PRE-MONARCHICAL SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

IN ISRAEL IN THE LIGHT OF MARl

by

ABRAHAM MALAMAT
Jerusalem

In recent years it has again become fashionable, in some quarters, to

discredit the historical reliability of various biblical descriptions of pre-
monarchic institutions in Israel. In order to counteract such scepticism
we may adduce a number of biblical references to early social and legal
practices which point to the existence of legitimate pre-monarchical
institutions. Thus, for example, we see evidence of an ancient family law,
including inheritance provisions and marriage customs, in other words,
a law not royal in authority. We note the recruitment of troops along
gentilic lines, from individual settlements, rather than the formation of
a national army. In short, it is the life of the family or clan that is domi-
nant here and not the later royal system. An indication of a different sort
can be found in the so-called anti-monarchic pericopes within the Bible,
several of which no doubt draw their inspiration from pre-monarchical
times. Finally - and this will be our major argument - there is the
extra-biblical evidence, and in this context the Mari documents are of
prime importance.
Old Babylonian Mari apparently shared common origins with the
early Israelites as well as with many other West Semitic peoples. Thus,
a comparison between early Israel and Mari can and should be made.
Indeed, the broad spectrum of the Mari archives - the largest extra-
biblical body of material within the West Semitic milieu - actually
invites such a comparison.! Furthermore, this comparative study reveals
an aggregate of similarities which thus cannot simply be regarded as a
result of common patterns of human behaviour.
First and foremost in such a comparison is the linguistic factor, that
is, the lexical items which are parallel in the corpora of both Mari and
the Bible. Significantly, a perusal of such West Semitic terminology has

1 On the comparative approach, including similarities as well as contrasts, see my brief

remarks in "Mari and Early Israel", Biblical Archaeology Today. Proceedings of the Interna-
tional Congress on Biblical Archaeology Uerusalem, 1985), pp. 235-43. On the method in
general see I. J. Gelb, "Comparative Method in the Study of the Society and Economy
of the Ancient Near East", Rocznik Orientalistyczny 41 (1980), pp. 24-36.
166 A. MALAMAT

its major impact on the societal level and reflects, in one way or another,
a thoroughly tribalistic milieu, mainly of non-urban population. This is
so in Mari as well as in early Israel, and it is only through sources
associated with these two entities - in all documentary evidence of the
ancient Near East until Islamic times - that tribal society is manifested
in full bloom.
The terminology is unique to the Akkadian of Mari and to Hebrew,
although occasionally it is found in other West Semitic languages as well
(in particular, Ugaritic, Aramaic and Arabic), but there are no true
cognates in standard Akkadian. At Mari the referents are entirely foreign
to the Assyro-Babylonian milieu. The Mari documents contain a set of
West Semitic terms denoting tribal units, forms of tribal settlements and
tribal leadership, in short: tribal institutions and customs. A comparative
study of these terms with their Hebrew cognates not only sheds light on
the meaning of individual words but also serves to illuminate the
underlying structures and institutions of the societies involved. We
employ the concept of institution in a broad sense encompassing inter alia
various life-styles. Let us first enumerate the Mari-Bible equivalents in
the various social realms: tribal units - gii)umlgiiyumlhibrumlummatum -
Hebrew goy, ~eber, )ummiih; forms of settlement - nawumlha~iirum -
niiweh, ~ii~er; and finally the institution of patrimony - nihlatum -
Hebrew na~aliih. We shall not deal here with terms for tribal leadership
- siipi/umlmerhum - sope.t, merea c - since they have been the subject of
several recent satisfactory discussions. 2

giiyumlgii)um - goy3

We shall commence our discussion with the term for the tribal unit
giiyum, Hebrew gOy, which was relatively small in scope. In Mari we
witness the occurrence of personal names composed of giiyum as well, in
particular Bahlu-giiyim (the leader of a clan notably named Amurru; see
below). In addition to Mari, giiyum is now also confirmed by a single
occurrence in the contemporary texts of Tell Rimah (ancient Karana).4

2 See]. Safren, "New Evidence for the Title of the Provincial Governor", RUCA 50

(1979), pp. 1-15; idem, "meraum and merautum in Mari" , Orientalia, N.S. 51 (1982), pp.
1-29.
3 See my previous treatments of giiyumlgoy inJAOS 82 (1962), pp. 143-4, n. 3; 15 e Ren-

contre Assyriologique Internationale, Comptes rendus (Liege, 1967), pp. 133 ff.; most recently
cf. Ph. Talon in]. M. Durand and].-R. Kupper (ed.), Miscellanea Babylonica (Milanges
M. Birot) (Paris, 1985), pp. 277-84; and G.]. Botterweck, R. E. Clements, ThWAT 1
(1973), cols 965-73 (s.v. goy).
4 See S. Dalley et alii, The Old Babylonian Tabletsfrom Tell al Rimah (Hertford, 1976),
pp. 220-1 (no. 305:18).