“Petitionary letters to god (Gottesbriefe, letter-prayers) ” written in Sumerian are products of the Old Babylonian scribal schools. They are prayers in letter-style, addressed and dedicated to gods by “pious sufferers”, urging the gods to release them from suffering. Six similar letters in Akkadian have also been identified. It is indisputable that there are similarities between the Sumerian and Akkadian genres in their presentation of the plight and petition.
There are differences as well. Unlike the Sumerian genre, mostly attested in multiple copies, most Akkadian letters are written by the archival hand and attested in just a single example. The Akkadian letters are addressed to the personal deity of the letter-writer, but in the Sumerian examples such is not necessarily the case. Scholars have considered that since the Akkadian letters are thus essentially archival and personal, the Sumerian and the Akkadian petitionary letters have no historical or genetic relationship. In this article, I conduct a more comprehensive study, focusing on the structural features of the Akkadian petitionary letters in comparison with Sumerian generic features, and suggest a slight modification in the previous understanding about the relationship between the two genres.
I describe several features that three of the Akkadian petitionary letters have that the other three do not-lengthy opening salutations, descriptions of past benefits received and services rendered, and vows and expressions of praise and thanksgiving. These features are also shared by some of the Sumerian petitionary letters, particularly those from the Larsa period, which are relatively late examples of the genre. Since I found it difficult to determine the historical sequence of all the Akkadian petitionary letters, I cannot make any definite claim about development or influences. However, I think it likely that the genre experienced stylistic development and the Akkadian letters with those features were influenced by the Larsa period letters as it seems that some important similarities in style and content that I describe cannot be explained without considering that one genre knew the other.

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This article deals with marriage contracts of Old Assyrian merchants and focusses on form analysis. Its contents can be summarized as follows:
1. In his recent discussion of the Old Babylonian marriage, R. Westbrook has suggested that a marriage contract was in fact of “bethrothal contract”. The study of some Old Assyrian marriage contracts in combination with data in some letters and records shows that a similar interpretation is also helpful for the Old Assyrian period. Marriage procedures under the contract by which Old Assyrian traders took a woman as aššatum, “(first and main) wife”, can be distinguished in three stages: betrothal in childhood, engagement, and marriage. The woman in question was called aššatum as each stage.
2. It is a well established fact that the community of Old Assyrian merchants also knew a “polygamous” marriage institution. It knew a formal marriage, sealed by a contract, with a woman designated as amtum who, however, was not a slave-girl owned by her husband or somebody else, as was the case in some Old Babylonian “polygamous” marriage contracts (cf. CH §146). Such amtum wives had a spacial legal status.
3. The recently published marriage contract kt t/k 55=AKT 1 no. 77 which was indeed a contract of engagement since the final payment of šimu “prices” has not been done and “the face (of the bride) is (still) unveiled”, acquaints us with still another type of marriage. The bride most probably was a qadištum, whose contractual status seems to have belonged to some different category from that of an aššatum and an amtum. This contract reveals that the custom of “veiling” a woman in order to fix her status, known from the Middle Assyrian Laws, was already known in the old Assyrian period. The text also acquaints us with the possibility of a marriage with a woman designated as ša'itum, “(travel) companion”, who seems to have enjoyed a status of ‘lover’ different from that of the aššatum, the amtum and the qadištum.

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To define the correlation of ‘treaty’ with ‘covenant’, the functions of the gods in the Aramaic Inscriptions from Sefire (Sf) are investigated from the religious-historical point of view. It is stated in stele IA lines 7-14 that this treaty was concluded in the Presence of the gods of the contracting parties and the names of the gods as witnesses are listed. In the first half of these lines (11. 7-10) the gods of KTK, an unknown city or territory, are enumerated in pairs, showing clearly the influence of the Babylonian pantheon. The construction of these lines suggests that the Babylonian culture exerted a remarkable influence on KTK. The latter part of the same enumeration lists the gods in Arpad as witnesses (11. 10-12). There both western semitic gods, such as Hadad, 'El and 'Elyon, and natural phenomena were worshipped. Unlike the former enumeration, there is no pair consisting of a god and his consort. To enumerate gods as witnesses in such a way was very prevalent in the Ancient Near Eastern traditions. In Sf natural phenomena were adored as well as gods, but in the OT phenomena listed were limited to only heaven and earth (e. g. Dt. 31:28 etc.). In addition, God appears as the witness to the treaty between Laban and Jacob (Gen. 31:50). These examples show that the function of the gods in Sf is similar to that of God in the OT. There was a traditional thought in Ancient Orient that the transgressors of the treaties were cursed and doomed to extinction by the treaty-gods. A similar type of curses appears in stele IA lines 14-35, in which Hadad plays quite an important role and most curses are closely related with his character as the storm-god. Furthermore, it was essential that the gods themselves conclude the treaty, which means, they were not only witnesses but also parties to the treaty. The following verbal usages are discussed in detail here: sym and nsr. Frequent appearances of the expression 'lhy ‘dy’ or ‘treaty-gods’ emphasize the inseparable connection of Sf with the OT and Ugaritic Literature. My final conclusion is: although there may be no direct borrowings on the part of the OT from Sf, the covenant thought in the OT and the treaty thought in Sf are closely related each other.

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