Ancient Legal Textbook from Mesopotamia
If a woman hates her husband and has said to him, “You are not my husband”, they will throw her in the river.
Written in cuneiform, this clay tablet records a series of legal terms, phrases, formulae, and some precepts, translated from Sumerian into Akkadian. Scribes may have used this work when learning to draft everyday legal documents, such as contracts and trial records. Although this copy comes from the library of the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, the original on which this would have been based probably dates to the second millennium BCE. Such a text may have served to help scribes draft formulaic legal documents and to promote their understanding of Sumerian, a long-dead language by this period of Mesopotamian history. (Source)
Neo-Assyrian (c. 900-600 BCE), Nineveh.
British Museum.