NUZI AND THE HUKRIANS PFEIFFER 553 



Itkhi-Teshub on the throne a considerable time later. Early in the 

 fifteenth century, however, the district of Arrapkha, including Nuzi, 

 became, with Saushshattar, an integral part of the kingdom of Mi- 

 tamii. Apparently there never was a king of Nuzi, although sons 

 of the king, like Shilwateshub, and " queens " resided there. The 

 highest authority at Nuzi was the local governor, responsible at first 

 to the king of Arrapkha and later to the king of Mitanni. A few 

 tablets at Nuzi are dated according to the governors of the time. 

 A governor named Kushshiharbe, according to a mass of specific 

 testimony, was no less corrupt and high-handed than Verres. 



The population of Nuzi was racially a mixture of Hurrians and 

 Akkadians, and it remained bilingual, for Akkadian was the literary 

 language and Hurrian the vernacular. At present, likewise, there 

 are Turkomans, Kurds, and Arabs, speaking at least two of their 

 three languages, living in the same region. The culture of Nuzi, 

 however, is basically Hurrian, in spite of clear signs of Akkadian 

 influence. The Hurrian invaders were on a much lower cultural 

 level than the population of Ga-sur. Even though they made rapid 

 progress after the conquest of the city, they never quite attained 

 the refinement and elegance of the vanquished. The pottery and 

 the figurines of Nuzi, for example, are decidedly cruder than those 

 of Ga-sur. It is only in painting and in seal engraving that the 

 Hurrians developed an artistic style of their own (pi, 2). 



After the conquest the Hurrian leaders divided the land among 

 their soldiers and established a feudal system in which the landowner 

 was subject to the corvee and prevented from selling his land. The 

 sale of a field could be effected legally only indirectly, by bequeathing 

 it to the buyer after he had been adopted. Adoption for a price was 

 a convenient device for other purposes as well: Free women were 

 adopted for marriage to slaves or sons, occasionally even for sacred 

 prostitution. Some persons, particularly childless widows and 

 elderly couples, adopted a man of wealth, transferring to him at once 

 all their possessions and obtaining in exchange a lifelong support and 

 decorous burial at his expense. 



Times of economic stress gradually deprived the small landowner 

 of his holdings and even reduced him to the condition of a slave. 

 Forced to borrow on the security of his land or of the person of his 

 son, who served the creditor until the debt was repaid, the farmer 

 would eventually be forced to adopt liis creditor, thus deprivino- his 

 family of the ancestral estate. Tlie rich, in the words of Isaiah, 

 " joined house to house and added field to field ", whereas the poor 

 were being sold into slavery, as Amos said, for the value of a pair of 

 shoes. The middle class eked out a rather precarious existence in 

 the various professions and skilled crafts on account of the competi- 



