Series | Antiquity Studies
Edited book | Wisdom Between East and West: Mesopotamia, Greece and Beyond
Chapter | Law, Morality, and Subversion in Sumerian Prose Miniatures
Law, Morality, and Subversion in Sumerian Prose Miniatures
Abstract
This paper investigates the legal framework and transmission history of two Sumerian prose miniatures from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000‑1600 BCE), which were hitherto considered as folktales and whose relation to wisdom literature remained controversial. It will be argued that their affinity with academic legal discourse and moralising wisdom compositions, as well as their firm embeddedness in scribal milieux, suggests that they are better understood as satirical morality tales bridging literary genres at the intersection of law and morality. Since both stories respond to incidental or conceptual ‘gaps’ in royal law collections, special attention will be devoted to analysing their subversive potential.
Submitted: Nov. 7, 2023 | Accepted: March 4, 2024 | Published July 9, 2024 | Language: en
Keywords Law • Royal legislation • Folktale • Wisdom literature • Satire • Parody • Morality tale • Scholarly text compilation • Scribal education • Sumerian
Copyright © 2024 Jana Matuszak. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-776-0/014
