ウル第三王朝時代の貸借契約について
1975 年 18 巻 2 号 p. 31-46,166
詳細
1975 年 18 巻 2 号 p. 31-46,166
In the legal documents chiefly from Nippur, we can find a fairly large number of loan texts. The scheme of them is in principle as follows.
“An object (silver or barley) as a loan, with or without interest, from a creditor, a debtor has received (šu ba(-an)-ti). He will pay back it within a term. He has sworn this by the name of the king, in the presence of some witnesses.”
This form is the same as that of the Old-Babylonian contracts called šubanti-type. In this article, I have investigated the loan texts of this type in the following points.
1. The amount of loan. (Part III, Chart I.)
2. The interest. (Part IV.)
3. The term of payment. (Part V, Chart II, III.)
4. The contracting parties. (Part VI.)
5. The penal and other provisions. (Part VII.)
Generally speaking, the fact that the debtor swore to pay back the debt within a term in the presence of witnesses seems to show that the contracts of this type were private. But this part was so often dispensed with that I cannot affirm that all the contracts of this type were private. Were the creditors acting as private individuals or as officials belonging to temples or other authorities? There is need of further investigation to answer this question.
