parking lot of the two grocery stores (makolet) on French Hill, near today’s light rail station: the larger of the two was smaller than the palm of my hand. The idea was that I would take the tablets home for Shabbat and return them to the Institute of Archaeology on Sunday. Of course, I tried to read the tablets in the parking lot right then and there.

I was stunned. Even at first glance I could make out signs for noses, ears, human beings (awēlum) and silver. Though I said nothing that day, allowing myself the chance to process what I was seeing, I immediately thought of the famous laws of Hammurabi that prescribe a range of punishments, including monetary fines, when one person puts out another’s eye, breaks their bone, or knocks out their teeth (more on this later).

When I reached home a few minutes later I confirmed my readings, and then spent the next 36 hours behind locked doors yelling at my children to not let any strangers into the house, fearing that someone might somehow damage the priceless artifacts under my watch. A week or so later, after further study, I presented to the excavation team a preliminary translation of what has come to be known as “The Laws of Hazor.”

The surviving text, with some restoration, contains parts of seven laws.^[6] The full tablet would have contained many more laws, and this one tablet itself could have been but a small part of a much larger collection of laws, such as the 282 laws included in Hammurabi’s collection.

Fragment A:

0' [If ... eye ... ]
1'. 12 shekels of [silver ...
2' If (it is) the n[ose …
3.' 10 (shekels of silver) to the owner of the sla[ve ...]
4'. If (it is) a tooth [ ...
5'. 3 shekels of silver t[o the owner of the slave ... ]
6' If the cheek of [the slave he has slapped ...
7'. and the slave to the owner of the s[lave ...
9'. If a man, the e[ar ...
10' and the slave . [ ...

Fragment B:

1' ... ] . . [ ...
2' ... ] to the own[er of the slave ...
3' ... ] . . [ ...

The laws depict a situation in which one human being (an awēlum) has rented out his slave (wardum) to another awēlum, and the slave has been injured (damaged). It is clear that the individuals involved are not of equal social status. The injured slave is property, and compensation must be paid to the slave’s owner for damage to the slave’s ears and nose.^[7] For comparison, the Torah does not address the situation of a rented slave, but the Covenant Collection does require an owner who damages his slave’s eye or tooth to free the slave (21:26–27).

Similar types of property-damage provisions are present elsewhere in the law collections of the ancient Near East as well. For example, several provisions in the Laws about Rented Oxen (ca. 1800 B.C.E, Nippur) are very close in wording to the laws from Hazor:

^{LOx 1} If he (the renter) destroys the eye of the ox, he shall weight and deliver one-half of its value (in silver).

^{LOx 2} If he (the renter) cuts off the horn of an ox, he shall weight and deliver one-third of its value (in silver).^[8]

Significance of Hazor’s Laws for Biblical Legal Traditions

The discovery of Hammurabi’s Law Code in 1901 generated significant excitement among biblical scholars as a potential source for biblical law.^[9] One prominent example is the talion law, in which an injury is punished with a matching injury—“an eye for an eye”:

‏^{ויקרא כד:יח} וְאִישׁ כִּי יִתֵּן מוּם בַּעֲמִיתוֹ כַּאֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה כֵּן יֵעָשֶׂה לּוֹ. ^כד:כ שֶׁבֶר תַּחַת שֶׁבֶר עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן שֵׁן תַּחַת שֵׁן כַּאֲשֶׁר יִתֵּן מוּם בָּאָדָם כֵּן יִנָּתֶן בּוֹ.

^{Lev 24:19} If anyone maims his fellow, as he has done so shall it be done to him: ^24:20 fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The injury he inflicted on another shall be inflicted on him (cf. Exod 21:23–25; Deut 19:21).

In Hammurabi’s Laws (196–201), this principle applies to injuries to an awēlum, referring in this context to a full citizen:

^{LH 196} If an awēlum put out the eye of another awēlum , his eye shall be put out. An eye for an eye.

^{LH 197} If he breaks another awēlum’s bone, his bone shall be broken.

In contrast to the Torah, where the law does not distinguish social status, in Hammurabi, injuries done to those of lower social status call for monetary compensation:

^{LH 198} If he put out the eye of a muškēnum (a lower-status citizen),^[10] or break the bone of a muškēnum, he shall pay one gold mina.

^{LH 199} If he put out the eye of an awēlum’s wardum (slave), or break the bone of an awēlum’s wardum, he shall pay one-half of its value.

Over the century since the recovery Hammurabi’s Laws, parallel codices from the ancient Near East have been recovered—the laws of Ur-Namma, Lipit-Ishtar, and the Middle Assyrian laws, for example—that reflect the same “eye for an eye” principle.^[11]

It has thus often been assumed that the talion laws in the Torah were a result of borrowing from traditions outside the land of Israel. While it is clear that the biblical talion laws are deeply rooted in the legal traditions of Israel’s neighbors in the ancient Near East,^[12] finding fragments of the cuneiform Laws of Hazor in the land of Canaan means that the biblical laws may not have been a 1^st millennium B.C.E. import from those neighbors. Rather, some aspects of biblical law were already present in the land of Canaan in the Middle Bronze Age, before the Israelites and before the composition of the Torah’s legal collections.

Are Talion Laws Relevant Today?

It has become common for us to dismiss talion laws as ancient, not worthy of serious consideration in modern law and legal theory. Yet, we must remember that laws of this type are still operative in some Islamic circles that embrace Shariah Law, while in the United States, the death penalty continues to be imposed for murder in some jurisdictions. In Israel, many have proposed recently that the death penalty be imposed for terrorist murderers such as those who committed the atrocities of October 7^th.

One approach to the talion laws is to view them as a message that punishment or compensation should be commensurate with the crime committed or damage caused by the perpetrator’s actions. In other words, if one knocks out the eye of a man, one does not blind both eyes of the perpetrator, and likewise one does not knock out all the teeth of someone who knocks out only a single tooth. This can even be seen as a merciful step away from overly harsh punishment. In the case of “a life for a life,” imposing the death sentence only for murder, not manslaughter, reflects a similar principle (Exod 21:12–14).

As opposed to the payment of damages to the owners in cases of both injured cattle and slaves in the cuneiform laws, we can appreciate Leviticus’ clear separation of the value of animal lives from all human lives, including slaves:^[13]

‏^{ויקרא כד:כא} וּמַכֵּה בְהֵמָה יְשַׁלְּמֶנָּה וּמַכֵּה אָדָם יוּמָת.

^{Lev 24:21} One who kills a beast shall make restitution for it; but one who kills a human being shall be put to death.

We can agree or disagree about the issue of capital punishment, or of talion in general. The underlying principle, however—that all human life is precious, not just some human lives depending on legal status, or other criteria that divide us—is deeply rooted in the legal traditions of biblical Israel, and it has been and is a crucial value of ancient and Modern Judaism.

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Published

September 9, 2024

Last Updated

November 21, 2024

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Footnotes

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Published

September 9, 2024

Last Updated

November 21, 2024

[1] Editor’s note: See Gary A. Rendsburg, “Ur Kasdim: Where Is Abraham’s Birthplace?” TheTorah (2019).

[2] On the invention of writing and the cuneiform writing system, see Hans J. Nissen, Peter Damerow, and Robert Englund, Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East, trans. Paul Larsen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), and C. B. F. Walker, Reading the Past: Cuneiform (London: The British Museum, 1987).

[3] Akkadian was the language of Assyria and Babylonia, Amorite the language of the Amorite peoples of 3^rd and early 2^nd millennium B.C.E. Syria and northwest Mesopotamia, and Ugaritic the language of the ancient port city of Ugarit (Ras Shamra), on the northern Syrian coast, which was destroyed in the 12^th century B.C.E.

[4] Today, the 18 cuneiform finds from Hazor include administrative tablets, letters, a dictionary list, liver omen models, a court record, inscribed objects, a multiplication tablet, and now our law code fragments. For editions of all the inscriptions recovered to date from the land of Israel, see Wayne Horowitz, Takayoshi Oshima, and Seth Sanders, Cuneiform in Canaan: The Next Generation, 2^nd ed. (University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2018).

