CONTRACTS
 

1.   SALES  AND  PURCHASES

I. A  SLAVE
Contract of the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar II

SHAMASH-UBALLIT and Ubartum, children of Za-
klr, the son of Pashi-ummani, of their free-will have
delivered Nanakirat and her unweaned son, their
slave, for nineteen shekels of money, for the price agreed,
unto Kaglr and Nadln-Marduk, sons of Iqisha-aplu, son of
Nur-SIn. Shamash-ubaflit and Ubartum guarantee against
insubordination, the claim of the royal service, and eman¬
cipation. Witnesses: Na'id-Marduk, son of Nabu-naglr,
son of Dabibi; Bel-shum-ishkun, son of Marduk-zir-epish,
son of Irani; Nabu-ushallim, son of Bel-akhl-iddin, son of
Bel-apal-u^ur. In the dwefling of Damqa, their mother.
And the scribe, Nur-Ea, son of Ina-Isaggll-zIri, son of Nur-
SIn. Babylon, twenty-first of KIsillmu, eighth year of
Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon.

[This tablet affords a good example of the sale of a
slave. In this case the persons who sell guarantee that the
slave will neither become insubordinate, nor prove to be
subject to any governmental claims, nor prove to have been
emancipated by adoption. The word rendered " emanci¬
pation " means literally " adoption," but adoption by a
freeman was an early form of emancipation.

This sale is from the reign of the Nebuchadnezzar of
Biblical fame, dating from 597 b. c. The same kind of con¬
tracts, as the next one quoted will show, were made seven¬
teen hundred years earlier.]

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