In the spring of 2006, two other scholars and I received a collaborative research grant of $150,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct research on Neo-Babylonian trial law and procedure for the two-year period from July 1, 2006 until June 30, 2008. We have recently received a two-year extension (2008-2010) and an additional $175,000 from the NEH.

Special Link
Click here for a list of texts that contain Unicode-based transliterations. In order to read these transliterations, please set the encoding for your text editor to Unicode (UTF-8). To see the texts displayed following standard Assyriological conventions, please install and use the Wardu font, designed by the project's Dean Snyder.

Primary Participating Scholars
Cornelia Wunsch (University of London)
F. Rachel Magdalene (University of Leipzig)
Bruce Wells (Saint Joseph's University)

Part-time Consultants
Dean Snyder (Johns Hopkins University)
Shalom Holtz (Yeshiva University)

Abstract

The purpose of the Neo-Babylonian Trial Procedure project is to understand and describe the features and procedures of the trial court system operative in southern Iraq (ancient Mesopotamia) during the seventh to fifth centuries BCE (the Neo-Babylonian period, approximately 650-450 BCE). This effort will entail several endeavors: (1) identifying Neo-Babylonian trial-related tablets (documents) by searching the database of Neo-Babylonian legal texts already compiled by the project's co-directors, published scholarly literature on the topic, and targeted museum collections in Europe and North America; (2) encoding a large number of these texts with the Unicode encodings for cuneiform signs; (3) analyzing these texts for legal and historical content; and (4) compiling and organizing the encoding data and the legal-historical analysis in the University of Chicago's OCHRE (On-line Cultural Heritage Research Environment) system, a Unicode-based and internet-based system designed specifically to accommodate the study of ancient Near Eastern texts and artifacts. The collection of data in OCHRE will then be analyzed in order to produce the following: (1) a written presentation of the findings in book form; and (2) a free website with encoded Neo-Babylonian texts, searchable by individual or sets of cuneiform signs. This work will be primarily of interest to Assyriologists and legal historians, but it will also provide material that is important for scholars interested in connections between the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible, Greco-Roman legal systems, and Islamic law.