[5] For more on the project, see Horowitz, Oshima, and Sanders, Cuneiform in Canaan.

[6] Full publication of the fragments followed in 2012. See Wayne Horowitz, Takayoshi Oshima and Filip Vukosavović, “Hazor 18: Fragments of a Cuneiform Law Collection from Hazor,” Israel Exploration Journal 62 (2012): 158–176.

[7] The circumstances are familiar to us today when we rent a car. If we damage the car, we have to compensate the owner of the car for damage to the car’s front, roof, tires, etc.

[8] Martha T. Roth, Law collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2^nd ed. SBLWAW 6 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 40–41. Subsequent provisions include damage to an ox’s hoof tendon, tail, and the ox’s death while crossing a river or by predators (3–8). Only in the cases of death by predators is the renter not liable for damages. The laws are preserved on a set of student exercise tablets. According to Roth:

It appears that there was a self-contained series consisting of such legal provisions that circulated independently of the larger and more formal collections, and, with its repetitive language and limited subject matter, lent itself to student copying and memorization (ibid., 40).

Similarly, the Laws of Lipit-Ishtar (ca. 1930 B.C.E, Isin) require monetary compensation for injury to an ox’s hoof tendon, eye, horn, and tail (34–37; Roth, Law collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 33), and the Sumerian Laws Handbook of Forms (1700 B.C.E.), a compendium of legal materials copied from Old Babylonian contracts and legal documents, includes provisions for whether compensation is required in the event of the ox’s death while crossing a river or by predators (vi 16–36; Roth, Law collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 52).

[9] The text was inscribed on a large basalt stone stele found at Susa, an important city in ancient Elam (near the western border of modern Iran). The Elamites apparently stole the stele during a raid on Babylon. For a translation of the laws, see Roth, Law collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 76–140. Many scholars argue that the relationship between biblical law and Hammurabi’s laws is indirect, arising from legal traditions shared by or transmitted to the biblical authors. Others argue that the biblical authors used Hammurabi’s laws as a literary source for their work. Editor’s note: See the discussion and citations to additional literature on these theories in David P. Wright, “How Exodus Revises the Laws of Hammurabi,” TheTorah (2019).

[10] Similar to a “prole” in George Orwell’s 1984 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1949).

[11] The Laws of Ur-Namma (ca. 2100 B.C.E.), for example, use the principle for cases of homicide:

^{LU 1} If a man commits a homicide, they shall kill that man.

Both the Laws of Lipit-Ishtar (ca. 1930 B.C.E.) and the Middle Assyrian Laws (ca. 14th c. B.C.E.), also apply the talion principle in cases in which when a man strikes a pregnant woman:

^{LL d} If [a …] strikes the daughter of a man and causes her to lose her fetus, he shall weigh and deliver 30 shekels of silver. ^{LL e} If she dies, that male shall be killed.

^{MAL A 50} And if that woman dies, they shall kill that man; he shall make full payment of a life for her fetus

For the texts and translations of these laws, see Roth, Law collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 17, 26–27, 173–174. Editor’s note: On the talion principle in the Middle Assyrian Law, see Sandra Jacobs, “Deathblows to a Pregnant Woman – What Restitution Was Required?” TheTorah (2020).

[12] For an overview of the legal traditions and laws in the Ancient Near East, see Samuel Greengus, “Legal and Social Institutions of Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, vol. 1, ed. Jack M. Sasson (New York: Scribner, 1995), 469–484. For the law collections, see Roth, Law collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor.

[13] Unlike Hammurabi’s laws, which distinguish between full citizens, “proles,” and slaves, the biblical “eye for an eye” laws (Exod 21:23–25; Lev 24:19; Deut 19:21) make no mention of different categories of people according to rank or legal status. As noted earlier, however, the Covenant Collection requires manumission of an injured slave (i.e., not reciprocal punishment of the slave’s owner). Penalties in the laws regarding an ox that is a habitual gorer similarly draw a distinction between free persons and slaves (21:29–32).