NUZI AND THE HURRIANS — PFEIFFER 551 



receipts are also abundantly represented in these archives. The 

 house of Tehiptilla prevailed in court over its opponents in all the 

 53 lawsuits on record. Far less numerous are the documents of the 

 following types: Adoptions of free women for marriage to house- 

 hold slaves; marriages, wills, stipulations of voluntary slavery on 

 the part of "Hebrews" {Hahiru), agreements, gifts, sales of horses, 

 bills of lading, contracts for the hire of harvesters, letters, lists, 

 inventories, and so on. 



All these types of documents appear, in varying proportions, in 

 other family archives. The libuse of Zigi was less concerned in 

 the acquisition of landed property, through inheritance from the 

 jQctitiously adoptive fathers, than the house of Tehiptilla; its pre- 

 served records deal primarily with family matters, such as mar- 

 liages, wills, genuine adoptions, with litigation in court concerning 

 such matters, and with mortgages. Shilwateshub, son of the King, 

 according to his tablets, increased his wealth by making loans of 

 cereals, payable with the interest after the harvest, and by sheep 

 raising. A lady named " Tulpunnaya ", whose records were found 

 in room N120 of the palace, adopted young women for marriage to 

 her servants or, against the payment of the bridal price, to Nuzian 

 bachelors. She claimed the offspring of the wives of her slaves as 

 her property and she also added to her household servants by seizing 

 the persons of her debtors or of their sons pending the complete 

 repayment of the loan. Puhishenni, the son of Mushapu, who lived 

 in the district northeast of the palace, acquired fields through adop- 

 tion, raised sheep, and loaned sheep and cereals at interest. He once 

 provided an illiterate shepherd with a hollow, egg-shaped tablet 

 containing 49 pebbles corresponding to the 49 sheep entrusted to his 

 care, according to the inscription on this tablet and on the duplicate 

 record retained by Puhishenni. 



Aside from private records, such as those of Tulpunnaya and 

 Puhishenni, the tablets from the palace of Nuzi include official doc- 

 uments, such as lists of tax collections and of payments of wages to 

 female weavers and other workers, records of payments (from the 

 state treasury?) for the support of the "queen" of Nuzi and the 

 " queen " of the City of the Gods, reports on military inspections, 

 religious and scholastic texts, and court records. Among the last 

 is the transcript of the testimony presented in a suit for the impeach- 

 ment of a governor accused of soliciting bribes. 



THE HUERIANS AND THEIR CULTURE 



Hurrian personal names occur sporadically in the third millennium 

 B. C. in Babylonia and in Cappadocia, but the great Hurrian mi- 

 gration is not earlier than the beginning of the second millennium. 



