Die neuassyrischen Privatrechtsurkunden als Quelle fur Mensch und Umwelt.

• Author: JAS, R. M.
• Position: Review

Die neuassyrischen Privatrechtsurkunden als Quelle fur Mensch und Umwelt. By KAREN RADNER. State Archives of Assyria Studies, vol. 6. Helsinki: HELSINKI UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1997. Pp. xlii + 428. $44.50.

When C. H. W. Johns in 1898 published the first large collection of Neo-Assyrian legal documents, he mentioned on the title page of his book that he had not only copied the texts, but "collated, arranged, abstracted, annotated and indexed" them as well. Indeed, the two massive follow-up volumes published in 1901, and a fourth, posthumously published in 1923 by his widow A. S. Johns, besides containing additional copies, consist of over 1100 pages of commentary and indexes. A year later Mrs. Johns brought out a second, corrected edition of the first volume. It is no surprise that Johns' work has remained the most extensive study of Neo-Assyrian legal documents to this day.

The title page of Karen Radner's first book could have carried the same words "collated, arranged, abstracted, annotated and indexed," but if the technique is the same, her aim with this book is obviously a different one. Johns took it upon himself to provide the student of these then unfamiliar texts with as many tools to help him understand them as he possibly could. A hundred years later, not only has knowledge of Neo-Assyrian improved immensely, but numerous new texts from both central and northern Assyria have also been discovered that supplement the picture emerging from Johns' book, which is basically that of a palace society in Nineveh.

Radner now bravely takes one step further and tries to present the Neo-Assyrian legal documents in such a way that the information which these laconic texts contain concerning the Assyrians and the world they lived in will be of use to a wider circle of scholars. As suggested by the subtitle of her book, Radner's interests in doing so are mainly sociological and anthropological, rather than purely philological or juridical. On almost every page it becomes clear that all the carefully compiled lists and tables relate to actual events in the history of real persons, and one of the greatest attractions of this book, for me at least, is the enthusiasm and determination the author shows in bringing Assyrian men, women, and children back to life in this way. That she does not take this task lightly is proven not only by this very lengthy and well-wrought book, but also by the first volume of The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire...