THE STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF DISPUTE MANAGEMENT IN THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION OF LARSA UNDER HAMMURAPI

Abstract

Hammurapi (1792-1750 B.C.), the king of Babylon established the provincial administration of Larsa whose jurisdiction covered the entire territory of the Kingdom of Larsa after his conquest in his 30th year. This new provincial administration played a role as a mediator between the central government of Babylon and the local administrations of the cities in the province. The provincial administration seems to have been controlled by royal appointees sent by Babylon while the conventional municipal administration of the city, which was basically composed of the assembly of the city and the elders of the city under a governor, remained as the local administration. The local administration of the large cities under the province of Larsa, such as Ur and Nippur, had direct contract with the central government and supervised the local administrations of their subordinate cities and villages.(1) The legal authorities in the public administration took charge of (1) making regulations as legislators; (2) authenticating public and private contracts as administrators; (3) settling disputes and claims as arbitrators; (4) enforcing judgments in disputes as administrators.(2) These responsibilities were not clearly differentiated by legal specialists but were superimposed by administrators-in-charge in most cases. The legal system under Hammurapi has been studied by many scholars from the judicial viewpoints through the analyses of the Code of Hammurapi and legal contracts.(3) However, very few have researched the interrelation between the judicial and administrative systems. In this paper, I will focus on the dispute management in the public administration of Larsa under Hammurapi, by discussing the hierarchical and horizontal interrelations of the dispute management system from the analysis of disputes and claims according to the kind of case, the principals involved, judge(s), and