Blood Money in the Assyrian Documents

Abstract

This study is about the practice of “blood money”, which is well known from Old Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian documents. Although it is not included in the Middle Assyrian Law Code, it is known from the other sources of the period that it has an important place in Assyrian social life and legal understanding. It is understood that the blood money is a right earned by the relatives of the murdered person. In the Assyrian documents, the blood money is expressed with the word dāmu. While the word in question was always written phonetically in the Old Assyrian period, it was also expressed in the documents of the Neo-Assyrian Period with the logogram ÚŠ/MÚD.